WheelyCurious wrote: Thu Mar 03, 2022 2:50 pm You are likely correct for normal males LT, possibly less so for females but probably close. The length of the male urinary tract gives guys some protection against UTI's simply because the bacteria have further to travel... Females have the double issue of a shorter urinary tract, and a genital environment that is conducive to bacteria growth... Male or female, the meatus and first couple centimeters of the tract are expected to have some bacterial growth which does get flushed out every time one pees.
However once you start catheterizing, the situation changes drastically. While sterile technique is used when inserting a Foley cath, sterile only gets rid of most of the bacteria, not all, so some gets pushed in to the bladder with the cath, and more will migrate along it while it is in place. Intermittent cathing like I do is NOT done w/ sterile technique, although there is a lot of effort to make it 'clean'. So anyone doing IC is going to be pushing a certain amount of bacteria into the bladder along with the catheter. So the effort for those that have to do catheterizing is not on totally preventing bacteria in the bladder, but on keeping the colonization down to a level that doesn't produce 'clinical' symptoms... They mostly do this by encouraging us to drink enough fluids to make it necessary to cath every 4-6 hours which flushes enough of the bacteria out of the bladder each time to keep them from being able to multiply enough to reach dangerous levels. We also are encouraged to cut down on sugars and other foods that make urine more able to support bacteria, and sometimes to take supplements that are claimed to either make the urine less hospitable or otherwise discourage the bugs...
WheelyCurious
I have a relevant professional license, I'd quit while I was ahead if I were you.