Anti-fungals

Where there are antibiotics, anti-fungals are likely to follow.

The well-known challenge with antibiotics is that they ravage your gut by killing the beneficial, 'good', bacteria alongside the bad bacteria. Depending on the state of your body's defences, you may escape the unpleasantness, or you may jump on the merry-go-round of fungal infections that have very similar symptoms to a UTI. When antibiotics ravage your gut, what antibiotics really ravage is your entire microbiome or your body 'flora' - which encompasses the gut, gynaecology and bladder. Your flora is as individual to you as you are an individual.

Testing fungal infections is a detective game almost as much as negative UTI tests. The LUTS Clinic tests for candida in urine as part of the regular appointments. In my case, candida would occasionally show up in test results. When candida shows up all the way in the bladder, it almost certainly is thriving inside your guts. Medical doctors sneer at the new-age-wellness obsession with 'systemic candida' because, clinically, systemic fungal infections are really extreme cases and involve candida getting into the blood. But again the logic that you don't have something just because it can't be detected is flawed in patients with symptoms. Fungal infections have very similar symptoms to UTIs, and I had a bout of them post-Doxycycline, and they had to be treated with pharmaceuticals. After they got under control, I focussed most of my treatment through supplementation.

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Fluconazole
Efficacy rating: 7/10

You can only take a fluconazole tablet once a week, at most, and on a limited basis too (the maximum I had was 4 weeks). You cannot take fluconazole with clarithromycin/azithromycin, as that combination is contraindicated and known to cause heart rhythm problems. I had some success with fluconazole, and it is relatively easy to get hold of. 

Itraconazole
Efficacy rating: 9/10

I found itraconazole better for me because you could take it over longer periods, and it's by all accounts a 'gentler' azole against fungal infections. I'd be lying if I said I didn't use it for prophylactic reasons as well. And from memory the 'tetracycline' + 'itraconazole' combination was the best for me to stabilise my IC and get me on the path to recovery.

Supplements

The good - or at least better - news about yeast infections is that they can be treated over a longer period by more natural means, such as probiotic supplements, fermented nutrition and sleep. On the Supplements page, I list all the products I've used to help my body, not only specifically with fungal infections, but gut health in general.