Monday
20Apr2009
Cranberry Juice for UTI
“I know women use cranberry juice as a home remedy when they have a UTI but I don’t understand what you mean about bacteria sticking. I also don’t understand why sweetened cranberry juice would be better.””
Well, let’s take those questions one at a time and see if we can’t help you understand cranberry juice and UTI a little better.
In your digestive tract lives a germ known as E. coli. Even though nearly all of us have E. coli living in our digestive tracts, it can make us very, very ill if it gets to some other part of the body. In fact, if you watch a lot of news, you’ve probably seen stories about E. coli getting into water reservoirs or wells and making a lot of people sick.
What many people don’t realize about E. coli, though, is that it’s also the main germ in a urinary tract infection, or UTI. It causes about 85% of all cases. BUT—and this is the part that is really important—even if the bacterium gets into your urinary tract, it can’t cause an infection if it can’t stick to the walls of your bladder or the tubes that carry urine to or from it. In other words, the bacteria need a place to live before they can start to cause an infection.
What cranberry juice does is prevent the germs from grabbing hold and hanging on. Doctors used to think that cranberry juice worked by changing the pH of your urine but now we know that this isn’t true. Cranberry juice can’t really make your urine acidic enough to make a difference so now doctors believe it works by preventing adhesion.
So that’s how cranberry juice works to prevent an infection. But what about the debate over sweetened or unsweetened juice? Well, the reason I said sweetened cranberry juice is OK for people is that most of the studies that looked at cranberry for UTI actually used regular old grocery store brands of sweetened cranberry juice cocktail. If sweetened cranberry juice really “fed” the bacteria that causes an infection, the women in those studies would get more infections—not fewer.
Another reason why sugar can’t feed a bladder infection is that by the time the cranberry juice reaches your bladder, there isn’t any sugar left in it. Your body’s already used it all. In other words, there’s nothing left to “feed” bacteria because your body has already removed all the sugar. If you DID have sugar in your urine, it would mean that your kidneys were not working properly and you’d have much bigger problems than a simple bladder infection.
Ultimately, there’s just no evidence that the sugar in cranberry juice cocktail “feeds” an infection, despite what a lot of “natural” writers like to claim. Until someone can actually prove that the sugar in cranberry juice feeds an infection, I’m going to keep on saying that sweetened cranberry juice is just fine.
References:
Pinzón-Arango, P., et al. (2009). Role of Cranberry on Bacterial Adhesion Forces and Implications for Escherichia coli–Uroepithelial Cell Attachment. Journal of Medicinal Food.
Well, let’s take those questions one at a time and see if we can’t help you understand cranberry juice and UTI a little better.
What many people don’t realize about E. coli, though, is that it’s also the main germ in a urinary tract infection, or UTI. It causes about 85% of all cases. BUT—and this is the part that is really important—even if the bacterium gets into your urinary tract, it can’t cause an infection if it can’t stick to the walls of your bladder or the tubes that carry urine to or from it. In other words, the bacteria need a place to live before they can start to cause an infection.
What cranberry juice does is prevent the germs from grabbing hold and hanging on. Doctors used to think that cranberry juice worked by changing the pH of your urine but now we know that this isn’t true. Cranberry juice can’t really make your urine acidic enough to make a difference so now doctors believe it works by preventing adhesion.
So that’s how cranberry juice works to prevent an infection. But what about the debate over sweetened or unsweetened juice? Well, the reason I said sweetened cranberry juice is OK for people is that most of the studies that looked at cranberry for UTI actually used regular old grocery store brands of sweetened cranberry juice cocktail. If sweetened cranberry juice really “fed” the bacteria that causes an infection, the women in those studies would get more infections—not fewer.
Another reason why sugar can’t feed a bladder infection is that by the time the cranberry juice reaches your bladder, there isn’t any sugar left in it. Your body’s already used it all. In other words, there’s nothing left to “feed” bacteria because your body has already removed all the sugar. If you DID have sugar in your urine, it would mean that your kidneys were not working properly and you’d have much bigger problems than a simple bladder infection.
Ultimately, there’s just no evidence that the sugar in cranberry juice cocktail “feeds” an infection, despite what a lot of “natural” writers like to claim. Until someone can actually prove that the sugar in cranberry juice feeds an infection, I’m going to keep on saying that sweetened cranberry juice is just fine.
References:
Pinzón-Arango, P., et al. (2009). Role of Cranberry on Bacterial Adhesion Forces and Implications for Escherichia coli–Uroepithelial Cell Attachment. Journal of Medicinal Food.
Mon, April 20, 2009
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