When Bladder Infections Are Not Cured | Genital-Urinary Issues

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When Bladder Infections Are Not Cured

Written by Allen Lawrence, M.D.

Saturday, 30 April 2011 06:32

I really enjoy Tidbits of Coachella Valley, maybe you do too. As a Holistic Gynecologist, I have to take issue with the latest issue specifically with a column by Dr. Donohue their Medical Columnist. Dr. Donahue’s column in the latest edition, April 17, 2011, was based on question by a reader regarding bladder infections, “Bladder Infections Are Bane of Women.” Specifically, why women get bladder infections. Dr. Donahue writes what just about every other medical doctor would also write. So I am not faulting him, however, it is only one way of looking at this problem.

Maybe what he says holds true a good portion of the time to a single urinary tract infection every few years or once a decade. However, the woman writing in tells of a problem that is very common today. Chronic, recurrent, bladder infections. As described in the article: “My doctor prescribes antibiotics, but shortly after I ’ve completed them, I have another infection.” She then asks, “What do you suggest as treatment that might provide a longer period of relief? A pharmacist told me that I need one or two days in the hospital to flush out my kidneys.”

Dr. Donohue’s answer is basically a text book answer, that is a Standard Western medicine text book, based on the concept that all diseases are merely caused by one or more of the following causes: 1) the individual has poor genetics, hence poor tissues that are at a moments notice ready to breakdown and allow disease and illness to occur. 2) Disease is a deficiency of one or another drug or medication, evidence by the immediate prescription to “solve the problem.” 3) The patient did something wrong and the medical profession needs to fix you in a hospital, with surgery or with some medical technique that you can’t do for yourself. 4) Finally, you just bad luck!

Here – S.A. asks what causes urinary tract (in this case recurrent bladder) infections and why they recur? This is a great question. I have a totally different answer than Dr. Donahue’s. In this situation, we have a woman who has consciously or unconsciously recognized that the medical system, in treating endlessly with antibiotics and restrictions, is not working for her. She again, consciously or unconsciously, recognizes that there must be something more to it then what her doctor is telling her for his treatment did not work and more importantly she recognizes that it is not going to work in the future.

The approach Dr. Donahue discusses is used thousands of time a day, on tens of thousands of women, generating tens of millions of dollars for medical doctors and drug companies, but as for the vast majority of the women involved, they get nothing as their infections continue to recur and they are left powerless to have complete control over their life.

Using a different approach, not science, as it simply is not working here, for if it did, – S.A. along with the other tens of thousands of women world wide with recurring bladder infections, would already have been cured, and if they had, we wouldn’t be talking about this problem today.

From a holistic prospective something different is happening here and the problem is simply not do to a women with poor protoplasm, bad genetics, or taking faulty drugs, not taking enough antibiotics or the wrong antibiotics, or not being admitted to the hospital to have her kidney’s flushed out.

It would be nice if we new more about – S.A. for the likelihood is that if we knew her life story and what was going on in her life, we would soon find the answer to the mystery of the recurring urinary tract infections. The basic core belief from which I practice holistic gynecology says that this woman and her body are highly intelligent and if she is having a recurring problem, it must be that her body is trying to tell her something. While the message could be that there is an anatomical or physiologic problem within or around the bladder, in the case of recurrent urinary tract infections most commonly the issue is one or more unresolved frustrations and anger, usually, but not always related to a some problem or conflict within a relationship, often with the husband or boyfriend, but it could also relate to issues with a parent or parents, a child, her job or one or more of her friends or family members.

When we begin to understand and see our body as a highly intelligent organism, that is constantly giving us information and guiding us through life then illness often takes an entirely different form and meaning. In our everyday language we often say things like “I am pissed off at him!” Or “He pisses me off!” Can it be an accident that we relate anger to bladder function? No! It is part of a process I refer to as Body Symptoms Language, our body being intelligent, is constantly trying to communicate to us that we (our conscious awake self and our subconscious self) have a conflict that we are not resolving and that our body-mind (subconscious self) wants us to resolve. The problem is that our body-mind (subconscious self) cannot talk to us in words, it can only communicate in feelings and physical signs and symptoms. Much like your car tells you that are about to be out of gas when you check your gas gauge and you see that it is running near empty.

Body symptom language, while a recognized part of diagnosing illness, is not part of understanding or treating medical problems. Few physicians ask, “Why then is this symptoms here? Other then simply telling me that this tissue or organ has a problem, what could it possibly be telling us about the underlying cause of this patients problem?” Yes, it should be asking these questions, but medicine is still relatively quite primitive in understanding the relationship between mind, body and spirit, the intelligence of the body, and the ability of the body to communicate reasons and causes for illness. Besides this is not taught in medical school so how could the ordinary physician be aware of it. The truth is the average physician is generally unaware of the body-mind-spirit relationship to cause and effect. In fact the average practitioner pretty much sees the body as a mindless, robot, which does what we tell it to do. He sees the mind-body as imperfect, the spirit as a confusing concept, and he truly believes that the primary way he can fix illness, is using one or more drugs, and when this doesn’t work, surgery.

What I would have told S.A., if she was sitting across from me is, “Let’s look for the conflict your body is trying to communicate to you. Since the bladder is involved, it would appear that whatever the conflict is it has to do with a problem with or about a relationship, anger, frustration and hurt.” I would then ask, “What does this idea bring to mind for you?” The likelihood is that withing 10 to 20 minutes we would be talking about the problem and how and why we need to resolve it. She would then see that once a solution has been found, her urinary tract infections will go away for ever. There are however, exceptions to the above, women with PMS or going through menopause can have hormonal conflicts and this can be a physical reason for recurrent UTI’s, Dr. Donohue does not mention this in his column.

Why treat when you can cure!