Vibrant You

Frequent UTI’s? The Ultimate Healthy Urinary Tract Protocol to Feel Better Fast

• Bindi Stables • Episode 44

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Text Bindi!

If you're a woman, you almost certainly have experienced the discomfort of a UTI at some point in your life. Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are the most common outpatient infection in women. (Up to 60% of women experience at least one UTI in their lifetime, and many of these infections will be recurrent!)

The standard treatment for UTIs is antibiotics...

But you know the concern of rising concern of antibiotic resistance and the negative impacts antibiotics have on your gut health. 

In this episode you'll learn:

  1. Root causes behind UTI's
  2. The top 3 reasons you're getting recurring UTIs
  3. The ultimate UTI protocol to feel better fast
  4. Natural interventions for UTI's
  5. Top herbs and foods for a healthy urinary system
  6. Helpful hacks to prevent UTI's

Links:

  1. Urinary Tract Protocol
  2. Grapefruit Seed Extract (GSE)
  3. Candida and Bacterial Overgrowth Gut Rebalancing Protocol (CBO Protocol) 
  4. Beyond the Body: The Spiritual Meaning Behind 10 of Your Most Common Health Symptoms (From Digestive Issues to Back Pain to Hypothyroidism to Period Cramps and Beyond)  

Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be SO grateful if you could leave me a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, that way we can inspire and educate even more people together.

I’d love to connect with you on IG: www.instagram.com/bindistables

Visit my website for more resources and ways to work with me: www.bindistables.com

Bindi:

Welcome to the Vibrant you podcast. I'm your host, bindi Stables, and here we talk all things wellness and vibrant living. You'll learn about integrative health, functional medicine, holistic biohacking and enjoy raw and real conversations on personal growth, mindset and motivation. Optimize your body and mind and become the healthiest, most vibrant. You Enjoy the show. Hello and welcome to the Vibrant you podcast.

Bindi:

I'm recording this episode today from a cool and cozy rainy day in Bali, and this morning I got a text message from a friend showing that she is struggling with a UTI and we had a little exchange and getting some bloods done for her and a urinalysis to give her everything that she needs to get back to feeling super well, super fast. So that's what we're talking about today. Inspired by this conversation with a friend, we are getting into the ultimate healthy urinary tract protocol. So if you are experiencing a UTI, or you frequently get them or you have a friend that's got one at the moment, please do download this episode so that it's easy to come back to and share it with your friend. Of course, today's episode is not for everyone at all times, but I promise you that this episode will be a lifesaver if you do come down with a UTI and you'll know exactly what to do to help you feel better. So, so fast, before we dive in, I just have to say that this is not medical advice. We're not treating, we're not curing, we're not preventing disease. Here I'm simply sharing with you exactly what I would do and what I shared with my friend that's crossing a UTI at the moment. So, again, not medical advice, but this is what I would do and with my practice and everything that I do, I'm an integrative health practitioner and we're always looking at the root cause behind things. So if you do have a UTI, or you frequently get them, especially, we're going to be getting into what causes it, some of the contributing factors as to why you might be getting frequent UTIs, some helpful natural interventions, and I'm going to share with you the exact urinary tract protocol that I use when I have the start of a little UTI or if you have frequent ones, what to do and some really important considerations to keep this part of your body and this body system really healthy and vibrant. And well, because the truth is is that almost every single woman alive has experienced at some point in her life some level of UTI, whether a bladder infection or, you know, just burning sensation, itchiness down there, discharge, any of these things. This is really helpful knowledge to have, so not medical advice, but I hope this is helpful. Let's get right into it.

Bindi:

What is a UTI? So a UTI, also known as a urinary tract infection, is a level of infection at any point in the urinary tract. So the urinary tract starts at the kidneys, the urine goes down the urators into the urinary bladder and then urine comes out the urethra. So an infection in any point of those. It can be in the kidneys, it can be in the basically channels that connect the kidneys to the bladder or what connects the bladder to the outside world when you go to the bathroom. So most common is that some level of infection in the actual urethra itself, which is where a lot of the UTIs kind of start. If the bacteria isn't managed straight away it can climb up the urinary tract and even get up to the kidneys, which is obviously a lot more concerning and greater risk with that. So UTIs are so common.

