Who is Ruth Kriz? on Today's Interstitial Cystitis & Chronic UTI Spotlight
Ruth Kriz photo from LiveUTIFree.com
I'll be doing separate posts on practitioners who look deeper into chronic Urinary Tract Infections and Interstitial Cystitis: Ruth Kriz, Professor Malone-Lee, Dr. Michael Hsieh, and Dr. J. Curtis Nickel. Each specialist will have different opinions and a few overlapping ideas. I am not biased for anyone in particular, I wanted to learn all their ideas and that's why I reached out to all four specialists.
Ruth Kriz is a Nurse Practitioner who practices in Northwest Washington DC, in a tranquil leafy green neighborhood near the Woodley Park area. She shares a small office with another lady. They alternate days since she does most of her practice in Virginia via Skype with patients. She does see patients face-to-face, but her patients are from all over the place. Ruth has a database of over 3000 patients and has been in this office for over 20 years. The office states that their cure success rate is at 80%.
Ruth personally suffered with IC herself for 11 years but has been well for over 18 years. You can read her story here: How I Healed My Bladder with Long-Term Antibiotics and Vitamin Mineral Supplements.
She taught nursing for many years from LPNs to Master's level Nurse Practitioners and in 2005 opened her practice in Washington, DC to help IC patients. Ruth Kriz has been providing an integrative approach to the treatment and cure of interstitial cystitis and has over 30 years clinical experience working with IC patients. I have met patients who have been with her for years, and met recovered patients of hers as well on Facebook. Ruth's treatments are always changing and evolving. Back then, she used to do urine broth culturing using Dr. Fuzagottis' methods; she studied under him, and when he passed away, she passed on his broth culture teachings over to United Medical Labs. Nowadays, she checks patients' urine with DNA next generation tests like MicroGenDX and Aperiomics. She uses MicroGenDX more. She also has a bunch of other lab tests to see patients' underlying conditions, and her patients talk about how she's highly specialized in Lyme Disease. From my experience talking to her patients, treatment is an integration of antibiotics (orals and instills), biofilm disrupters (Interfase), and holistic methods ie) natural supplements.
I became Ruth's patient at the end of September 2018. It was difficult to reach her by phone, so I faxed my contact info and a blurb about my condition. That's how I got in. Ruth is super booked by the way, it was really hard for people to get in as her patient. A doctor-in-training on Instagram asked me how I got in, because a lot of patients she knew had been trying to get into Ruth's office for months. The average wait list to get in is several months. I heard back in September that she won't be taking in any new patients until the end of this year.
For first-time consultations, she spends 90 minutes with new patients face-to-face or through Skype. Mine was through Skype since I am based in Canada, which you can see a screenshot of on my previous post at Ruth Kriz: Nurse Practitioner Specializing in Interstital Cystitis & Chronic UTI. Before my first appointment, her staff emailed me questionnaires and forms to fill out so they would know my medical history and my current problem. Then we traded our Skypes with each other via email two days before the call. On the day of the call, I called her Skype to do a video session.
One thing that I loved about seeing Ruth is the time that I get with her on Skype sessions. In Canada, I have to wait around 3 months to see a specialist (gynecologist or urologist) and that gets me 10 - 15 minutes only. That doesn't give me time to talk about my situation and my Canadian specialists don't have time to look at all my medical documents. They're so overbooked and overworked that I have learned that from now on, I need to bring any big health problems/rarer conditions to private healthcare elsewhere. In Canada, our healthcare is free since it is government-run healthcare. But my personal opinion is that socialized medicine doesn't work when it comes to big or rare health problems. We have brutally long waits, and I was left to fend for myself for months with little to no help. That's when I turned to US private healthcare to seek opinions from urologist Dr. Hsieh and nurse Ruth Kriz in Washington DC, and traded email discussions with Professor Malone-Lee in the UK.
Before my first session with her, she had me watch Dr. Bill Costerton - The "Father" of Biofilms". (Doctor Costerton has studied biofilms for more than 40 years. His biofilm research and prolific publishing has led to many medical breakthroughs, confirming that biofilms cause myriad chronic conditions: middle ear infections, kidney stones, urinary tract infections, gum disease and many more that affect millions of people.) My next session with her was getting my urine tested with MicroGenDX and some other lab tests, and you'll find my treatments shown on my Instagram.
Ruth's belief is that Interstitial Cystitis is caused by biofilm bacteria. She does call it a multi-faceted problem, and believes that the bacteria in the UTI is the trigger to then causing Pelvic Floor Dysfunction and all the mysterious inflammation that goes on. According to Ruth, she believes that all IC cases are actually infections.
