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Thanks to speculation about Donald Trump’s unverified spare-time proclivities, urine has been on the minds of many people lately, perhaps more so for me. For years I have lived with frequent urinary tract infections (UTIs), and they’ve made my life less than golden.
UTIs are the most common bacterial infection, and while anyone can get a UTI, women are relatively more vulnerable. In fact if you’re a woman, you will likely have such an infection at least once during your lifetime. And what’s the biggest risk factor for having another UTI? Having taken antibiotics, which, by the way, is the only proven way to get rid of a UTI.
The problem is, antibiotic resistance is becoming a public health crisis. There are more and more strains of bacteria resistant to the best available antibiotics and there are no new antibiotics on the horizon. We’ve all heard the sage advice that anyone prescribed antibiotics should finish the full course of treatment. Stopping too soon breeds antibiotic resistance, we’re told. While that is certainly part of the story, it’s important to note that humans are prescribed only a small fraction of the antibiotics consumed worldwide. The bulk of these drugs are fed routinely by farmers — without prescription — to healthy animals being raised to become food. This is standard industry practice. A diet laced with a steady stream of antibiotics not only prevents disease in the animals, which can be costly for agribusiness, but also conveniently causes the animals to gain weight more rapidly, which pads the bottom line.
When I confide in my doctors that I fear I’ll get yet another infection, they invariably ask whether I’m doing everything right: Drinking lots of water? Check. Taking cranberry tablets (which some medical evidence suggests might help with prevention but doesn’t likely treat existing infections)? For sure. Practicing sensible hygiene (which I won’t detail here)? Absolutely. I’ve even adopted some lesser known preventative methods. For instance the glucose-derived compound d-mannose, like cranberry extract, may help with prevention, and although the evidence of its efficacy is slim, I take a daily dose just in case.
My plight is such that I recently had an insurance company agent declare that UTIs are a “pre-existing condition” for me and hence not covered when I travel, even though I’ve managed to eradicate every infection I’ve had so far, and each successive infection ends up being a different pathogen from the last.
Recently, the national health publication STAT, produced by the Boston Globe, reported the case of a Nevada woman who became infected by the same kind of bacteria that often causes UTIs: Klebsiella pneumoniae. The variety that infected her was resistant to every available antibiotic, and so she died. I’ve had a Klebsiella infection myself in the last year. I’m lucky that mine was sensitive to penicillin-type antibiotics, and it went away after treatment. But will I be so lucky next time? Will you?
All I can think to recommend, aside from the usual refrains to take antibiotics only when facing a bacterial infection (not viral) and to complete the full course of any antibiotics you’re prescribed (which unfortunately won’t halt the declining effectiveness of our remaining arsenals) is to transform the way we produce our food. We should be insisting that governments worldwide forbid the routine use of antibiotics on healthy animals, and we should be asking that each and every farmer adopt such practices voluntarily in the meantime. That is a big challenge, but it’s a matter of life and death. And there is something every single person can do today to pressure agribusiness: Replace the meat, eggs, and dairy products in our diets with plant-based foods, with the ultimate goal to eliminate animal products from our diets completely. My health – and yours – depends on it.