Bindi:

Some little facts for you is that a bladder infection is the second most common human infection and UTIs impact 10 to 20% of women at least once a year. The typical treatment intervention is around of antibiotics, which of course, can be helpful in the moment of having a UTI, you may notice some relief. But of course, there's its own risks with that and my guess with you listening to this podcast is that you are a very self led woman. You like to really take care of your body. You use Western medicine only as absolutely necessary and you do your best to really manage your health and keep your health really optimal with this natural and you know the path of least harm to support your health in general.

Bindi:

Some things that can increase our risk to UTIs is, of course, you know, women are more likely to get UTIs than men.

Bindi:

So, being female, any sort of chronic conditions like autoimmunity, any sort of immune system issues, gut issues and hormone issues these are really common contributing factors as to why someone might especially get frequent UTIs is because of gut issues or underlying hormonal imbalances, as well as, of course, the overuse of medications or antibiotics, lifestyle factors. There's so many things that we'll get into as to why that might be, but some of the main signs and symptoms right, the hallmark of UTIs is burning sensation when you pee, having discharge in your urine or mucus foul smelling or more cloudy urine, it's not clear, feeling like you just have to pee all the time, so that urinary urgency, with or without a lot of urinary output, you might be peeing a lot or you might just feel like you constantly have to pee, but when you go it's like you're not really going that much. Of course, pain or pressure in the lower abdomen or the pelvic area, blood in the urine, right. So I share all these kinds of signs and symptoms which can be a sign of a UTI. But I will say as well that several things can cause this.

Bindi:

So it's important, of course, to rule out other factors. Again, this isn't medical advice. This is root cause medicine. So we're looking at what causes these symptoms, but of course, you'd always want to go to your doctor and run some bloods and a urine test to gain clarity on why this is happening to begin with. So it's important to rule out other things.

Bindi:

Some things that are really common that can either cause UTIs or feel like a UTI can be an intolerance to oxalates. So oxalates are really high in certain foods like spinach or kale or a lot of leafy greens. If you're drinking a lot of green juice, you're eating a lot of raw salads and whatnot that have high oxalates. That can be one. Of course, mold toxicity can be another cause for increased urination, burning sensations when you pee blood in the urine, those types of things, kidney stones, prostate issues for men there's lots of things to rule out there.

Bindi:

But if you know that you have a UTI, you've been diagnosed with UTI, you know that you have frequent UTIs and you just know what that feels like, then here's going to be some really helpful things for you. So, of course, if that UTI does get to a point where it climbs up right, it goes from the urethra the entrance of the urinary system, you know and it climbs up the the urators into the bladder and it goes beyond a bladder infection and it starts to go up the urators up into the kidneys. Of course that is more serious and I actually have had a kidney infection before. This was years ago and I'll share more later on as to some of the factors as to why that showed up for me, because it's quite interesting as someone that eats so healthy and I actually don't get frequent UTIs, my urinary system just genetically is like pretty strong. My genetic tendencies are in other parts of my body but, yeah, if you are experiencing like fever or back pain or chills, nausea, vomiting these are definitely all signs of something a bit more serious.

Bindi:

It's a possibility that that infection has reached the kidneys and of course you'd want to, you know, go to a doctor right away to take care of that. Okay, so couple diagnostics for you before we get into actually the protocol. So a few things like what I recommended with my friend this morning is she's going to just zip over to the doctor, do a couple labs to see if it is, you know, bacterial based UTI or if it's something else, and so the basic ones that I've, that I mentioned to her, is to do just a complete blood count. So go get her blood drawn and do something called a CBC or the complete blood count. This is a panel of your your red blood cells, your white blood cells, and it shows a lot about your immune system and the state of your immune system. So what we notice is that if you do have a present or active infection in the body, including a urinary tract infection, that those white blood cells or lymphocytes especially, will be a bit higher. They'll run a bit high. It's showing that your immune system is trying to fight something off and there's some level of infection. I also recommended her to go get a urine test, so a urinalysis to check for bacteria, for mucus, for uric acid and oxalates as well. So those are some of the ones that we'd be looking at with your Western doctor.

