Healthy bladder habits help prevent UTIs
Drink lots of fluids to avoid painful infections
— It’s not something most women want to talk about but as medical conditions go, this one is pretty common and irritatingly so.
Urinary tract infections, or UTIs, cannot only be painful, but also cause embarrassing and anxiety-provoking symptoms. They are a particular scourge for women, who for anatomical reasons are far more susceptible than men to developing these pesky infections.
About half of all women will experience a UTI at some point in their lifetime, and some women get them over and over again, making them more than just a nuisance.
Urinary tract infection is a non-specific term that refers to a bacterial infection in any part of the system responsible for removing urine from the body, including the bladder and kidneys, says Dr. Lesley Carr, a urologist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.
UTIs typically start in the urethra, the narrow tube that runs from the bladder to the opening where urine is released. If the infection moves upwards to the bladder, it too can become infected, causing a condition known as bacterial cystitis.
Should the bacteria invade the kidneys, which are linked to the bladder by two long tubes called ureters, the infection is considered more serious. Left untreated, a kidney infection can lead in very rare cases to sepsis, an infection of the blood that can be fatal.
“Often there’s pain and that could be pain in the bladder area, felt above the pubic bone, and also what we call dysuria, which means pain during the actual act of voiding, often radiating down along the urethra.”
That pain is often described as burning. Depending on the extent of the infection, it can be so excruciating that women will desperately try to limit how much they pee.
Other signs of a UTI can include foul-smelling and cloudy urine. “There could even be blood in the urine or blood on the toilet paper,” Carr says.
The best treatment for urinary tract infections, doctors say, is to try to prevent them in the first place.
Carr said that means practising “healthy bladder habits,” which includes staying well-hydrated by drinking fluids and flushing the system by urinating regularly. She suggests drinking a glass of unsweetened cranberry juice each day or taking a daily cranberry extract caplet.