If you’ve ever had a urinary tract infection (UTI) — characterized by an intense need to urinate followed by a burning sensation — you know far too well how annoying they can be. In fact, we’ve pretty much heard it all when it comes to preventing or getting rid of one: make sure you pee after sex, drink cranberry juice. But one thing we didn’t consider adding to our arsenal was regular physical activity.
According to a new study published in the journal of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, researchers suggest that exercise, even at low levels, may decrease your risk of bacterial infections—more specifically, UTIs.
The study, which followed nearly 19,000 people in Denmark for one year, asked participants to rank their level of daily activity from 1 (“regular hard physical training and competitive sports several times per week”) to 4 (“reading, watching television, or other sedentary activities”). Members were then divided into groups based on their level of physical-activity: high, low, moderate.
Meanwhile, a sedentary group was also formed – excluding anyone whose level of activity decreased due to a history of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and lung disease, among other things.
Throughout the course of the study, researchers from Aalborg University in Denmark gathered data from…
…a national pharmacy to determine which people — about 22% of men and 34% of women — filled prescriptions for antibiotics.
After factoring in things like age, body mass index, smoking, and alcohol use, study leaders discovered that individuals in the low physical-activity group (walking, bicycling, light gardening, for at least 4 hours a week) were 10% less likely to experience an infection than those in the sedentary group. In contrast, persons who were in the moderate-activity group had a 32 percent lower risk when compared to inactive volunteers.
Of course, women, whose risk of contracting at least one UTI is approximately 40% to 50% throughout their lifetime (because the urethra is shorter than in men), had the most success – indicating that all levels of exercise better prevented the uncomfortable infections when compared to sedentary behavior.
Considering UTIs account for as many as 8.1 million visits to health care providers each year, the findings could prove to be very helpful. “These results indicate that practitioners should be aware of physical activity as a potential preventive factor for bacterial infections in the work of disease prevention and health promotion,” the authors wrote.
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