Bindi:

If you are getting frequent UTIs and you're like, why does this keep happening? You know, I eat well, I exercise, I'm pretty healthy why does this keep happening? Then we'd really want to be investigating a little further as to what are the underlying root cause imbalances in your body that are causing those recurring UTIs to begin with. So, as I mentioned before, a lot of frequent UTIs is actually less about your urinary system and more about what's happening inside of your gut microbiome and what's happening with your hormones. So, especially if you notice, like, if you start to just track your menstrual cycle, do you notice like, do you tend to get UTIs right before your period? Do you tend to get UTIs right after your period, after you've bled? These can be, you know, signs that hormones are a factor in those UTIs, as well as your gut microbiome. So let's get into what actually causes a UTI. So it connects to the gut microbiome here.

Bindi:

So urine is typically sterile until it reaches the urethra and most of the time bacterial contamination happens due to an obstruction of urine flow in the presence of bacteria that's actually coming from the intestines or vaginal secretions. Most commonly, in about 90% of the cases of UTIs, e coli, which is a bacteria, is the main culprit or the primary offender behind most bacterial contamination from the intestines. So what this means is basically, if you went to the bathroom and you had a level of E coli in your intestines, you wiped back to front. Or even just the presence of a little bit of bacteria sitting in your underwear, it can climb up through your urethra and cause that infection, as well as due to sexual activity. So we'll get into specifically some tools that'll be really helpful to prevent that moving forward.

Bindi:

But yeah, 90% of the time these UTIs come from that bacteria called E coli that actually comes from your gut and from stool, primarily From you or another person, in the case of UTIs, from sex. So it starts at the urethra, it climbs up into your bladder. If it doesn't get resolved there, it's going to climb up the ureters. It can get to the kidneys and that's not good. So with UTIs, we do really want to you know prevention as best as possible but really be proactive, that if you are starting to feel some like little twinges or little off sensations that this could be a protocol that you you look into or talk to your doctor about I always have to say that to see if it could be a right approach for you. So what are the natural interventions?

Bindi:

So there's three main goals that we're working with for rebalancing a UTI. Naturally, the first is to eliminate the active infection while also identifying and addressing those underlying root cause and balances that allowed for that infection in the first place, which, again, is usually gut related, hormone related or some level of immune system related, right. So goal number one is creating a hostile environment for the bacteria within the urinary system. So basically making it a little bit more acidic so that bacteria can't thrive and just creating an environment where bacteria can't really cling and obstruct the urinary system. The second goal is to actually increase urine flow, so helping you drinking more water, you know, helping you pee more to flush away harmful organisms. And then the third goal for us is to support and boost the immune system. Right, of course, optimizing the gut microbiome, building up your immune system, finding that hormonal balance is really key in the long term. But, yeah, it is crucial to know that. You know healthy bacteria are what we need to really thrive in our body and in our urinary system overall.

Bindi:

And of course, antibiotics they can be life saving like bless Western medicine when we need it. And you know, of course, the overuse of antibiotics, you know, creates antibiotic resistance and then in the future if you ever do need antibiotics for a life saving operation or an accident or something you know, knock on wood, that never happens. But you know we are more likely to build up resistance to those antibiotics and they're less likely to be more effective when we need it in the future. As well. As antibiotics, just you know, wreak so much havoc on our gut microbiome. Sometimes we have to take antibiotics, but if it's not necessary, of course you know we want to avoid that one possible because it does really mess up our gut microbiome and our good bacteria that we need to foster a healthy immune system and gut microbiome. So that's super important.

Bindi:

Okay, so what is the actual urinary tract protocol? So this is exactly what I do. This is exactly what I recommend in my friend. She's going to be feeling amazing. Give it a couple days and this is what I've done in the past as well. So I'm going to share with you a formula or a sequence of things that you can be taking, and what I do is I drink this formula every three hours, up to five times a day, until the symptoms are gone. Then I continue it for one more day, right? So keep drinking it until the symptoms are gone, and then you want to do one more day on it, just to make sure that everything's clear and, you know, not allow it to kind of come back.

