What is an IC or UTI Flare? Healing Isn't Linear

I  just wanted to write: Don't be despaired if you suddenly get a "flare" of symptoms for a few hours, a few days or weeks or more. Whether you are healing from interstitial cystitis, regular cystitis aka urinary tract infection, or a long-term/chronic UTI, healing is not linear. I was feeling 80 - 85% last week and have been stable for weeks with no worsening of symptoms. Everything has been going on the up-and-up. But then suddenly on Monday, I felt like I was cycling back to 70%. I thought, "Strange!" By Tuesday night, I had progressed very backwards, like a 40% feeling. The constant urethra sharp niggles and the frequent urgency of every 15 minutes was back to haunt me. It was so terrible and gave me massive anxiety. I didn't get a wink of sleep that whole night and was up for 24 hours back-and-forth to the toilet.

To rectify this, I immediately did my usual regime: D-Mannose and baking soda (my older posts will teach you how I do them). Also, I chose NOT TO EAT all of Wednesday. Goodness, I was so hungry, but I wanted to give my bladder a full rest of whatever was overstimulating it. All I had on Wednesday was only my usual Fiji spring water, 2 to 3 times of D-Mannose with water, and several times of baking soda with water. By today, Thursday, I'm feeling back up to about 65% - 70% as the bladder re-sets and heals. I'm hoping to get back to my usual 80% by the weekend. I just will eat less for the next several days and keep to just mostly water.

I learned this strategy from other ladies in my IC and long-term UTI groups that not eating will re-set the bladder. Why does it work? I don't know. I do feel it's not truly a safe or healthy strategy, but it's how some ladies told me it brought their bladder back to a better state. How curious and interesting! I even read on a Facebook group about a lady who had a very damaged bladder with lesions and ulcers. She decided not to eat for months. She only did water and vegetable home juicing, and ended up extremely thin. She said her urologist was furious at her when she turned up like a skeleton at the clinic. But when they did the cystoscopy, the urologist was shocked to find that her bladder had healed substantially and was no longer as severely ulcerated as before. She also said her bladder was feeling a lot better ever since she did that few months' fast. So that story gave me a bit of a clue about this link between food and bladder healing. As much as I would like to not eat for a few months and get my bladder healing more aggressively, I cannot as I am already thin like a wafer! I can't go more thinner than I possibly am, since I am already underweight at 90-something lbs. My regular weight is 95 lbs - 100 lbs (I'm naturally a very thin girl). If I were overweight or obese, I would definitely do that veggie home-juicing and water fast to aggressively heal the bladder.

So what is an IC or UTI flare and why does this happen?
So far, I only know of 2 reasons from what other women are telling me:
1) diet-related cause
2) pathogen-related cause

Diet-related: Sometimes you eat a food that is salty, vinegary, sugary, acidic, inflammation, allergic to your bladder and it will burn your raw damaged weak bladder lining, making your bladder more painful causing it to have that higher urgency and/or burning. My doctor told me to think of your bladder as a cut. If you put the wrong content onto that wound such as orange juice or salt on a cut, it will sting more.

Pathogen-related: My Ruth Kriz patient friend did a Microgen DX urine test during one of her IC flares. The urine test showed her pathogens were way up than from her previous tests! So her flare was caused by a surge of pathogens -- either they grew on their own, or a biofilm broke and released more. So flares can also be bacterial related as well. If you were told your IC is not an infection, I recommend you read my post about how your interstitial cystitis can actually be a urinary tract infection.