UTI’s in young girls and
postmenopausal estrogen-deficient women are frequently caused by irritation to
the urethra.
Everyone seems to know that
little girls get UTI’s from bubble baths which they like so much as little
girls. The chemical irritation of the
soap in the urethra of an unestrogenized urethra irritates considerably,
causing secretions within their urethra to increase, thus allowing the
bacterial that normally live in the lower third of the urethra to ascend into
the bladder causing an infection.
The
same problem occurs in menopausal women who are not on estrogen. The urethra again becomes thinned, and it is
a very estrogen-sensitive pathway, or epithelium, and frequently older women
will irritate the urethra by scrubbing at the introitus of the vagina with
soap, or even scrubbing briskly with a washcloth- which is enough to make the
area swell slightly and become edematous and increase the urethral
secretions.
A good number of
postmenopausal UTI’s could be avoiding by realizing the introitus of the vagina
and the urethral opening should only be washed with WATER & FINGERS with no
washcloth and no soap being used. This
frequently is a problem when people have an infection and seem to presume that
there is something wrong with their hygiene that is causing a vaginal
infection. Consequently they scrub
harder and use more soap, making the problem worse or extending it into a
UTI.
In reproductive years the problem
is less likely to occur, but even in reproductive years with normal estrogen
levels, UTI’s may be caused by both a chemical and a mechanical irritation of
the urethra.