Bindi:

So the first thing is you're going to have filtered water. So eight to 12 ounces of filtered water. Do not use alkaline water We'll talk more about that in a sec but just good old filter water, not Kungen water, not alkalized water, just normal pH water. What we're going to do is we're going to take two drops of grapefruit seed extract, or GSE, also known as citricidal drops. This is grapefruit seed extract, not grape seed extract. There are different things and it won't have the effect. So this is basically. It's a natural antibiotic. Grapefruit seed extract should be in everybody's medicine cabinet. It is just the universal antibiotic that we can use in these cases.

Bindi:

So for bacterial overgrowth the cool thing about grapefruit seed extract and how it differs from traditional antibiotics, is that it's an antimicrobial as well as an antifungal. So the issue with antibiotics is that antibiotic right, it's against bacteria. That's what biotic means. Is bacteria. So it kills the bacteria in the gut. Good and bad. Right, we want to kill the bad guys. But what happens is when we kill all of the bacteria in the gut, all of a sudden all these other microorganisms in our gut, such as yeast, they then, if there's no more bacteria, all the yeast in our gut are like free rain. They're eating up and gobbling up all the food that we would be eating, that normally the bacteria would be eating and basically the you know, the bacteria goes down the candida and the yeast is going to overgrow. So you take antibiotics and you end up with a yeast infection and what causes recurring urinary tract infections and overgrowth of yeast. So it's just a vicious cycle that we want to avoid as much as possible.

Bindi:

So grapefruit seed extract okay, two drops. We're also going to be taking two to five grams of a powder called de-manos, and de-manos is a powerful molecule that really obstructs any bacteria from taking hold inside of the urinary tract system. It basically helps to flush the urinary tract system and makes the environment of that urinary tract unavailable to hold onto pathogens. It makes it slippery and it helps things flush through with more ease. So it's going to help, you know, your immune system, kill it off and not allow that bacteria to proliferate inside the urinary tract.

Bindi:

Next thing you can take or add into this mixture. You can choose if you want to mix this all into one it does not taste good, you guys or if you prefer to take it separately, doesn't really matter. But two tablespoons of Bragg's apple cider vinegar. Okay, so the reason why I say Braggs Braggs is the brand of apple cider vinegar is because it's raw and with mother. You can use other brands, but you do want to be checking the label that it's raw, meaning it's unpasteurized, meaning it has good bacteria in it and it's with mother. So that means that the original culture that created that apple cider vinegar is still in there and that's really beneficial for our immune system in the urinary tract.

Bindi:

So it's really acidic and it helps to actually put more acid into the urinary tract where those bacteria can't thrive, right, those bacteria inside of the urinary tract are often thriving in an alkalized environment. This is why we want to avoid alkaline water. So if you're like I've heard Kungen water is amazing and you're drinking water with a super high pH, you're drinking alkalized water and you're like I've heard. This is so good for me. You know it's good for alkalizing the body and the tissues. Yes, in some cases, however, your body can actually become too alkaline and in the case of a urinary tract infection, we don't want alkalized things. So you actually can be too alkaline, which is interesting.

Bindi:

Okay, so you're going to take that apple cider vinegar, two tablespoons of it, and then the next thing that you can take is three grams of a sorbic acid powder. Now, that's vitamin C powder. It must be this particular form of vitamin C, so it has to be a sorbic acid. You can also take capsules. That's fine If you don't want to take the full powder, you'd want to do a capsule form. It's just that you'd have to take quite a few of them to get to that three grams. And yeah, what you're going to do is you're going to either mix that at sorbic acid powder into water and drink it down, or take it in capsule form and drink it down. Just make sure it's not calcium, a sorbate. So every nutrient there's different forms, different varieties of that nutrient. We want it to be a sorbic acid, okay, not calcium sorbate, because again, that's actually very alkaline and it will perpetuate the symptoms, so we don't want that. So that's the basic protocol. Okay, filtered water, grapefruit seed extract, d-manose powder, apple cider vinegar, a sorbic acid or vitamin C powder in that sorbic acid form. So that's the basics.

