Latest / The IBS Solution with Brooke Kane / The IBS-UTI Connection No One Talks About (Here’s How to Fix It)
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_00: If you have IBS and you keep getting UTIs, there's a reason those two problems can keep showing up together.
- 0:06SPEAKER_00: And if nobody connects them, you can clear one infection, feel better for a few weeks, and then end up right back where you started.
- 0:12SPEAKER_00: I know because I dealt with constant UTIs for years myself.
- 0:16SPEAKER_00: I'm Brocane.
- 0:17SPEAKER_00: I'm a registered nurse and functional medicine practitioner specializing in IBS relief.
- 0:22SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to show you what most women are never told about this pattern, why it keeps repeating, and what finally changed it for me.
- 0:29SPEAKER_00: When a UTI keeps coming back, all the attention goes to the bladder because that's where you feel it.
- 0:34SPEAKER_00: You get tested, they find bacteria, you take the antibiotic, the infection clears, then a few weeks or a few months later, you're right back in the same place.
- 0:42SPEAKER_00: And once that has happened two or three times, the question has to change from how do I get rid of this UTI to where do these bacteria keep coming from?
- 0:51SPEAKER_00: Because they did not just magically appear in your bladder.
- 0:55SPEAKER_00: A lot of the bacteria that cause UTIs normally live in the intestinal tract.
- 0:59SPEAKER_00: And if you also have chronic diarrhea, the recurring UTI situation starts to make a lot more sense.
- 1:05SPEAKER_00: When you have chronic diarrhea, you're going to the bathroom constantly, your stools loose, and you're wiping over and over throughout the day.
- 1:12SPEAKER_00: And for women, there's not a lot of distance between the rectum and the vagina and the urethra.
- 1:17SPEAKER_00: That means bacteria from the intestinal tract have more opportunities to end up somewhere where they do not belong.
- 1:24SPEAKER_00: So when a woman tells me she has urgent diarrhea all the time and she keeps getting UTIs, I immediately want to know whether the same bacteria causing those infections are coming from her gut.
- 1:35SPEAKER_00: Because now we're not dealing with two random symptoms.
- 1:38SPEAKER_00: We have a gut full of bacteria, repeated loose stools, giving those bacteria more opportunities to move where they shouldn't be, and a urinary infection that keeps coming back.
- 1:48SPEAKER_00: And this is where the next piece becomes really important.
- 1:51SPEAKER_00: Your gut can become a reservoir.
- 1:53SPEAKER_00: Your gut can act like a reservoir for the bacteria that keep making their way back into the urinary tract.
- 1:59SPEAKER_00: Think of it like a leak under your sink.
- 2:02SPEAKER_00: You keep finding water on the floor, so you mop it up.
- 2:04SPEAKER_00: The floor dries, everything looks fine.
- 2:06SPEAKER_00: Then a few weeks later, the floor is wet again, so you mop it up again.
- 2:10SPEAKER_00: Eventually you have to stop staring at the floor and you need to ask, where's this water coming from?
- 2:16SPEAKER_00: That's how I look at recurring UTIs.
- 2:18SPEAKER_00: The antibiotic may clear the infection that you have today, but if the gut is still holding the same bacteria and giving them another opportunity to migrate, then you can keep ending up with the same problem over and over again.
- 2:30SPEAKER_00: You mopped the floor, you never fixed the leak.
- 2:33SPEAKER_00: And that's also why the next part matters so much, because the treatment itself can start making the gut problem harder to recover from.
- 2:40SPEAKER_00: If you're listening to this and you're thinking, that's exactly me, I have chronic diarrhea, I keep getting UTIs, and nobody's ever connected the two.
- 2:48SPEAKER_00: There's a link below to learn more about what I do.
- 2:51SPEAKER_00: Most of the women I work with have already tried diets, medications, supplements, GI doctors, sometimes functional medicine too.
- 2:58SPEAKER_00: We stop guessing and actually look at what's happening inside the gut so we can figure out what is driving symptoms and what needs attention first.
- 3:06SPEAKER_00: If that sounds like you, check the link below because this next part is where the cycle can get even worse.
- 3:12SPEAKER_00: To make matters worse, the most common UTI treatment can worsen your IBS issues, keeping you trapped in this vicious cycle.
- 3:19SPEAKER_00: You already have IBS, your bacterial balance may already be badly disrupted, your protective bacteria may be depleted, and your bowel movements are already a mess.
- 3:28SPEAKER_00: Then another UTI shows up.
- 3:30SPEAKER_00: So you take another round of antibiotics.
- 3:32SPEAKER_00: That may clear the infection in your bladder, but it can also wipe out more of the bacteria your gut actually needs and make that imbalance even worse.
- 3:40SPEAKER_00: So you end up with this devastating pattern where the gut's already unhealthy, bacteria get another opportunity to cause a UTI, the UTI gets treated with antibiotics.
- 3:50SPEAKER_00: Those antibiotics can leave the gut even more disrupted than it was before, then another infection shows up and the whole thing starts over again.
- 3:57SPEAKER_00: That's how women can spend years treating infection after infection without ever getting out of the cycle.
- 4:03SPEAKER_00: I lived this, I know how exhausting that is because I dealt with constant UTIs myself for years.
- 4:08SPEAKER_00: And if you've been through this, you know what starts happening after a while.
- 4:12SPEAKER_00: You become hyper aware of every little sensation.
- 4:16SPEAKER_00: Something feels slightly off when you pee, and you immediately think, oh, here we go again.
