My wife now knows not to insist on pure cranberry juice, but rather to request a 100% juice blend and not “cocktail” (the cocktail is what the juice blend goes in). I finished the battery acid myself over the course of a few weeks, out of pure Floridaman cussedness. It was not pleasant.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7824375/
Just drinking a lot of water is the best non-antibiotic treatment. Cranberry juice does not significantly impact an active UTI infection. Other much smaller studies indicate that it may be helpful, but the more robust studies show no real help.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29046404/
Other studies do show that cranberry juice can help reduce future UTI occurances though.
My ex had several UTIs and she said the cranberry helped the pain more than anything.
My wife also swears by it, but I’m curious if objective testing might reveal if it’s actually relieving pain, or if the act of drinking this stuff is temporarily raising one’s pain tolerance to the degree that the UTI pain doesn’t seem so bad.