Bindi:

If you did that, give it a couple of days, you're going to clear your UTI. This is my experience. I should say my experience is, when I do this, it clears it right away. I've even had it where this. Actually, I took it once and it cleared it Like there's no more burning sensations a couple of hours after. I should mention that I also drink some coconut water and that's also really helpful, but yeah, that alone.

Bindi:

But I want to share with you as well some herbs you can take for a healthy urinary tract system. So these can be ones that you take a little bit more regularly or you do cycles of a few times a year. This is what I do to help maintain a healthy urinary tract system and you could look into or talk to your doctor if it's right for you. So first is gokshura. Gokshura is a really excellent herb. It's also I think the Latin name is tribulus terrestris which is an excellent plant for the urinary system in both men and women.

Bindi:

Coriander seed tea so you probably have coriander seed in your spice cabinet, especially if you're cooking Indian food and those types of things. Yeah, coriander seed, if you can get it organic, it's actually a very powerful medicine. It's very cooling, very soothing and when we drink it it's actually a slight diuretic, so it helps to flush the urinary system as well. So you could be sipping on coriander seed tea throughout the day. That's really helpful. And then another really common and helpful herb is uva ursi. So, especially if we can get uva ursi with a chemical component it's like active compound is called arbutin, and as long as we have at least 20% of arbutin, it has very powerful antiseptic properties which can be used in the case of UTIs. There's lots of studies and research out there validating that. So it's an ancient remedy, but science is confirming its benefits and I like to use 500 to about 1000 milligrams of uva ursi three to four times a day as needed.

Bindi:

Some foods that you can use, as well as fresh coconut water, coconut oil and coconut meat. So I've actually been traveling before and did not have all of my you know witchy stuff when my travel bag with me and I'm like, oh, shoot, of course, like what is a recipe for UTI when you're traveling, you're on vacation, you're in and out of the ocean, you're living in your bathing suit, you're hiking, so you're sweaty and not staying dry down there all the time because you're sweating, and yeah, I've definitely like got the little start of a UTI and I'm like, oh, no, shoot. So what did I do? I used food as medicine and I did these foods Okay. So here in Bali, everywhere we can get a fresh coconut. So I drink a couple of coconut waters a day. I ate the meat out of it as well. So coconut oil or coconuts in general have these antimicrobial chemicals in them called lorac acid, boric acid and caprylic acid. So it's antibacterial, it's antifungal and drinking this can actually really help it clear my symptoms so fast. You guys, literally one day of just drinking coconut water and eating the meat in that coconut. So I can't say that that's going to be the case for everyone. I would do the full protocol, doctor, doctor. But that's what I would personally do and this was just really helpful that the coconut water was enough to clear it for me. I also ate a bunch of cucumbers that day, which are also really cooling and soothing for the urinary tract.

Bindi:

Cranberry juice that's like the standard remedy, right? That's the DIY thing. When you Google, what do I do? Save me. I have a UTI. Everyone says cranberry juice, and it's true. Now, what is not true is that the cranberry juice, what's the brand? Ocean, ocean spray or something. But basically it's not going to do the trick. If it's from concentrate, if it's loaded with sugar, if it's loaded with preservatives, it's not going to do it. But fresh cranberry juice, no added sugar, just the juice, no preservatives, not from concentrate is actually very helpful in rinsing the urinary tract. So I will link up the full UTI protocol in the show notes. You can have a look at it as well, as I'll share the exact products that I use. I'll link them up.

Bindi:

If you know that you're prone to UTIs, that'd be great things to consider having in your medicine cabinet. Just ongoing, super, super helpful. Okay. Some last little considerations for you. Okay, so if you are having UTI or you know that it's frequent for you, you do want to be drinking plenty of water. Okay. So minimum two liters of water a day, let's say for the average person, the average woman, you know, two to three liters a day. And again, please avoid that alkaline water, just Standard pH, neutral pH water is going to be quite good filtered water.

