Posted by Anonymous

A Raw Alkaline Vegetarian Diet & Only Water Seems to be Helping My UTI / IC Symptoms



"I cured my IC by diet" and "I healed my IC going alkaline" is what I have been reading lately. I read that people were healing their IC symptoms by eating alkaline (and seemingly mostly or all vegetables). So I decided to try this. At first, for days, I was eating roasted alkaline vegetables but my symptoms were just as bad. I was feeling so frustrated! So what was I doing wrong?

I was also losing weight because I was sticking to just eating vegetables for so long. I was on the long-term low dose Macrobid (one 100mg Macrobid per day for the next 6 weeks) and it was keeping in my pain and symptoms at bay at about 30% - 40%. I still had moderate pain and burning, but not like the razor-blade sharp severe pain I was having before taking Macrobid antibiotics.

So one day, I tried something completely different. On April 23rd, I ate only raw alkaline vegetables, something I never do. I'm a spaghetti and pizza kind of girl and I like eating my food cooked. But I read that when vegetables are cooked, they get acidic and apparently acidic foods flare your bladder which leads to bladder inflammation and more painful IC symptoms. So that might be why even when I was eating roasted vegetables, my symptoms were still painful!  So on my new day, I ate just raw cucumbers, red bellpeppers, califlowers, broccoli (making sure any vegetables I picked were on the alkaline list). I also started taking 1 teaspoon (2000 mg) of D-Mannose every 3 hours (read my April 28th post on what brand I take and how I take it).

My symptoms completely changed in 1 day. The pain, burning and stinging went down by 50% - 60%. I was so shocked I wanted to cry in joy. The frequency, however, remains and I still have dull pain in my bladder and mild stinging in my urethra. I'm also really exhausted all the time. But I'm just happy to decrease the burning urine and urethra somewhat. Was it the D-Mannose or the diet? I'm going to say it was the diet, but I'm sticking to doing both just in case.

The only drawback is that I'm losing weight way too rapidly. I lost 13 lbs from being so afraid to eat anything that would flare my bladder. I'll be seeing a Naturopath later this week for my 1st time, to learn what to do for my IC symptoms and how to gain my weight back. On e-mail, she had told me that diet was key to managing Interstitial Cystitis. So I hope to learn from her on what I need to eat or do, and I will be sharing them here on my blog. I highly recommend that you get a naturopath or follow blogs of IC patients who have healed.

The reason why I also think diet is the healing factor is because of these other people who also healed from Interstitial Cystitis:
I'm still learning all this, and I haven't figured out what diet to follow quite yet. But in the meantime, I'm sticking to my raw alkaline vegetables while I continue my research. I'm just so relieved that the stinging and burning is knocked down to 50% while I am on this raw vegetarian alkaline diet. I don't like it, but I'll do anything to be able to walk again. I was able to take slow 5 - 10 minute walks outside of my home for the first time in 2 months of being bedridden. I was overjoyed! However, I still have a lot of anxiety over this and desperately wanting this to all end.

So this is what I'm only eating right now... and drinking only water. I don't drink anything else. I'm so hungry, but I'm too scared to try anything else at the moment. I still have the same frequency of wanting to pee all the time. At least the pain has been knocked down halfway, so I can stop crying 24/7 on the toilet.

I'm also only drinking Spring water (bottled) and alkaline water. I'm avoiding tap water for now because when I tested my tap water, it was acidic. You can test acidity and alkalinity by using PH strips. You can buy PH strips anywhere at any health food or health supplement store. It's best to get water that's at a neutral PH (7) or alkaline (higher than 7). I'm drinking FIJI bottled water and EVIAN bottled water. According to Today's Dietician: The Urgency of Interstitial Cystitis — How Diet Can Improve a Crippling Disease, Julie Beyer, IC expert and also an IC patient in the article, was also drinking FIJI and Evian as well. I highly recommend her blog Interstitial Cystitis Diet: Confident Choices, since she is an IC patient as well! I'm slowly reading through her blog.
Email Post