People's stories on their treatment with Ruth Kriz:
I've Never Met The Nurse Who Saved My Life
ICBigSister - About Me
Linsey's Chronic UTI Story
Ruth Kriz's Facebook group - only for her current and past patients:
Treatment with Ruth Kriz
To make an appointment to see Ruth Kriz, visit her website at RuthKriz.com
Have you been a patient of Ruth Kriz? Whether it was a successful or failed treatment, I would like to hear your story, and will never publish your story nor reveal your identity to anyone.
If you want to chat with me and many other IC and chronic UTI people from all walks of life, find us on Instagram at @VancouverUTIGirl
Ruth personally suffered with IC herself for 11 years but has been well for over 18 years. You can read her story here: How I Healed My Bladder with Long-Term Antibiotics and Vitamin Mineral Supplements.
She taught nursing for many years from LPNs to Master's level Nurse Practitioners and in 2005 opened her practice in Washington, DC to help IC patients. Ruth Kriz has been providing an integrative approach to the treatment and cure of interstitial cystitis and has over 30 years clinical experience working with IC patients. I have met patients who have been with her for years, and met recovered patients of hers as well on Facebook. Ruth's treatments are always changing and evolving. Back then, she used to do urine broth culturing using Dr. Fuzagottis' methods; she studied under him, and when he passed away, she passed on his broth culture teachings over to United Medical Labs. Nowadays, she checks patients' urine with DNA next generation tests like MicroGenDX and Aperiomics. She uses MicroGenDX more. She also has a bunch of other lab tests to see patients' underlying conditions, and her patients talk about how she's highly specialized in Lyme Disease. From my experience talking to her patients, treatment is an integration of antibiotics (orals and instills), biofilm disrupters (Interfase), and holistic methods ie) natural supplements.
I became Ruth's patient at the end of September 2018. It was difficult to reach her by phone, so I faxed my contact info and a blurb about my condition. That's how I got in. Ruth is super booked by the way, it was really hard for people to get in as her patient. A doctor-in-training on Instagram asked me how I got in, because a lot of patients she knew had been trying to get into Ruth's office for months. The average wait list to get in is several months. I heard back in September that she won't be taking in any new patients until the end of this year.
For first-time consultations, she spends 90 minutes with new patients face-to-face or through Skype. Mine was through Skype since I am based in Canada, which you can see a screenshot of on my previous post at Ruth Kriz: Nurse Practitioner Specializing in Interstital Cystitis & Chronic UTI. Before my first appointment, her staff emailed me questionnaires and forms to fill out so they would know my medical history and my current problem. Then we traded our Skypes with each other via email two days before the call. On the day of the call, I called her Skype to do a video session.
One thing that I loved about seeing Ruth is the time that I get with her on Skype sessions. In Canada, I have to wait around 3 months to see a specialist (gynecologist or urologist) and that gets me 10 - 15 minutes only. That doesn't give me time to talk about my situation and my Canadian specialists don't have time to look at all my medical documents. They're so overbooked and overworked that I have learned that from now on, I need to bring any big health problems/rarer conditions to private healthcare elsewhere. In Canada, our healthcare is free since it is government-run healthcare. But my personal opinion is that socialized medicine doesn't work when it comes to big or rare health problems. We have brutally long waits, and I was left to fend for myself for months with little to no help. That's when I turned to US private healthcare to seek opinions from urologist Dr. Hsieh and nurse Ruth Kriz in Washington DC, and traded email discussions with Professor Malone-Lee in the UK.
Before my first session with her, she had me watch Dr. Bill Costerton - The "Father" of Biofilms". (Doctor Costerton has studied biofilms for more than 40 years. His biofilm research and prolific publishing has led to many medical breakthroughs, confirming that biofilms cause myriad chronic conditions: middle ear infections, kidney stones, urinary tract infections, gum disease and many more that affect millions of people.) My next session with her was getting my urine tested with MicroGenDX and some other lab tests, and you'll find my treatments shown on my Instagram.
Ruth's belief is that Interstitial Cystitis is caused by biofilm bacteria. She does call it a multi-faceted problem, and believes that the bacteria in the UTI is the trigger to then causing Pelvic Floor Dysfunction and all the mysterious inflammation that goes on. According to Ruth, she believes that all IC cases are actually infections.
People's stories on their treatment with Ruth Kriz:
I've Never Met The Nurse Who Saved My Life
ICBigSister - About Me
Linsey's Chronic UTI Story
I ended up meeting and/or skyping with everyone above online (except for the 1st article lady).
Ruth Kriz's Facebook group - only for her current and past patients:
Treatment with Ruth Kriz
To make an appointment to see Ruth Kriz, visit her website at RuthKriz.com
Have you been a patient of Ruth Kriz? Whether it was a successful or failed treatment, I would like to hear your story, and will never publish your story nor reveal your identity to anyone.
If you want to chat with me and many other IC and chronic UTI people from all walks of life, find us on Instagram at @VancouverUTIGirl