Do you suffer with cystitis like symptoms?
After the menopause, women may complain more of symptoms which appear to be like cystitis- needing to pass urine more frequently and burning sensation on passing urine. They can be quite troublesome and occasionally women find symptoms last quite a long time. The cause of true cystitis is infection in the bladder which can be detected only by doing a laboratory test for micro-organisms. You will be asked to produce a 'clean' specimen of urine, which simply means straight into a sterile pot and not via any other container and preferably not contaminated by touching your skin either (often called a 'mid-stream specimen'). If infection is detected, you will be offered the right antibiotic for that infection.
Sometimes though, these urine samples will come back time after time, saying 'no infection'. Antibiotics are therefore not given and symptoms continue. For some women the simple solution may be that vaginal dryness is causing symptoms which appear like cystitis symptoms. Soreness of the vaginal area can lead to burning on passing urine and dryness around the bladder opening (the urethra) can cause frequency of needing to pass urine, just like with cystitis. Simply relieving the vaginal dryness with regular use of a natural lubricant such as Sylk, may itself help to relieve some of these troublesome symptoms.
