Cystitis versus UTI: What's the difference?
The bladder can sometimes develop "diverticulum" which are pockets or outgrowths where urine can be stored as a reservoir and bacteria grow to cause cystitis or recurrent urinary tract infections.How to Test for Urinary Tract Infections at Home
You can buy UTI test strips to test yourself at home for a UTI that’s caused by a bacterial infection. Follow the instructions on the box to find out whether you have urinary tract infection or not. If you have bladder irritation and you do not have a urinary tract infection according to the test strips, then you probably have painful bladder syndrome / interstitial cystitis.What’s the difference between UTI and Cystitis?
If you go to a doctor, the official difference between a UTI and cystitis has to do with whether or not there is an identifiable pathogen in your bladder that is causing the bladder to be irritated and inflamed. Let me explain…At your doctor’s office, you pee into a cup and then the doctor will either send your urine to a lab or use a test strip to determine whether or not you have an infection in your bladder. In theory, you can trust these results, but in practice, you should never blindly trust the healthcare system. If you went to a mechanic and had him fix your car, but later returned and the car was not fixed and perhaps even ran worse than before you took it to the mechanic, what would you do? Would you blindly trust that the mechanic fixed your car even if it still had the same problem? How many times would you continue to take your car to that mechanic if your car was never getting fixed and perhaps even running worse?
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By definition, a urinary tract infection is where you have an infection in your bladder, usually a bacterial infection, but there are other types of infection that don’t involve bacteria, that can’t be detected by urinary test strips, and that are not always easy for lab workers to identify. Schistosomiasis infection, for example, can cause extreme bladder irritation, but this infection won’t show up on a UTI test strip.Also, it is possible that cystitis is caused by some kind of infection that conventional medicine simply can’t detect. Cancer, for example, is caused by something called a mycobacterium – a hybrid microorganism that behaves a bit like a fungus and a bit like a bacterium and that seems to live quietly in human cells unless activated. Once activated by acidic conditions in the body, this mycobacterium takes control of cells and causes them to replicate. This is not mainstream knowledge because if cancer is an infection, The Cancer Industry no longer makes sense and people simply won’t pay for it. But what if interstitial cystitis is also caused by some kind of tiny pathogen that goes undetected in the lab and that isn’t detectable on urinary test strips? If that were true, you would want to treat this infection to get rid of the bladder irritation.
Many patients go to the doctor’s office to get antibiotics for a UTI and they leave empty handed because the doctor doesn’t believe the patient has a UTI. I've spent plenty of time in doctor’s offices hoping for UTI treatment only to go home empty-handed as well. Doctors feel frustrated when they can’t offer treatment for their patients too and often, they take their frustration out on their patients (as though their cystitis patients need more frustration in their lives). So let’s think outside of this box and go beyond the idea of cystitis and UTI to look at this problem in a different way.
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UTI and Cystitis: Common Causes
Bladder Cell Weakness
Did you know that if you were to accidentally cut off one of your fingers above the first knuckle, you could regrow that finger if you applied a powder of stem cells from a pig’s bladder to the stub? Bladder tissues that are healthy will regrow and renew themselves within about 40 weeks, but if the bladder wall is damaged, the damaged cells are rapidly exfoliated and regenerated within 72 hours.Bladder tissues are designed to be tough and resilient, yet to be able to also regenerate and regrow. So, if you have cystitis or recurrent UTIs, what’s really going on? Why is your bladder unable to fend off infection, slough off damaged tissues, regrow the bladder wall, and restore itself to normal?
Though most laypeople who have never studied medicine think about interstitial cystitis and urinary tract infections in terms of antibiotics or perhaps pain-killers to get rid of bladder irritation, it can be helpful to think about these urinary tract issues at the cellular level. If your bladder cells are “weak”, why are they weak and how do you recharge them?
If we’re talking about cells, and cellular weakness, we need to think about the mitochondria which are like the battery of cells. And if we’re talking about mitochondria, we’re really talking about electricity and generating electricity inside cells. Mitochondria, as the battery-power for human cells, work in a manner similar to how all batteries work, through the movement of electrons along a circuit. In the human body, we consume electrons in the form of trace minerals. Trace minerals are also known as “electrolytes” because they are, essentially, electrical.
