Interstitial Cystitis: Anyone have symptom relief tips?

Posted by januaryjane @januaryjane, May 6, 2020

Ive been diagnosed with IC for awhile and am on Elmiron. It has been helping pretty well. The past few days Ive had a bad flare. I try not to take advil/ibuprofen. Any others out there with IC that have symptom relief tips? Im staying away from the 4 Cs, and other irritants in food, drink. (The 4 Cs being caffeine, carbonated, citrus, vit. C.)

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diane | @dks | Feb 27 10:07am

I was found to have IC (after a year of on/off UTIs & much pain). At that point, I was put onto methenamine (twice a day) and over the counter D-Mannose (twice a day). It took several weeks but finally I started feeling much better. I was on those two meds for three years when my kidney labs showed that I have 3a stage chronic kidney disease. Upon research, I found that the methenamine is hard on our kidneys, so we cut the methenamine down to only 1/2 once per day (pm) and cut the D-Mannose to once per day (am). That was over a year ago now since the meds were cut down and I'm still pain-free. I have not had a UTI since 2019. I hope you're able to find some relief from IC pain. It is horribly debilitating.