CANDIDIASIS: PREVENTION

by admin on March 23rd, 2009. Filed under Women's Health

It is pretty difficult to totally avoid this bug, particularly if it likes living in your gut. The simple, common-sense things are worth trying. These include avoiding the things which are recognized as precipitants or aggravators of thrush:

• avoid wearing tight-fitting clothes for prolonged periods

• if wearing pantyhose, wear cotton-gusset types

• avoid nylon underpants

• avoid lycra pants

• carefully dry pubic hair after showering—even using a hair dryer

• avoid vaginal deodorants, or excessive soap.

All of these suggestions aim to make the pubic area less warm, moist, and irritated, so less of a haven for thrush.

If the bug is in your gut, it is probably not a bad idea to prevent wiping the bugs past your vagina. When you wipe your bottom after going to the toilet, wiping from front to back rather from back to front has been recommended. I’m not sure how much difference this really makes, as I don’t think many researchers have spent a lot of time on it, but it seems to make sense.

If you are taking antibiotics for an infection you may find you end up with thrush. Some women have told me that eating yoghurt daily, or applying it to the vagina each day while taking antibiotics helps prevent thrush, although the scientific evidence to back this up may be lacking.

Dietary changes have been promoted by many people as a treatment for this bug. Yeast-free diets, and low-sugar diets seem to be the most commonly recommended. This is out of the field of my own experience and expertise, so I cannot comment for or against it, but many people, particularly natural therapists, advocate dietary manipulations.

Some women notice that their thrush is related to their menstrual cycle. If you have a regular recurrence, say, just before your period, using yoghurt or a medication like a pessary or cream for a night or two may be helpful around this time. Often this form of ‘therapeutic prevention’ breaks the cycle of recurrent thrush.

Women may notice that their thrush is aggravated or precipitated by having sex. Certainly if the skin is damaged there is a higher chance that any organism, thrush included, will have more of a chance to cause a problem. So it may be that intercourse is causing damage to the vaginal skin. A way of preventing this may be to use a lubricant (preferably a water-based lubricant like K-Y Jelly, which is unlikely to damage the skin or cause a reaction, and is safe to use with condoms). Using a lubricant means that you are not depending on your natural vaginal lubrication, which may be reduced for a variety of reasons. It can be particularly important if you are resuming sexual activity after a bout of thrush, because the infection may have made the vaginal skin more sensitive and more easily damaged.

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