One of the most valuable natural remedies for cystitis that works fairly quickly to get rid of bladder irritation is salt loading and salt flushing, which involves drinking large, repeated doses of Himalayan sea salt in water until copious urination occurs. Inevitably, the trace minerals / electrolytes from the Himalayan sea salt end up in the urine in the bladder. These trace minerals can be used to recharge mitochondria and reduce inflammation and irritation in the bladder. For some people, salt loading and salt flushing is all that’s needed to get rid of cystitis symptoms permanently, but for other people, it works merely to reduce inflammation and irritation. In any case, salt loading and salt flushing for cystitis seems to work because it recharges the mitochondria in bladder cells which helps the cells function better in a general way.
Bladder Tissue Weakness
If the bladder cells are weak, bladder tissues can get red, inflamed, and irritated. Inside the bladder, tissues are rough and convoluted. When these tissues get inflamed, it’s easy for bacteria and other infectious pathogens to get trapped and cause inflammation and irritation that can’t easily be treated using antibiotics from the doctor’s office.Indeed, some people are born with bladder diverticulum or little pouches in the bladder wall where urine, bacteria, and other pathogens can easily colonize the bladder. Other people who are not born with this issue can develop bladder diverticulum in response to any number of bladder tissue insults. A bladder diverticulum can act as a “reservoir” where urine gets stored even after the patient has attempted to fully empty the bladder. A reservoir of this sort can often be emptied fully during urination by simply urinating, then standing up and moving around to get all remaining urine moving toward the urethra, and then sitting down to urinate again. This simple act of emptying a urinary reservoir, whether it is caused by bladder diverticula or by inflammation of other organs such as the intestines (which can put pressure on the bladder such that it causes urine retention), can be life-changing in terms of its ability to get rid of recurrent UTIs and reduce cystitis inflammation and irritation.
If the bladder tissues are weak, one has to ask why? Some or even most people have something going on in their bladder that makes their bladder tissues strong enough to ward off infection and inflammation. What is it? From my experience, the answer to this question has to do with both the presence of toxins as well as a lack of certain nutrients.
There are a number of nutrients that have the ability to protect the body from certain toxins. For example, if your body is deficient in iodine, you are more susceptible to having a toxic response to fluoride and bromide. This is because iodine, fluorine, and bromine are all in the same column on the periodic table of the elements. While iodine is an essential mineral, fluorine and bromine are both toxic to the body if the body is deficient in iodine. If you are deficient in iodine, the body will search for anything resembling iodine in order to fill this need. Fluorine and bromine both have outer electron shells resembling iodine and they can be mistaken for iodine if iodine is deficient or perhaps not present in the body at all. People who are deficient in iodine tend to develop inflammation throughout the body along with poor immune system function. The bladder is a common area that becomes inflamed and irritated because the body dumps bromide and fluoride into the bladder to remove it.
Bromide and fluoride are two toxins that can cause tissue inflammation and irritation in the bladder, but the lack of sufficient iodine can also cause the tissues to become inflamed and irritated. If cells don’t have enough iodine, they become susceptible to infection. Iodine is a mineral that acts as a front-line defense against pathogens.
Bladder Fascia and Bladder Meridians
The bladder meridian begins at the corners of the eyes and goes up over the top of the head, down the spine, down to the ankles, and to the little toes. The meridians might be conceptualized as a network of fascia that connect these areas of the body.The meridians used by acupuncturists have been studied by a number of doctor-scientists who have found that these energy pathways are made up of systems of fascia (translucent sheets of tissue that are electrically conductive) that are interconnected and that work like electrical wires inside a house to carry energy from a power source to machines, lights, etc. that need power. To the western mind, the meridians seem to be randomly organized, but in fact, each meridian develops predictably from an embryonic “bud” into an “electrical” pathway as the embryo develops into a fetus. In other words, as an embryo, a meridian is just a cluster of cells, but as the embryo slowly develops from this cellular mass into a fetus, as the organs and tissues of the fetus take shape and then take their places in the body, the meridians unfold and continue to connect the various organs and tissues even as those organs and tissues migrate from a central point to their outward locations. This explains why meridians often connect distant points on the body.
Reiter’s syndrome is a diagnosis that I received years ago. The doctor told me that this disease involves cystitis or recurrent bladder infections, arthritis, and eye irritation. Though I did not have arthritis, I did often have eye irritation. Now I know that the eye irritation was related to my cystitis symptoms via the bladder meridian which connects the bladder with the delicate tissues at the corners of the eyes. In fact, migraine headaches that originate from the back of the head and neck can also be related to bladder issues. And of course, arthritis and fibromyalgia (both of which are correlated with bladder issues) likely arise from autonomic nervous system imbalance, yet another issue that is under the domain of the bladder meridian.
