Now why is that? What's going on? Why are these cystitis attacks happening again and again?

Well, e-coli (notorious source of most Cystitis / UTI and Bladder Infections) is identified in medical circles as an adaptive bacterium, meaning that it is capable of modifying its nutritional requirements to its immediate surroundings. Then, because Cranberry makes urine more acidic (rather than neutral), you are effectively nourishing your e-coli whenever you drink some Cranberry.

More than 5 years ago I began to religiously take cranberry every day, in the belief that it would reduce or eradicate my frequent UTI attacks. At first things improved, but then discovered that I still got just as many infections as previously.

Only when I began to do my own research did I realize that I had been wasting my time and money. I was foolishly following a widely-dispersed myth instead of searching out something that really worked (I did in the end though).

If it's a fiction, just why is cranberry so popular? Why do those "experts" say it actually works in reducing and/or curing Cystitis / UTI? Is its reputation totally underserved? Here is a very basic summary of the information I picked up:

It is well-known (in scientific circles anyway) that the e-coli bug sticks like crazy to the walls of the urinary tract, where it sets up home and multiplies. It is also well known that Cranberry juice has a mildly anti-adhesive property. From these two unrelated facts everyone seems to have decided that if bacteria sticks and cranberry un-sticks, then cranberry must be particularly good for cystitis sufferers and UTI sufferers.

However, I also believe that if you compare its anti-adhesion properties against the damage that can be done in producing acidic urine in which e-coli thrives, then the benefits just don't outweigh the disadvantages, so cranberry fails miserably.

There's another problem too - cranberry prevents some antibiotics from working effectively. Antibiotics do their work by damaging the bacteria's cell walls. Adding cranberry-created hippuric acid to the urine just makes the bacteria to grow a thicker skin, and this makes the future use of that antibiotic less likely to succeed.

This is why some UTI-sufferers who have taken cranberry for years may find that their physician's standard course of antibiotics no longer works and their infections quickly return. This problem is compounded by the modern physician's desire to prescribe smaller than the usual courses of antibiotics, when actually a longer course is needed.

"BUT IT SEEMED TO BE WORKING SO WELL - AT FIRST!"

Yes, it often does! Drinking cranberry results in your urine becoming more acidic, and that will - at first - attack and kill many of those bacterial cells.

So you'll feel better at first, and soon believe that cranberry is a miracle cure. But that is usually only a temporary respite. Things inevitably get worse later.

The e-coli cells remaining, (always the stronger tougher ones), will quickly get used to their new environment, then start to reproduce and breed ever-stronger replications of themselves. Your next UTI attack will inevitably be worse than any previous one, and you'll label cranberry as a curse.

Of course, all that I've outlined here does not happen to all cystitis or UTI-sufferers, but it did happen to me! After 22 years of occasional uti-problems, I was told about cranberry. I hated the taste, but taking a cranberry pill every day gave me four years of total relief.

Then, out of the blue, I had an attack which was really bad. I stepped up the cranberry intake - to no avail. I had to visit my doctor and get antibiotics. Then a few months later, another much more painful UTI hit me, much worse than every before (I'll spare you the gory details). It was only now that I realized that cranberry was no longer the cure for UTI that I had believed.

I began a search for an alternative. It took a long time, but I did locate a natural remedy for UTI, one which is staggering in its simplicity. It had no known side-effects, no reaction to other drugs, and it wasn't absorbed by the body! And it could also be used as a uti-preventive or as a very effective UTI remedy.

It's called Mannose, or D-Mannose, or Waterfall D Mannose (and no, I don't know why). It is extracted from trees (just like the simple aspirin), and seems to offer solutions to many people for whom regular UTI's are part of life. If you want to know more, follow the links in my final paragraph