There are topics that many women know from experience, but not necessarily from clear information. Urinary tract infections are one of them. They are lived, suffered, treated, they return. And yet, much of the public conversation continues to revolve around incomplete explanations: hygiene, the bacteria, the antibiotic, neglect. All of that matters, yes, but it is not enough to understand why so many women go through this problem more than once, nor why sometimes the discomfort seems to set in even when there has already been treatment.
The most interesting thing about this approach is that it shifts attention toward something much more everyday and, precisely because of that, more invisible: habits. The way we urinate. The time we hold it. The posture we adopt. The tension with which we live. The ease with which we learned to ignore basic body signals. Pelvic floor therapist Nataly Burgos provides an especially useful look at this point, because she returns the conversation to the realm of the concrete: what we do every day and rarely question.
When talking about urinary tract infections, Burgos recalls that they usually manifest with very recognizable signs, such as “burning, pain in the lower part, pain when urinating”. These are symptoms that many women identify immediately. But beyond the specific episode, what is valuable is understanding that the urinary system does not function in isolation from the rest of the body or our habits. It is not a machine that simply responds well or poorly. It also reacts to tension, repetition, custom, and the way we have learned —or not— to inhabit the body.
One of the most revealing findings has to do with something apparently minor: posture when urinating. For many women, especially in public bathrooms, not sitting down has been presented for years as a protective measure. Girls are taught to urinate in a squatting position, suspended, or even standing, to avoid contact with surfaces perceived as dirty. That custom seems logical. But it is not necessarily innocent. Burgos explains it directly: “You must urinate sitting down, definitely, and with your feet on the floor”. And she adds something that dismantles a deeply normalized practice: “do not urinate while squatting or standing, because that tenses the entire pelvic floor area”.
The observation matters because urination does not depend only on “releasing” the urine. For the body to urinate well, the bladder must contract and, at the same time, the muscles involved in that process must relax. If that doesn’t happen, urine can remain retained. And when that residue becomes frequent, the body enters a less favorable dynamic. What seemed like a simple maneuver of haste or prevention begins to be seen as part of a pattern that can influence urinary well-being in a sustained way.
Something similar happens with the habit of holding urine. For many women, it is not presented as a problem, but as a social obligation. Holding it at school. Holding it at work. Holding it during a trip. Holding it because the bathroom is gross, because there is no time, because it feels embarrassing to ask for permission, because there is always something “more important.” Burgos names it with a simple and forceful phrase: “‘hold it’ is something I think many of us heard since we were little”.
The strength of that phrase is that it does not describe an isolated individual decision, but a pedagogy. Many women were taught, from early on, to postpone basic bodily needs. And when that becomes a habit, it stops feeling exceptional. The body learns to be interrupted, to adapt, to function under pressure. Later we are surprised when discomfort appears, as if it hadn’t been announcing itself for years in small normalized gestures.
It’s not just about holding it too long. There can also be apparently opposite habits that alter urinary function: going to the bathroom “just in case,” rushing urination, or stopping it before finishing. These are common practices, especially when the day is full of haste. But the body registers those repetitions. The bladder also learns. And when it is accustomed to emptying prematurely or under tension, it can start to behave in a more reactive, more sensitive, or less coordinated way.
Added to this is an element that is still rarely talked about: the pelvic floor. In common discourse about urinary tract infections, almost everything revolves around bacteria, cleanliness, and medication. Much less is said about muscle tension, stress, or the time we spend sitting. However, Burgos links these discomforts with pelvic musculature that can remain contracted, rigid, or hyper-alert. And when that area lives in tension, the body can not only experience discomfort: it can also alter functions as basic as urinating naturally.
That point helps to understand why some women continue to feel urgency, pain, or irritation even when they have already treated an infection. It doesn’t always mean that everything started all over again in the same way. Sometimes the system is left especially sensitive. The specialist herself explains it this way: “your body, despite there being no bacteria, as it has been left very sensitive, starts producing symptoms as if there were an infection”.
That nuance changes a lot. It forces us to move away from the idea that everything is solved solely by eliminating the bacteria. In some cases, an infection does have to be treated medically. But after that, or even in parallel, it may also be necessary to check the terrain: habits, posture, muscle tension, hydration, constipation, diet, stress level. It is a less reductionist view and closer to how the female body actually functions in daily life.
Prevention, then, looks less like a rigid list of prohibitions and more like a re-education. Sitting properly when urinating. Not suspending the body in the air. Giving the bladder time to empty without pushing or rushing. Not holding it too long, but also not going to the bathroom out of routine when there is no real need. Drinking water. Paying attention to sustained moisture in the intimate area. Checking constipation, which is so often normalized as if it had no consequences. Also observe the impact of stress and sedentary lifestyle, because the body does not separate the emotional from the muscular with the ease with which we sometimes do in discourse.
In that same line, Burgos mentions support resources that can be part of preventive care, such as cranberry, probiotics, and attention to the microbiota, in addition to temporarily avoiding certain irritants when the bladder is especially sensitive, such as coffee, citrus fruits, soft drinks, or spicy foods. The important thing is not to turn that into a universal recipe, but to understand that the urinary system also responds to the body’s internal context and the way we accompany it.
Perhaps the most powerful thing about this conversation is that it reveals something deeper than a specific infection. It shows the extent to which many women have learned to live disconnected from basic signals: the urge to go to the bathroom, the sensation of incomplete emptying, the burning that is minimized, the discomfort that is postponed, the stress that is lodged in the body until it is tensed entirely. Talking about urinary tract infections, from this perspective, is also talking about a pedagogy of endurance that has been all too common in the female experience.
That is why preventing is not just about avoiding bacteria. It is also about questioning inherited habits. It is about recognizing that what seemed normal might not have been healthy. It is about stopping treating the body as something that must always adapt to external demands. And it is about understanding that well-being often starts with small decisions: sitting down, waiting, listening, not rushing, not silencing the symptom, not getting used to discomfort. This way of looking at the body, with more attention and less daily violence, speaks naturally to Yuriyana Club’s mission of accompanying women toward a fuller life on an emotional, physical, and sexual level through knowledge and connections that enrich.
You can find the complementary video to this article here: https://youtu.be/jw4XRTbHirQ
