The UTI diet
Try grocery shopping with your bladder in mind.
Your diet has a huge influence on the kind of bacteria and hormones that regulate your body. If you are prone to UTIs or want to be more mindful of how your diet affects your health, consider the “UTI diet”.
Making long-term and beneficial food choices can help change your body composition and reduce the risk of getting recurrent UTIs.
How does your diet affect your chance of getting an UTI?
Diet is the foundation to good health, so it’s naturally a huge influence over your lower tract system and your body’s ability to fend off infections. While changing your diet will not directly affect your chances of getting or preventing UTIs, it is a proactive step that you can control.
Your diet also affects your urine pH, a huge factor that influences how you contract infections. A bladder with a high pH is more likely to get infected from bacteria that thrive in that kind of environment. The foods you eat are reflected in your urine pH, which determines whether the bacteria in your system will start an infection or are dormant.
What foods should you avoid if you have an UTI?
Because UTIs involve your bladder system, it’s important to consider foods that won’t further irritate your bladder which can worsen the symptoms of a UTI, making it more painful and potentially difficult to take care of.
Foods that you’ll want to avoid if you are treating a UTI include:
- Artificial sweeteners
- Caffeine and other energy drinks
- Spicy foods
- Citrus fruits like lemons, and other acidic foods
What should you eat to help prevent UTIs?
Your UTI diet plan should include foods that are beneficial to your bladder health. The Candida diet is one example of an anti-inflammatory diet that improves your gut health and bacteria in your body. This includes reducing gluten, sugar, alcohol products, and certain types of dairy. The diet focuses instead on eating lean proteins, healthful fats, non-starchy vegetables, and probiotics.
Some things that are great to include into your diet are:
- Water. You should be drinking throughout the day and making sure to stay well hydrated so that you body is constantly flushing out bacteria and toxins in your urinary tract.
- Yogurt, sauerkraut, or kimchi and other probiotics that introduce good gut flora into your system
- Greens like kale which is filled with good vitamins and important nutrients that support your body system
Food is key to your overall health; your diet influences many body functions that are affected by UTIs. So making good choices about what you eat is the best way to ensure that your body is strong and that you’re preventing all kinds of infections.
