Dear Lori,
I use vitamin C to ramp up bladder acidity. I don't have an indwelling catheter but it still makes me feel better even at 1 gram per day. With an indwelling cath I took 4 grams and mandelamine and had very few infections. Someone said it combines to create formaldehide in the bladder. I don't know if its true. It does make daily vitamins and minerals work better. john -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, 8 Sep 2007 8:50 pm Subject: From Lori RE: [QUAD-L] Potassium See what's new at AOL.com and Make AOL Your Homepage. Attached Message From: David Michaelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: >From Lori RE: [QUAD-L] Potassium Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2007 17:31:34 -0700 W, please post the following to the list if you would: Being VERY low on potassium is a dangerous thing. Besides sodium, it is the second positive ion in the body and extremely important for many of the vital organs. In 1997 when I got bronchitis… because I had such a hard time coughing …I was using my albuterol inhaler many many times a day. I finally had to go to the emergency room to get an x-ray to rule out and ammonia. As I was in the x-ray room… a nurse came running in with two of the biggest pills I had ever seen in my life (and by then I had seen plenty) saying that I had to take them right away. I asked her why and she told me that my blood work had just come back and I was very low on potassium. I guess it scares them so much that they could not even wait until the x-ray was finished! On another potassium related topic… I just had the strangest thing happen to me less than a year ago. I had been battling constant urinary tract infections for years and finally had some big boulders removed from the bladder itself a year ago this past May. My doctor and I thought that would solve the problem. Unfortunately, I kept having chronic UTIs. Someone here had suggested the medication "Mandelamine" (I think it was) as sort of a prophylactic against UTIs. Anyway, one day my husband and I were reading about the medication on one particular site and on that one site… a paragraph glared at us. It said that one could not take this medication if they could not get their urine pH to stay at a 6 or lower. More acidic in other words. Up till then I could not get my urine pH at that ideal number by trying cranberry juice, cranberry supplements, etc. etc. to get it that way. The more acidic the urine… the last chance for bugs to grow. I have always known that. Anyway, I had been eating a banana every single day for a long long time. My husband boinked himself on the forehead with the palm of his hand as he read that paragraph. To make a long story short… I stopped eating the bananas and I have not had a bladder infection since! Along with keeping my urine Ph around the ideal number 6. Who would ever have thought that too many bananas could contribute to increased bladder infections? But, when you do some in-depth reading about potassium… it talks a lot about potassium and the role it plays with kidney function, etc. etc… I told my urologist and she was also glad that we found an answer to my problem that had plagued me for almost 7 years. That is the second time that the Internet has helped me more than greatly when even the doctors were without answers. I love the program "Mystery Diagnosis" on the Discovery Health Channel. It portrays what had happened to me so many times over the years… having all kinds of symptoms and the doctors can help you either because of laziness or incompetence. "The more you know…" :-) Lori Michaelson C4/5 complete quad, 27 years post Tucson, AZ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 6:15 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [QUAD-L] Potassium In a message dated 9/7/2007 4:49:19 P.M. Central Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: W can you pass this on to the list for me? Do any of you guys have low potassium? Every time I get a blood test it reads lower. My doc just upped me to 60mg - 40 in the morning and 20 at night. Dan I would suggest a monkey diet of a couple of bananas a day. Best Wishes See what's new at AOL.com and Make AOL Your Homepage. ________________________________________________________________________ Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail! - http://mail.aol.com
