Complaints & connections · borters.ch
Bacteria ascend into the bladder — usually harmless, but warning signs like fever and flank pain need immediate assessment.
Also known as: cystitis · urinary tract infection · UTI
Open in the tool — with search and all the links →This compilation is for information and replaces neither medical diagnosis nor treatment. If you have symptoms, see a doctor.
Usually a bacterial infection of the bladder — burning when urinating, frequent urge, lower-belly pressure, cloudy or smelly urine. Common in women. Drinking plenty flushes it out; simple cases sometimes clear on their own, otherwise an antibiotic helps. Warning signs of kidney involvement: fever, flank/back pain — then see a doctor promptly.
Fever, chills, a clear sense of illness and a pain in the side of the back mean the infection has reached the kidney. A urine culture then belongs given before the first tablet is taken, and the treatment is urgent.
As unsweetened juice or a preparation daily over months — not as treatment of an acute infection.
Every complete emptying washes germs out. Holding on for hours gives them time. It works best after intercourse, within half an hour.
For simple bladder infections the picture is enough. A urine culture belongs with it in men, in pregnancy, with fever, in children, with repeated infections and when a treatment has not worked.
The short urethra in women makes the infection common there and mostly harmless. In men there is more often something behind it — residual urine with an enlarged prostate, a stone, an inflamed prostate. That belongs investigated.
Even germs in the urine without any complaints are treated here, because pyelonephritis and a premature birth can arise from it. That is the one exception to the usual restraint.
Warmth on the lower belly and a lukewarm sitz bath ease the cramp while the treatment works. They do not replace it — but the first hours become more bearable.
If pinworms travel forward they cause burning, discharge and itching — while the urine stays clean. The adhesive-strip test in the morning settles it.
After a swim in a lake or river in Africa or the Middle East, burning and blood at the end of passing water can come from a blood fluke. It is treatable, and treatment prevents the late consequences.
Antibiotics kill the bacteria in the bladder; symptoms usually ease within a day. An uncomplicated infection also clears without antibiotics in about half of people, though it takes longer. Both are workable paths — the decision follows the symptoms, not a principle.
About half of all women have at least one bladder infection in their life, many several. With an antibiotic the symptoms usually ease within a day; without one it takes three to five days longer on average.
Diluted urine irritates less, frequent emptying carries germs out, warmth relaxes the bladder muscle. With fever, flank pain or blood, do not carry on alone.
Pain on passing water, a constant urge, only a little each time, pressure above the pubic bone and cloudy, strong-smelling urine.
Fever above thirty-eight degrees, shivering, nausea and a back tender to tapping on one side mean the kidney is involved. That belongs treated the same day.
Instead of burning: sudden confusion, falls, loss of appetite, withdrawal without fever. A smell alone or germs in the urine without complaints, by contrast, are not treated.
A baby with fever without a runny nose and cough, a child with belly ache, vomiting, poor drinking or new bedwetting: then the urine belongs checked before waiting.
A bladder infection can turn the urine red. If the blood remains after the treatment or appears without complaints, the search goes on.
Together with frequent urge and the feeling that little comes. Fever and flank pain do not belong to it — then it has moved higher up.
The dipstick shows inflammatory cells and nitrite. The culture names the germ and how it behaves towards antibiotics — it belongs given before treating, unless it is a first simple infection.
Normal or only slightly raised with a simple bladder infection. Clearly raised speaks for the kidney being involved.
Belongs alongside with fever, with repeated infections and before some antibiotics whose dose depends on kidney function.
Sugar in the urine encourages infections. Recurring bladder infections are one of the roads by which an unrecognised diabetes is found.
A sufficient amount of urine across the day dilutes what would otherwise crystallise or irritate. Spread evenly it works better than in two large portions.
With reduced kidney function it rises and becomes dangerous for the heart rhythm; under water tablets it falls. In both directions it belongs measured and not guessed.
With low levels airway infections occur somewhat more often; correcting a deficiency makes sense, a high single dose during the infection does not act on it.
Cutting out calcium is the wrong route with stones: it binds oxalate already in the bowel. Calcium with the meal instead of between meals is the lever, not avoidance.
Needed by the defence cells. For lozenges at the start of a cold there are hints of a slightly shortened duration; at a high dose over months zinc lowers copper.
Clearly worthwhile and well studied when deficient; fewer data for the wider uses. Fat-soluble — check blood levels at high doses.
After menopause the lining becomes thinner and the protective flora recedes — the most common reason for recurrent bladder infections at that age. A local treatment lowers the rate markedly in studies, without acting in the body.
Sugar in the urine feeds bacteria. With certain diabetes medicines that excrete sugar through the kidney, urinary and genital infections are therefore more common — that belongs to the reckoning of those medicines.
In pregnancy the ureters widen and urine flows more slowly. This is why a bladder infection climbs to the kidney more often — and why even a symptom-free colonisation is treated then.
In a controlled trial women with recurrent infections who drank 1.5 litres more a day had almost half as many episodes over the year. The effect showed over 12 months.
Studied are preparations with 36 mg proanthocyanidins a day. Commercial cranberry juices usually contain too little of these and a lot of sugar — the supermarket juice is not the study product.
Traditionally used in a compress over the bladder. A urinary infection with fever, flank pain or in pregnancy belongs treated and not rubbed.
Common as a sitz bath additive, strongly diluted. It does not belong in the vagina — the lining reacts differently from skin.
The longest meridian in the body, from the eye over the back to the little toe. The Bladder stands there for excretion and for the back chain at once.
In the hollow of the knee, on the Bladder meridian. Traditionally used for back and bladder — that both lie on the same line is the reason.