The symptoms that happen when you have a urinary tract infection are usually urinary frequency, and that would be more than six to eight times a day. Urinary urgency, that sense that I’ve gotta go, gotta go! Burning with urination, and sometimes pressure in your bladder. You don’t have to have all four of those symptoms to have an infection, and I have seen patients that have had none of those symptoms but clearly had an infection. However, you can have a really irritated urethra, you can have pelvic pain, you can have a lot of urgency.

The most important thing for you to understand is that we cannot treat a urinary tract infection effectively until we have a urine culture so we know exactly what antibiotics to use. Antibiotics are the only way to treat a urinary tract infection. One of the things that you can do yourself to help prevent infection is to make sure that you’re drinking an adequate amount of water. Water is the most important liquid for you to ingest to keep your urinary system healthy. Sometimes we want to drink other fluids and that’s fine as along as they don’t aggravate the bladder.

If you have the symptoms of an infection, or you think your bladder is irritated, then you should back off on the things that would aggravate your bladder. Anything that’s acidic. So your citrus, cranberry juice, we tend to reach for cranberry juice but it’s highly acidic and can aggravate your bladder. Coffee, tea, tomatoes. So when you know that your bladder’s unhappy already, then back off on the things that could aggravate your bladder and actually make you worse. So if you think you have an infection, please come by the office and give us a sample; that’s the best way for us to send it for culture and know exactly how to treat your infection.

If you have any other questions about infections and especially if you’re having recurrent infections, please make an appointment and let’s discuss this.