UTIs
When enough is enough!
Recurring UTIs
The role of conventional medicine in creating dependance to antibiotics and increasing your risk of multidrug resistance.
Your doctor may prescribe you antibiotics in response to your symptoms or results of a test, and you may feel instantly better for it. However, antibiotics generally kill free-floating bacteria (and just about any living organism in your body, including the good and bad bacteria in your gut).
After weeks, months or years of treatment, as soon as you stop taking antibiotics, your symptoms appear almost immediately — back with a vengeance — affecting your mood, energy levels and a great deal of pain that can disturb your sleep. You may feel you don’t have any energy, are brain-fogged, anxious and also probably irritable. So. you get back on the wagon and before you know it, you have been taking antibiotics for 2, 5 or 7 years without interruption.
Taking antibiotics for so long heavily disrupts the ecology of the human microbiome — a single course of antibiotics can change the composition of oral and gut microbiomes for at least a year — and adds to your stress levels and, therefore, reduces your resilience — affecting every system in your body. You may feel like a hamster on a wheel and just don’t know how to jump out of it. Considering stopping antibiotics may cause you a lot of stress and may even create fear, as you know how painful it can get.
In every pool of microbes, there are always some that are drug resistant. When you take antibiotics, you help these bacteria to develop and thrive, potentially taking over and wreaking havoc in your body by pushing health-supporting bacteria into corners. When multidrug-resistant bacteria have reached great enough numbers, they can then cause infections for which there is no medicine. Additionally, these bacteria can pass on their drug resistance to other bacteria, adding to the problem.
Click on the button to find out more (once there, scroll down to the UTIs series):
What can be worse than multidrug-resistant bacteria?
The problem with taking antibiotics daily, bacteria’s defence mechanism is to create biofilms to protect themselves, building skyscrapers where many microbial colonies can hide and work together for their survival. Because of the biofilm, bacteria can also shed their membrane, exposing their content and increasing the release of pro-inflammatory markers that end up in circulation. Those factors can be channelled to just about anywhere in the body, the joints (leading to joint pain and stiffness), the brain (inflaming neurones, leading to brain fog, anxiety and cognitive dysfunction).
Biofilms are chronic in nature, as biofilm-residing bacteria can be resilient to both the immune system, antibiotics and other forms of treatment. Therefore, using stronger and stronger antibiotics will not have the desired effects and can lead to treatment resistance in the long term. Now, even yeasts can find a spot to thrive, leading to candida overgrowth and even more health problems down the urinary system, deeply affecting the pH of the vaginal canal, another factor responsible for chronic infections.
The holistic approach
Urinary tract infections can make your life a misery and the pain unbearable. Every attempt by your GP will not eradicate the pathogens, simply because they are shielded inside biofilms. Despite the symptoms associated with infections and the pain, the tests ordered by your GP may reveal an absence of infection and you may be told: “It’s all in your head!”.
At Nutrunity UK, we look at your body as a whole and, therefore, we aim to uncover triggers and mediators to your condition and give you protocols to help restore balance in your body and help you get back to being your best self. But, in UTIs protocol, 100% compliance is required — no matter how brain-fogged and exhausted you may feel at the time — to help you get rid of the problem. If you don’t you may delay the healing process.
The way we work is by testing, testing, testing. We look for the culprits (bacteria and other microbes) and propose one protocol to follow. If the following test reveals that the bacteria have reduced in numbers, we know we are on the right path. If the numbers have not changed, we need to change the protocol to target the right biofilm and retest. We also work with the world-leading US-based Nurse Practitioner and chronic UTI/IC specialist whose research spans 40 years following her own experience and complete recovery from IC. We have amassed large experience in supporting clients with recurrent UTIs/Interstitial Cystitis and associated challenges, including gut, vaginal, hormonal and HPA axis dysfunction.
You may also have to follow an anti-inflammatory diet. And, in some cases, an elimination diet. The aim is to stop adding fuel to the fire!
It may take 3-6 months for you to eradicate the infection, even longer if you don’t follow through. So, you must understand the importance of every step you take on your journey toward healing to prevent any delay.
Pricing
£1200
— everything is included
Initial consultation + 2 follow-ups
The first follow-up will be 2 weeks after the initial or once the test results are received, whichever comes sooner. This allows us to target the protocol according to the results and identified pathogens. Note that pathogens may differ as we peel away the biofilm layers. This is why testing is a vital part of the process.
+ 1 email daily (We aim to respond within 24 hours. We also highly recommend that you email all your questions at once, to facilitate communication. )
+ Review by world expert in chronic UTI and interstitial cystitis
+ 2 State-of-the-art qPCR+NGS test kits (£356 each — we do not charge any commission).
This is the cost of seeing a consultant in Harley Street that will simply resolve to prescribe you antibiotics. While antibiotics are necessary to treat the infection, we are looking at the body as a whole and addressing every other underlying issue that is making you more susceptible to infections.
£95
1-hour follow-up to discuss the results of tests, successes and challenges — from the third follow-up onwards until infection is resolved.
£356
Additional test. We will order this for you and get it sent directly to you. You may also order directly from the laboratory. Either way, the results will be sent to our practice and then released to you with your complete report.
£60
30-minute follow-up to discuss success and challenges, and any new symptoms.
Get started with Nutrunity UK, today.
Main picture: medical illustration of drug-resistant, Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria by the CDC (source: unsplash.com) . This bacteria is very often present in chronic UTIs.