Bindi:

The second is, of course, the foods that we eat matter. So really making sure that you're on some level of just anti-inflammatory diet, full of whole foods, lots of plants. I talked about oxalates. Some people don't tolerate oxalates from plants too well, or if you're eating a lot of those or drinking a lot of green juice it can contribute. Those oxalates are quite sharp and irritating to the UTI. They don't cause a UTI directly, but the sharpness of them are like these little crystals, same with, like uric acid which comes from meat. I'm like, do you eat a lot of plants or eat a lot of meat? We want to find that middle diet where we're not too much high in oxalates from plants but we're also not too high in uric acid from meat, because both of these can contribute to just irritation in the urinary tract. Then the sharpness or little scratches that those crystals will form from uric acid or oxalates can lead to infection. Fun little fact for you.

Bindi:

So, third, you can always take probiotics. So taking a really high quality multi-strain probiotic on a regular basis can be supportive. Now, the caveat to that is that if you have gut issues, if you do have a candida overgrowth or a bacterial overgrowth in the intestines, then you'd actually want to make sure that you clear that out and do a really in-depth gut rebalancing, gut microbiome rebalancing protocol before adopting those good bacteria. Because if you have too much bad bacteria in your intestines and then you feed it with all this good bacteria from probiotics, from kombucha, from kefir, from yogurt, it's actually going to just feed the bad bacteria. So that's one of the places that people go wrong when trying to heal their gut. They have bloating and gas. They learn on Instagram oh, I must have, you know, sibo or I must have candida. And they start dousing their system with probiotics, not knowing that it's actually feeding the bad bacteria and making it worse. It's helpful at a certain stage, once we clear out a lot of the bad bacteria, then we repopulate with good bacteria. But yeah, the more you know.

Bindi:

Okay, other things to consider is, of course, I'm sure you already do this, but it's worth mentioning in case there's someone out there. You always want to make sure that you're wiping from front to back when you use the bathroom right, so we're not accidentally pulling, you know, wastes from the intestines, from your bowel movements, pulling that forward towards the urethra and those bacteria climb up the urinary tract from there. So always wiping forward to back or, if possible, even like here in Bali, everyone uses a bidet right. We have like a little spray, a bum gun. You know you just wash yourself, but you want to make sure that you're always keeping yourself really dry after, because, of course, that wet, damp environment just the main thing that people struggle with here in Bali is like UTIs is just it's hot, it's sweaty. We're in and out of the ocean constantly. We live in our bathing suits. You know everyone gets UTIs here. So we do want to make sure that you know the genital areas of course clean but also really dry. So that might even mean you know, after you do your workout session, make sure that you change out of your workout clothes right away so it's not, you know your body's, that part of your body isn't sitting in, you know dampness basically. So shower and change right after swimming or sweating. You know, in Bali, you know we're always so sweaty here and then think about sex. So right after you have sex, or ideally before and after you have sex, ideally like just washing your vagina right, like washing that area, so that if there is any bacteria from previous bowel movements or on your partner as well, you know there's there's less risk of those bacteria climbing up, the UTI from that. Another good practice overall for women, you guys, is after you have sex is try to go pee right as soon as possible. Right after. You don't have to ruin the mood. But I mean, like you know, shortly after do make it a priority to urinate, because when you pee after having sex it rinses out the urinary tract. So if any bacteria started to climb up, you know it's going to rinse that out and doesn't give it time to proliferate. So that's a little hot tip for women.

Bindi:

Another one is considering your menstrual products. So I have definitely had UTIs in the past that I know were related, unfortunately, to keeping like tampons in too long, you know when you're traveling or you're just not able to change them as frequently. So do make sure that you're obviously changing menstrual products early or as frequent as possible If you're using a menstrual cup, to make sure that you really sanitize it, like a rinse is not enough, you really need to sanitize it. And there's little like holes inside of it. Did you know that inside of your menstrual cup there's little holes that basically help it vacuum seal inside of the vagina so that it doesn't leak, but those holes actually get clogged with body fluids? So you want to make sure that when you wash it you're also poking those holes and releasing any matter that's stuck in them that can be causing bacteria.

