Cranberry Juice

Cranberry VS E.coli

E.coli, the cause of between 90% and 95% of bladder infections, is an acid-tolerant bacterium* that is uniquely adapted to survive in the human body, and can quickly mutate to resist antibiotics. It can travel upwards and attack your kidneys, and it can progress to cause serious kidney problems. The trick is to stop the E.coli in its tracks before it gets to the kidneys.

E.coli can survive in acidic environments [evidence] that are lethal to other pathogens, such as in fermented foods like sausage and apple cider. It also survives and even thrives in acidic urine conditions with a PH as low as 2. More evidence

Drinking cranberry juice (which acidifies the urine) when you have an E.coli bladder infection or UTI is therefore pointless and will probably do more harm than good.

Before we go further with this story, it is worth telling you a little of what we have learned about E.coli, because if you are going to defeat something, you first have to know your enemy.

Escherichi coli, one of the most thoroughly studied of all bacterium, is always present in the human intestine, even in newborn babies. (It is of course also present in other animals.) Text Book of Bacteriology - E.coli

It plays an essential part in the processing of food, and of our waste materials into faeces that we can pass out of our bodies. E.coli is therefore useful to us, and we have also made use of it medically. For example, it is used for genetic engineering, since cultures of E.coli can be made to produce unlimited quantities of the product of an introduced gene.

E.coli - the Opportunist

Unfortunately, E.coli is also one of the most dangerous bacteria we could have chosen to have a symbiotic relationship with. It is a fast mutator, since it multiplies at an enormous rate given the right conditions, (doubling the colony size approximately every 20 minutes) and it is 'opportunist', being non-fussy about where it lives and multiplies. It will happily thrive on medical equipment, on catheters, on your hands, in your mouth, up your nose, on any mucous membrane, in your hair, in your bladder, on your towel, on door handles, toilet seats, and in your tap weater and water filter. To be active, all it needs is a ittle moisture. The moisture in the air is enough... To thrive, it needs something to feed on. But it can feed on almost anything.

It is also an unusually hardy bug. In an study by Abigail F. Weliver, Heat as a Microbial Agent, she said that:

"E.coli can grow both aerobically and anaerobically. It can synthesize all its own amino acids, purines and pyrimidines using the nitrogen donor molecule glutamine (Berks, 2002). E. coli is a mesophile, which lives in the temperature range near that of humans, with a growth optimum between 25°C and 40°C (Madigan, 2002)...."

She goes on to show that the bug can occasionally withstand extended boiling...

"The one week old E. coli was tested at 100° C. We predicted that absolutely no E. coli would be able to survive a 100° C environment, however, there were two positive tests - the first being the 10 mL sample at t = 0, and the second being the 0.1 mL sample at 60 minutes."

So it can thrive with or without oxygen, in almost any conditions, and other studies show that E.coli can hibernate in freezing temperatures almost indefinitely. E.coli is therefore both creiophilic (can survive freezing, so watch those ice cubes and ice cream when you are on holiday abroad) and thermophilic (can survive boiling, so that towel may not be as clean as you think...)

And you won't kill it by washing something in warm soapy water. In fact, it thrives in those conditions. It even lives on soap. You can, however, flush it away, and that's important to our story - more on that later...

E.coli has an amazing affinity with the bodies of warm blooded animals like us. The entire bug (the variety that can stick to the bladder) is covered with molecular hairs (fimbria or pili with lectins - the special molecules that attach to mannose) that stick like velcro to the cell walls of body tissue and anything else with the correctly oriented mannose molecules. There is a natural antibiotic we produce called human beta-defensin-1 that helps to break the fimbria/pili that E.coli use to attach. However, people who are prone to UTIs either don't have enough of this natural defence, or the bacteria that are infecting them have developed resistance.

E.coli and D-Mannose

Now comes the interesting bit. We already knew that using antibiotics against bladder infections just led to more resistant E.coli, thrush, and long term antibiotic-related complications.

However, during our research into the behaviour of E.coli, we discovered that they like most of all to attach to a sugar-type substance called d-mannose, which our body produces naturally as part of the walls of cells. This d-mannose is naturally present in the bladder and the urinary tract, providing the ideal docking ports for the E.coli. We don't have perfect bodies, and nature has really messed things up here, because if it weren't for the d-mannose in the cell walls, any E.coli that managed to get up the urethra would be flushed away in normal urination. But they are not. They get up there, and they find a docking port, and they start to multiply. And that's when the trouble begins. They burrow their way into the walls of the bladder, which somehow doesn't recognise them as enemies, and embraces them as if they were fond friends. This can make them very difficult to get rid of without a good intake of dmannose. And the fact that they bury themselves into the bladder wall can lead to repeat attacks of cystitis.

The cell walls of E.coli are covered with minute fimbria (hairs) with lectins (molecular projections) that hook like velcro to the mannose in the walls of the bladder and urinary tract.	In this photo the E.coli are the white egg-shaped cells. The E.coli attach to dmannose in the cell walls. But mannose in the urine occupies the E.coli lectins, preventing attachment.

The answer to preventing attachment of E.coli in the bladder, kidneys, and entire urinary tract is therefore simply to take a supplement of dmannose.

"The problem is that bacteria are immensely adaptable critters. Expose them to antibiotics long enough, and they'll evolve ways to survive the drugs." Abigail A. Salyers - University of Illinois.

We had heard small amounts of d-mannose could be found in cranberry, but the problem is that the acidifying effect of cranberry juice, tablets, or powder just makes the infections worse.

The best way to take it is as a pure high quality supplement. Taken at high levels - up to 8 teaspoons a day, it can solve most urinary tract infections. Taken as a propylactic, dmannose prevents There are various d-mannose suppliers worldwide, where a natural version of the product can be easily obtained.

Note: Hospital aquired antibiotic-resistant E.coli infections kill hundreds of babies and children worldwide every year. Giving d-mannose is often the only way to save their lives.