Dr. Aaron Hartman explains that recurring UTI-like symptoms in young women may actually be interstitial cystitis, a mast cell inflammation condition often triggered by viral reactivations or SIBO. It's treatable with mast cell stabilizers like quercetin instead of repeated antibiotics.
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You're having bladder pain. It comes and goes and gets better with antibiotics sometimes. Sometimes it goes away on its own. Sometimes you get some pain, but actually you're getting kind of depressed. You're feeling kind of down. You have some other body aches and pains. You've been to multiple specialists and told it's just UTIs. This happens in young ladies and been told you need to just take antibiotics and move on, but you know something else is going on. What could this be? And is this one of the many things that's overlooked by healthcare system as a blind spot? 100%. What I'm referring to is interstitial cystitis. What I'm referring to is interstitial cystitis. This is actually a part of mast cell activation syndrome that we see a lot in our clinic, where the bladder gets inflamed. And think about it; it comes and goes. So by the time you get to see a provider and get antibiotics for it, it kind of goes away on its own. Sometimes can have a viral reactivation. Sometimes can have a tick-borne relationship. We'll see with patients with SIBO or overgrowth of bacteria in their gut. The point is this actually is very, very treatable with a lot of mast. cell type treatments. And yet it's called idiopathic interstitial cystitis, which means your bladder's inflamed. Doesn't talk about the cause. And there are actually a lot of treatments for this. Has anybody out there been dealing with interstitial cystitis or had a friend? It's one of these diagnoses that I first heard about about 20 years ago, and now it's becoming more common, especially as more people are becoming familiar with mast cell activation syndrome. So I'd love to hear your story below if you've actually had this entity, this illness. And, if you've tried something kind of off the chart like Uribel, for example, or other quercetin-like mast cell stabilizing medications and had a great response, I'd be curious because the reality is there's a lot of cool things out there you can use to treat this without chronic antibiotics and surgery. So, I'd love to hear your story below. If you'd like to learn more about these kind of entities, we have a whole series on mystery illnesses, and this is one of many of them on our website. So, take care. I'd love to hear from you.
