Thank you… thank you… thank you! I don’t know you but I have a vivid sense of who you are through this article. I love your soul

From a referral from a friend, I saw Steven Clavey at Apricot Grove in Melbourne. I was highly skeptical but my partner encouraged me to stick with it. Within weeks I was able to have sex without an antibiotic prophylactic (Steven advised me to avoid preventative antibiotics). It was 8 months of morning and night herbal use before I weaned myself off.

This was 3 years ago. I’ve since had a few infections that became medically undiagnosable as they were negative in cultures. I was sent to a uro-gynaecologist who once again put me on antibiotics (fosfomycin and Hiprex). I am grateful to her in getting this infection under control, but once again found the antibiotics playing up with my gut. She suggested I would need Hiprex long term. After a month of taking them I decided to go back to my Chinese medicine specialist to build back in a prevention method. I hadn’t seen him at all this time around because I had started to find the herbs hard to ingest. He switched up the herbs to counteract my gag reflex (they really are quite horrible), and I’m off antibiotics again completely.

The reason I advocate Chinese medicine to my friends, despite my skeptical and Western science-based nature, is because I really think the research and practices for recurring UTI’s or Interstitial Cystitis are outdated and underfunded. When we are left to advocate on our own we have no option but to try other methods. I’d rather engage a potential placebo effect than deal with whole-body repercussions of long term antibiotic use. Western medicine tends to look at organs, not overall health, and I believe women are being given a raw deal with this approach. From the latest research I’ve seen, the microbiome of the bladder is as important as the microbiome of the gut. An overproduction of E. Coli in the gut from antibiotic use can increase likelihood of transferral to the bladder, and if the microbiome of the gut has been cleansed, there’s nothing to fight off this bacteria. New research also suggests bladder E. Coli has become “super E. Coli”, through antibiotic resistance and ill-health. They’re now trying to utilise the ‘glue’ of this biofilm for innovation. I’m sure they’ll utilise our gluey bacteria before they help us remove it.

Please try Chinese Medicine. Be discerning and be skeptical, but it might be your best option if like me, you’ve been put through the specialist merry-go-round.