Now my next tip is to empty your bladder fully, now if you’re suffering from  prolapse problems or tight pelvic floor muscles or even just when you’re empty regularly, you might  be surprised at how much urine is actually left  in the bladder so to empty your bladder  properly and to make sure all the urine comes out so it doesn’t sit there and congregate  with bacteria, what you can do is first of all  make sure that you sit on the toilet seat, never hover above it, sit because when you sit down to empty and you lean forward then the pelvic floor muscles can relax and your bladder can empty well and the other thing is to take your time, i think we’re all guilty of trying to rush through our bladder emptying so really take your time to fully empty, if you think you’re having problems emptying you can do a technique called a double void which you should check on.

Now the fourth thing to think about is intimacy and intimate health so you’ve probably heard about honeymoon cystitis when e coli bacteria can actually get into the bladder and we can prevent that and there’s ways of preventing that by emptying your bladder immediately before and after any intimacy and the other thing that you can also do too is to use a water-based lubricant, now if you look on the ingredients of your lubricant bottle, you can see that it’s either a water base so water would be the first ingredient, if oil or petroleum is the first ingredient then the bacteria can actually congregate and and stick in that oil and you’ll know that it’s really quite hard to wash off so a water-based lubricant will wash   off readily whereas an oil-based lubricant will  adhere to your skin and the bacteria can stay in the oil-based lubricant, the other thing is to make sure that when you wash always use just water   not soap and not perfumes in the intimate area. The final thing is to think about using something like vaginal estrogen so while this isn’t a natural  tip, it’s really well worth knowing for women with menopause so during menopause, estrogen  decreases now when this happens the vaginal   tissues aren’t as well nourished and it can make  you much more predisposed to a bladder infection, there’s a breakdown in the the tissues or the  lining of the bladder and also the opening of the bladder becomes much wider, now you can use vaginal estrogen either in a pessary form or a cream form and you get that obviously from your doctor and what that does is it actually nourishes the tissues in this area and can help you close down that opening into the urethra so the space isn’t quite so open and also to improve the lining of the bladder so it’s much less susceptible to infection.

So i think you can see there’s quite a number  of things you can do to actually help yourself   prevent a repeat bladder infection, we’ve talked  about drinking more water, we’ve talked about   cranberry in form of juice or tablets, we’ve talked  about your intimate health, we’ve also talked about emptying your bladder and emptying your bladder really well and finally we talked about vaginal estrogen and perhaps considering using that and talking with your doctor about that as well, so i really hope that these five tips help you  prevent urinary tract infections and help you escape that ongoing problem of having to repeat antibiotics all the time.