Urinary tract infections are one of the most common bacterial infections in women, with around 50%–60% of women developing UTIs sometime in their lives. After menopause, around 10% to 15% of women experience recurrent or complicated urinary tract infections.
Menopause itself isn’t necessarily what makes a UTI “complicated.” But it does create changes that can make urinary infections more common.
The reason largely comes down to estrogen.
Estrogen helps support the tissues and environment of the vagina and urinary tract, keeping them elastic and moist. As estrogen levels fluctuate during perimenopause and decline postmenopause, that environment changes, often thinning vaginal tissues, causing dryness and irritation.
“The low-estrogen environment in the bladder postmenopause makes the bladder a more hospitable place for the bacteria to set up, reproduce and stay,” Lane said.
For Norlian, she’d had urinary problems as an infant because of an unusually narrow urethra but said she didn’t experience significant problems with UTIs until after menopause.
For several years, she recalled experiencing UTIs as frequently as once or twice a month. She eventually learned that her urethra was bent, although she wasn’t retaining urine, and her doctors didn’t blame all of her infections on that anatomical difference.
She suspected the timing of her frequent infections wasn’t coincidental.
“I still believe that I got a lot of them because of the hormones that were doing less and less,” Norlian said.
