By Anna Sawkins
Cystitis is no fun, that’s for sure. Like so many of our customers, I suffered repeat infections of E.coli related cystitis for many years. I was prescribed countless courses of antibiotics and drank gallons of cranberry juice, as advised, to acidify the urine. In my case, as is the case with so many, the infections continued. I got temporary relief with each new antibiotic, but then the infection would come back with a vengeance.
Doctors tend to prescribe the lightest possible antibiotic and shortest course for very good reasons, but, in my case, it would fail to kill the infection, and when I went back they’d give me the same antibiotic but for a longer time.
But an antibiotic that has failed to beat an infection is likely to fail because the bacterium has built up a resistance to that antibiotic. If you keep attacking it with more of the same, it just becomes more resistant. Soon, nothing had any impact other than broad-spectrum antibiotics that had, for me, considerable side effects. I was desperate and began to do my own research; the more I learned, the more clear it became that I was not actually being reinfected. I was succumbing to the same infection that was getting stronger as mutated bacteria defeated an antibiotic by burrowing deeper in to the bladder wall to hide behind tough biofilms, ready to emerge and begin to colonise again at a later date.
I also learned that acidic urine creates perfect conditions that encourage this detachment and regrowth and discovered (as our grandmothers had before us) that drinking milk laced with baking soda helped a little (I now know that it was because I was changing the pH in the urine to alkaline and that doing this was inhibiting bacterial growth). Equally, lemon juice and Robinson’s Lemon Barley Water helped, especially if taken neat at the first sign of infection (not pleasant, but just bearable, and better than cystitis). Very high doses of raw garlic, a superb natural antibacterial, also helped from time to time but obviously this was difficult to sustain and proved to be too antisocial. Anyway, it was after another episode of cystitis, and treatment with yet another seven days of broad-spectrum antibiotic that I realised I was in serious trouble. The infection hadn’t gone away.
I had kidney problems. I would drink gallons, and issue a tiny cupful. I had abdominal bloating, and sharp pain, especially in my joints. Basically, I was at the end of my tether and seriously ill. Fortunately, that was the day when
the first shipment of Waterfall D-Mannose arrived in a parcel. I took one level teaspoonful in a small glass of apple juice. Within hours of taking Waterfall D-Mannose, my symptoms were starting to abate. Within a day I was clear of cystitis symptoms. Free at last from the pain, I cried with relief. The truth is that it took months to finally get rid of that propensity for new episodes to threaten (embedded bacteria have to surface to enable attachment and be removed), but now, a little each night and I remain infection free.
I think we are privileged in that we have access to so much useful information that enables us to take more responsibility for our own health, and research effective long-term solutions. We can find safe food supplements that do not deplete our immune system or cause side effects that may be unwittingly ruinous to our health. In fact they work symbiotically with the body to promote healing.