Bladder Emotions and More…
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the bladder is said to be responsible for fear and stubbornness, but anyone with cystitis or recurrent urinary tract infection knows that these health issues create anxiety, inability to get comfortable, insomnia, and a lack of concentration to name just a few other associated emotions.Above, we talked briefly about the idea that each cell in the bladder is electrical and that each cell needs trace minerals and electrolytes in order to function properly. The Bladder Meridians are a manifestation of that electricity as it courses through the body. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, if that electricity, known as chi, is somehow impeded in its normal passage through its meridian, it can cause issues in the bladder, in the eyes, in the head, along the back, and in the ankles and legs.
I have at times, for example, had pain in the lower half of my calves and ankles prior to developing bladder irritation and then later, a fever. Fevers typically involve the autonomic nervous system via prostaglandin E2 which stimulates the sympathetic branch. The sympathetic nervous system ganglia run parallel to the bladder meridian as it passes along the spine, so it makes sense that the bladder meridian is often involved in producing fevers.
Essentially, though fevers are often caused by a urinary tract infection, in fact, they can be caused merely by cystitis or bladder irritation because of the role that the bladder plays in regulating the autonomic nervous system. Indeed, any kind of stress by itself can cause a fever under certain conditions. A fever caused by stress is called a “psychogenic fever”.
Is a proper diagnosis necessary to treat recurrent UTIs or cystitis?
In reality, if you have ready access to the proper medication to fortify the tissues of the bladder wall (for example, Lugol’s iodine), if you have access to medications to reduce the pain and irritation of a UTI or cystitis, and if you have access to powerful medications to treat a UTI at home, you probably don’t need a diagnosis to successfully treat these urinary tract issues. One of the issues with conventional medicine is the fact that patients often can’t go to the doctor right away when they have a health issue and by the time patients get to the doctor, a UTI or cystitis has gotten worse. But if you’re able to treat a UTI or cystitis immediately at home, as soon as symptoms develop, or better yet, to prevent symptoms from developing in the first place, a diagnosis is somewhat irrelevant.The antibiotics that doctors prescribe can destroy gut health and most patients are aware of this problem. There are only a few antibiotics that actually make it into the urinary tract and many of them are broad-spectrum antibiotics which means that they get rid of good bacteria in your intestines. But there are other options like chlorine dioxide solution (CDS) and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) that are available over-the-counter as powerful antibiotics that don’t kill the gut flora. CDS doesn’t kill healthy bacteria that have a pH similar to the pH of our healthy human cells, which is one of the reasons why this medicine is so useful. It doesn’t harm healthy bacteria, but it does kill the unhealthy bacteria.
If you have something like CDS on hand as an over-the-counter antibiotic treatment for recurrent UTIs, you can begin doing treatment as soon as you notice symptoms rather than having to wait to do a doctor’s appointment. This, by itself, will make your bladder stronger and healthier if you’re able to treat bladder infections quickly at home. But taking D-Mannose powder and drinking daily doses of unsweetened cranberry juice will prevent UTIs while also strengthening the bladder cells and tissues at the same time.
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Today, in conventional medicine, doctors spend a lot of time trying to diagnose patients, which is often expensive for patients and it also wastes time in terms of getting patients started on treatment. Often UTIs and cystitis have a similar or the same underlying cause and spending a lot of time on diagnosis, doesn’t really make sense. Rather, it’s better to work with cystitis and UTI prevention, at-home treatments for UTI and cystitis, and avoid antibiotics from the doctor’s office that can destroy gut flora.
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Resources:
• Serrano-Aroca, A. et al. (2018). Bioengineering Approaches for Bladder Regeneration. Retrieved February 27, 2024 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6032229/#:~:text=In%20a%20state%20of%20homeostasis,in%2072%20h%20%5B1%5D.
• American Institute of Stress (2020). Yes, stress can cause a fever – here’s how to tell if you have a psychogenic fever. Retrieved February 27, 2024 from https://www.stress.org/yes-stress-can-cause-a-fever-heres-how-to-tell-if-you-have-a-psychogenic-fever
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