- 4:21SPEAKER_00: You worry about traveling because you don't want to get one away from home.
- 4:25SPEAKER_00: Sex becomes another thing you have to think about.
- 4:27SPEAKER_00: You know another infection may mean another doctor visit, another test, another antibiotic.
- 4:32SPEAKER_00: It gets old real fast.
- 4:34SPEAKER_00: For a long time, I thought about the UTI as a urinary problem because that's where the infection showed up.
- 4:39SPEAKER_00: What finally changed the pattern for me was addressing what was happening in my gut.
- 4:43SPEAKER_00: And once I understood that, I started looking at women with chronic diarrhea and recurring UTIs very differently.
- 4:49SPEAKER_00: Because now the question isn't just what do we use for this infection?
- 4:53SPEAKER_00: The question becomes, what is living in the gut that keeps getting another chance to cause trouble?
- 4:58SPEAKER_00: This is where testing becomes important.
- 5:00SPEAKER_00: If I have a woman with IBSD and recurring UTIs, I want to know what is actually living inside that intestinal tract.
- 5:07SPEAKER_00: Are bacteria that shouldn't be dominating the gut showing up in high numbers?
- 5:11SPEAKER_00: Are the beneficial bacteria that normally help keep those organisms under control depleted?
- 5:16SPEAKER_00: Is the gut inflamed?
- 5:17SPEAKER_00: Is digestion functioning properly?
- 5:19SPEAKER_00: Is the intestinal environment allowing the wrong organisms to take over?
- 5:24SPEAKER_00: Because if the gut is acting as the reservoir, I need to understand the reservoir.
- 5:28SPEAKER_00: I'm not interested in guessing, and I'm not interested in handing you the same generic gut protocol that I hand everybody else.
- 5:34SPEAKER_00: I want data.
- 5:35SPEAKER_00: This is where people tend to jump ahead.
- 5:37SPEAKER_00: The second women hear gut bacteria, somebody tells them to take a probiotic.
- 5:42SPEAKER_00: That's not how I work.
- 5:43SPEAKER_00: I use probiotics, but I'm not blindly adding bacteria to a gut when I don't even know what's happening in there.
- 5:49SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there's an overgrowth that needs attention first.
- 5:52SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the gut is so irritated that I need to calm things down before I can start trying to rebuild it.
- 5:57SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the protective bacteria are severely depleted and rebuilding them becomes a major part of the plan.
- 6:04SPEAKER_00: So the question isn't which probiotic should I buy?
- 6:07SPEAKER_00: The question is, what does this gut actually need?
- 6:10SPEAKER_00: Because you cannot intelligently change a bacterial environment you've never properly looked at.
- 6:15SPEAKER_00: And you cannot probiotic your way out of a gut you have not even investigated.
- 6:20SPEAKER_00: There's another piece of this that matters just as much.
- 6:23SPEAKER_00: I don't only want to change what the bacteria are that are living in the gut, I want the diarrhea gone.
- 6:28SPEAKER_00: Because if you're having loose, urgent stool several times a day, you're still dealing with the same physical situation that gives intestinal bacteria more opportunities to move where they shouldn't.
- 6:39SPEAKER_00: So when we improve the intestinal environment, rebuild what's missing, address what should not be there, calm the inflammation, get bowel movements formed and predictable again, we're changing the whole setup.
- 6:50SPEAKER_00: That's the goal.
- 6:51SPEAKER_00: I don't want you barely controlling the diarrhea while waiting to see when the next UTI shows up.
- 6:57SPEAKER_00: I want the gut functioning differently enough that we're no longer creating the same conditions over and over again.
- 7:03SPEAKER_00: So if this is you, I want to know what is happening in your gut between infections because that's where you have the opportunity to change the pattern.
- 7:12SPEAKER_00: I want to know which organisms are overgrown, which protective bacteria are missing.
- 7:16SPEAKER_00: Why are you still having diarrhea?
- 7:18SPEAKER_00: What is happening in that intestinal environment that keeps giving the wrong bacteria an advantage?
- 7:24SPEAKER_00: Then we work on what we actually find.
- 7:26SPEAKER_00: That may mean addressing an overgrowth, rebuilding depleted bacteria, calming inflammation, improving digestion, or doing several of those things in the right sequence and at the same time.
- 7:36SPEAKER_00: I want those loose, urgent bowel movements becoming formed and predictable again.
- 7:41SPEAKER_00: That's how you change the conditions that keep setting you up for another UTI instead of just waiting for the next infection to appear.
- 7:49SPEAKER_00: So if you have IBS, you keep getting UTIs, remember the question nobody asked me for years.
- 7:54SPEAKER_00: Where do these bacteria keep coming from?
- 7:57SPEAKER_00: The infection may show up in your bladder, but the story can start somewhere else.
- 8:00SPEAKER_00: And when chronic diarrhea is part of your life too, I want that gut investigated instead of treating every UTI like some random new event.
- 8:08SPEAKER_00: That is what finally broke this cycle for me.
- 8:11SPEAKER_00: If you have chronic diarrhea and recurring UTIs and nobody ever looked at those problems together, there's a link below to learn more about working with me.
- 8:19SPEAKER_00: And if you have already done all the stool testing and somebody told you everything looked normal, watch this video next.
- 8:25SPEAKER_00: I'll show you the seven things even advanced stool tests can miss and why a normal result may not tell you nearly as much as you think.