UTIs & Bladder Health
Recurrent UTIs are a genuinely female issue, and one that's often poorly served by a repeat-prescription approach. Recurrent UTIs and bladder symptoms are also more closely linked to hormone health than people realise. Oestrogen supports the health of the urogenital tissue and the vaginal microbiome, and shifts in either, through hormone imbalance, perimenopause or vaginal dysbiosis, can make recurrent UTIs and bladder discomfort more likely.
Research increasingly points to why UTIs come back so often even after a course of antibiotics appears to have worked. Bacteria can form intracellular communities embedded within the bladder wall itself, protected within a biofilm structure that antibiotics struggle to penetrate. This helps explain why repeated antibiotic courses can bring short-term relief without resolving the underlying pattern, and why infections often return not long after treatment ends.
As a fertility nutritionist working with a functional medicine approach, I support chronic and recurrent UTIs with a combination of dietary and lifestyle changes, targeted supplements, and antimicrobials aimed at addressing embedded bacteria and biofilm directly, alongside supporting the vaginal and urinary microbiome more broadly. This sits alongside your GP's care, particularly where antibiotics are clinically necessary, rather than in place of it.
