Your Overall Diet
Eat a healthy diet. Cigarettes alcohol and drugs should be eliminated if you can or cut down, as should heavily spiced foods and junk food.
Try and eat as naturally as possible (food free of additives) and make sure you drink lots of water.
What you put into your body comes out in its secretions and the vagina is the same. Ever noticed how your sweat smells differently after eating spiced food, then you will realize why this is so important.
2. Cleaning
Odor-producing bacteria can thrive on the vulva and need to be cleaned off regularly to prevent vaginal inflections and prevent odors.
Washing the genital area daily with a simple, fragrance-free soap is normally enough to keep the vagina area clean and fresh.
Your vagina self-cleans itself so douching is not required.
Furthermore, douching upsets the delicate balance between good and bad bacteria in the vaginal ecosystem and can actually be harmful.
Because infections such as yeasts are found in the intestine, it is important after going to the toilet to wipe front to back i.e. you need to wipe the vagina area first and the rectum last!
During sex it is also very important to avoid contamination of the vagina area with organisms and bodies from the bowel, or rectum area.
3. Clothes to wear
To prevent vaginal infections and keep your vagina healthy make sure your clothing allows the area to breath. To do this avoids tight garments and fabrics containing a high percentage of synthetic fibers such as nylon.
Remember, that tampons and diaphragms left for too long in the vagina can create a very strong unpleasant odor as well.
4. Safe sex
Finally, if you donโt know your partner very well, always Use a condom and a spermicidal to reduce the chances of infection and disease.
If you are unlucky enough to get an infection, the symptoms are outlined below of three of the most common ones.
The good news is that to reclaim a healthy vagina is easy, if you are alerted to the problem and take action.
1. Bacterial vaginosis
Bacterial vaginosis (BV) accounts for more than 50% of all vagina related health visits.
About half of all women with BV vaginal infections have no obvious symptoms.
The most common symptom is a thin, white to light grey discharge with an offensive fishy like smell that is extremely unpleasant.
The odor is strongest when the discharge is exposed to any alkaline substance and this includes soap and semen, it will therefore be at its strongest and most obvious after cleaning or sex.
BV is easy to treat and is normally treated by a course of antibiotics prescribed by a doctor.
2. Yeast
Although yeast infections are probably the most common type of vaginal infection, many women never bother to seek help.
Most simply recover naturally and others treat themselves with anti-fungal vaginal creams available without prescription from the chemist.
Symptoms of yeast infections include:
Vulvar itching combined with irritation in the vagina area and redness.
If the urinary opening becomes inflamed, urination will increase and discomfort will be present.
If the infection is severe, the vulva will swell and fine breaks, called fissures occur. This causes vaginal discharges to become thicker and whiter.
Yeast infections are the result of excessive growth of a family of fungi that normally live in any healthy vagina, but when they increase the balance of the vagina is upset and problems occur.
Answered by
Pankaj
, an ibibo Specialist,
at
3:27 AM on March 17, 2009