Bindi:

Okay, last couple ones for you guys is really working on healing the gut and healing those hormonal imbalances that are contributing to frequent UTIs. So notice, are you more likely to get a UTI like right before your period, during your period, right after your period, if it seems to go in cycles like that, it could be hormonal. It could be just like bacteria from menstrual products. That is a possibility, but especially if it's like right before or after your period, it could be hormonally related. So you'd really want to work with a practitioner, work with an integrative health practitioner. Run your labs. You know I do this for clients all the times. We run lab tests to see where your hormones are at, where your gut microbiome's at and it makes a big difference. So if you do have an overgrowth of Candida and that's the driving you know cause behind a lot of these UTIs, we can really get to the bottom of that in just a couple months.

Bindi:

Final thing I want to share with you is the emotional component of UTIs. So I had a horrible. Utis are not common for me, but I had a horrible UTI infection. This is probably maybe five years ago now, living here in Bali, and it kind of started off as like a little twinge in my urethra, like it was always before my period. So I knew it was hormone related, but it just wasn't going away, like I would do everything that I knew to kind of manage it, but it was really coming back.

Bindi:

And you know that it's the case that when you're doing everything right you're eating the right foods, you're taking the right supplements, you're doing all the lifestyle things and you keep getting this recurring thing, it's worth it to look at the emotional component and see if there's a stress factor, a nervous system factor, some sort of emotional connection contributing. And I actually created a whole podcast episode. It's called Beyond the Body the spiritual meaning behind that your most common health symptoms. So we just talk about the mind-body connection, where we hold different emotions and the different organs of the body. If you do have a reoccurring health issue, you know what it might be saying emotionally for you to contribute to that healing process.

Bindi:

But according to traditional Chinese medicine, the kidneys in the urinary system represent fear. So if you are getting a UTI or it's especially if it's recurring, right, we all have one off experiences because we were in our bathing suit too long when we were at the beach. You know we've all been there. But if you're like regularly getting it, is there a factor of fear involved? Is there any big changes in your life? You know changes in living situation, changes in relationship and finances. Is there anything fear based going on?

Bindi:

Ayurvedic philosophy has a slightly different opinion. They say that the urinary tract represents guilt or shame, which also makes a lot of sense, and in yogic philosophy, because that urinary tract system is connected to the second chakra or the second energy center running up the spine, that it can also be a place for resentment or hurt specifically involving the opposite sex. Of course, the Western practitioner and me, you know we talk about functional medicine, protocols and lab testing and nutritional supplements, all of those things. But the part-time monk in me you know that lived in India and lived as a part-time monk for many years just can't deny you know the mind-body connection and I've seen with too many clients facing recurring urinary tract infections, the connection between just resentment or hurt, you know, or sexual experiences that didn't feel really great and that creating, you know, uti. And it makes sense if you were really stressed or you're holding a lot of resentment towards a sexual partner, for example, or you have sex and you know you say yes but your whole body is saying no, it would make sense that that stress response would be, you know, a cause of inflammation and that that inflammation could lead to a UTI right A drop in your immune system and increase in inflammation. No doubt that there could be a connection there. So it's worth looking at that emotional component as well.

Bindi:

So again, I will link all of this up in the show notes, the protocol, this extra podcast episode on the mind-body connection, and I would love to hear if this was helpful for you. Do you struggle with UTIs? Is there anything that I missed? Any questions you have? You're so welcome.

Bindi:

I absolutely love hearing from you In my DMs on Instagram. My handle is at bindi-stables, that's B-I-N-D-I stables with a B, and if there's anything that I can ever do to support you in your health optimization journey, I would always love to hear from you. So that's all for today, my loves, wishing you a beautiful day ahead, and I will see you back for another episode real soon. Take care. Thanks so much for listening. If you loved today's episode, please spread the love by subscribing and leaving a review, or if there's someone in your life that you think could benefit from this conversation, please share this episode with them. I would love to hear from you over on Instagram, at bindi-stables, or visit my website, bindi-stablescom, to connect and work with me. Thank you so much again for being here, and I'm celebrating you in this journey of becoming the happiest, the healthiest, most vibrant you.