Quote Originally Posted by indysteel View Post
Interesting. I've heard that advice with respect to an overactive bladder and to nocturia (nighttime urination) but that's a different problem from recurring UTIs. If you suffer from recurring UTIs, you should urinate when you feel the urge; it's not good to hold it. No if you feel a constant urge to urinate and/or feel the urge but don't have much volume or a strong stream, those are possible signs of infection.
In point of fact apparently what set off my round of continual bladder infections was summer camp when I was 9 or 10. I was used to outhouses - I had relatives who still didn't have indoor plumbing, after all - but THOSE outhouses were CLEAN. These stank of pine cleaner all the time, and since they had little kids "cleaning" them (it was part of camp chores) who were grossed out by the whole experience, they weren't really clean, and they were full of spiders (when you're 3' tall and weigh maybe 40 lbs you're not going to be going after the spider webs over your head).

They also had a habit of dumping lime down the holes, which they THOUGHT would cut down on smells, but what it REALLY did was stop the normal composting process dead in its tracks, thereby increasing manifold the smell generating potential of the contents.

End result being - frantic efforts to avoid having to go in there = urinary retention = bladder infection = frantic efforts to avoid going in there even more = more urinary retention = another bladder infection = entry into the fellowship of continual UTIs.

So no, that sounds like extraordinarily bad advice to me too.

Doctors aren't always as sharp as we would hope. They can have the same kinds of funny ideas other people have, that aren't so funny in real life. When my sister, who is gay, came down with a serious precancerous condition that required immediate full hysterectomy before it blossomed into full cancer, her doc actually had the balls to tell her it was because she'd never had sex with a man.

I guess the man hadn't heard about HPV and its link to Cervical cancer, which you get via intercourse with a man.