Jesus be a box of Monistat SMH!
The CDC has found that most of the UTIs in the U.S. are caused by the E. coli bacteria. They used to think that this E. coli came from our own tracts, not the environment around us, but now it’s looking like that isn’t actually the case:
The CDC analyzed the genomes of E. coli from women who were suffering from UTIs, and compared them to the E. coli genomes from food sources, including chicken, red meat, and pork. They found that the strains of bacteria from the UTIs matched those from one food source in particular: chicken. The bacteria were likely to have come from the chicken itself, rather than from human contamination during the food preparation process.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently called for a reduction in the use of common antibiotics in food animals, since their overuse in farms has widely been linked to the growing resistance of these bugs.
Antibiotic resistance is not only a health concern, but it’s an economic one, since infections often need to be treated multiple times or require more complicated measures. Organic farms have recently shown some promise as a method to reduce antibiotic resistance, particularly in bugs that are resistant to multiple forms of antibiotics.
So while we’ve been taught to think that those painful and annoying UTIs were related to to being skanky, not enough cranberry juice or just one of the many joys of being a woman, this type of study makes us wonder what else could be lurking in our chicken and other meats that is making us sick.
Not to say that craving for Popeye’s might just lead to a infection in your lady parts. Would you like hot sauce or honey with those antibiotics?