The gentlebirth.org website is provided courtesy of
Ronnie Falcao, LM MS, a homebirth midwife in Mountain View, CA

Vaginitis Mistaken for UTI

I went to a lecture in April on Chronic Bladder Infections, presented by Molly Linton, ND., LM. at the Southwest conference on Botanical Medicine. Molly is a very busy family practice doc, she does about 7 births/mo. OOH.

Her lecture is 3 printed pages of protocols and several pages of notes taken during her lecture. Her info sheds some light on the recent discussion on UTIs. To start off with be sure you are dealing with a UTI, not vaginitis. to quote from her lecture "As I stated in my vaginitis lecture most dysuria is caused from a vaginitis and not a true cystitis. Therefore the true cause is not addressed in many women."

Dysuria-painful urination

She considers bladder infections in women to be chronic in 2 situations.

1. a bladder infection that did not fully clear up with the first treatment.
2. when a woman has one without explanation or if it continues to occur even after that situation has been addressed fully.
3. something related but not truly UTI is interstitial cystitis- " Most treatments for bladder infection will exacerbate symptoms of this disease. What occurs is the cracking of the interstitial walls. ( she likens this as an example to cracks on the corners of your mouth, only worse) As the bladder fills it hurts, the use of most of these herbs is irritating. The treatment is to remove the irritating agents which are usually candida and food allergies. The thrust of symptomatic relief is healing the mucosa with demulcents, pain relievers, and systemic treatment of candida."

Urine flow-The rule of thumb on drinking water for everyone( sick or not) is "1/3 of their body weight in fluid ounces/day plus 8oz for every vice." example: before you drink a cup of coffee or a glass of juice or smoke a cigarette you drink 8oz of water, in addition to your daily amount. " Once someone has a bladder infection I increase the intake to 8oz/hour for a cleansing flush. This alone may stop a chronic bladder problem and should be the first therapeutic suggestion." She stated that this will stop a UTI within 24 hours for 60% of women.

"Acidify or Alkalinize: The urine has an acidic pH, so that most of our therapeutic approaches are to acidify the urine. Although in clinical practice the use of ascorbic acid and cranberry juice seems to work and the presumed mechanism has been to acidify the urine, they do not truly acidify the urine. There are many reasons to alkalinize the urine such as many of the botanicals with anti-microbial properties work more effectively in a higher pH (e.g. hydrastis and arctostaphylos uva ursi)........ If you are unsuccessful in your usual treatments try alkalinizing the urine. ...."

Cranberry because of hippuric acid, which inhibits E. coli from adhering to the lining of the bladder and urethra, blueberry juice has similar properties. She recommends " fresh juice, 4oz every 2 hrs. with 4oz before retiring at night to not allow the invasion by the E. coli." This has a 60-70% kill rate.

I hope I have not fragmented this info too much, She really presented much more and in a more orderly fashion, I was just hoping to touch on some of the stuff already talked about on the list. Molly lives in Seattle, Wash. and said unfortunately she was going to be quitting the midwifery part of her practice sometime this summer, she is a gifted and experienced teacher and I would hope someone will hire her for a MW conference or 2, too much info to loose and not pass on. At this conference she commented on wanting to teach, next year, about treating cervical dysplasia- she has had an excellent success rate with no one so far going on to have cancer. Sharon in Tucson.