Did You Know That Most Women Don’t Know The First Thing About Maintaining Vaginal Health?
Staying fit and healthy is not always an easy task. It gets even trickier when it comes to the care of your vulva and your vagina. As such, this article explores a few tips to help you maintain a healthy vagina. Read on to discover some useful vagina health tips.
Keeping Your Vagina Clean and Healthy
First, you need to be wary when washing. Did you know that your intimate area is one of the most sensitive parts of your body? While it seems logical that you should clean inside your vag, you should not clean internally because your vagina has an internal pH balance that regulates its own cleanliness. Internal cleaning methods, such as douching, are therefore not recommended.
Simply wash the external parts using recommended products and always stick with warm water only.
Detecting Vaginal Issues
You should listen when your body talks. This means that you should pay attention when something is slightly wrong. Any itching, abnormal discharge, or odor may be a sign of vaginal infection and should be taken seriously. Therefore, you must not hesitate to see a gynecologist whenever you feel something of this sort.
Protecting Your Vagina From Diseases
Further, you should commit yourself to the use of condoms. They not only help you stay protected from diseases such as HIV/AIDS during intimacy, but also prevent a host of other common infections.
These include conditions such as bacterial vaginosis. Think beyond preventing pregnancies as you use condoms.
Letting Your Vagina Breathe
Moreover, you should remember to give your body room to breathe. As such, you should avoid impermeable clothing that does not allow air to enter your body, such as polyester.
Such clothing may create hot and moist genital areas that are susceptible to infections. Instead, you are advised to go for pervious and loose clothing made of natural materials such as cotton.
What About Peeing Before Sex?
Finally, peeing before sex is a healthy habit. The same applies to peeing after sex. This helps prevent urinary tract infections since the germs in the vagmay be pushed to the urethra during intercourse.
In the same vein, you should remember to wash your hands before and after sex to avoid careless propagation of the harmful bacteria/germs.
You should always remember not to hesitate when you find something amiss with your genital area. Instead of taking any chances, you should enlist the help of a gynecologist and let them know your problem as early as possible.
Vaginal exercises should also be embraced in order to stay healthy and maintain vaginal elasticity. You can learn more about Pussy Excerises, such as Kegels, here.
Got more questions about vaginal health related to tampons, clean panties and more? Keep reading.
If you are a woman, then you understand how important and delicate your vag is, and how embarrassing a trip to the gynecologist can be.
We all want to take care of ourselves, therefore the need to know basic things regarding the vagina and how to take care of it.
Basic body hygiene is important, and the vagina is part of this body. The vaginal walls produce a fluid that carries the dead cells and germs outside, this is why doctors advice that if the vaginal discharge is abnormal(color,odor) you should pay close attention.
How do I clean my vagina?
While showering, avoid using soap to clean the vijina, water is enough.
Soaps, shampoos and deodorants often change the acidity of the vaginal fluid to alkaline. This is dangerous because the vagina’s acidity helps to prevent infections by bacteria and fungi.
Cleaning the vagina once per day is enough except maybe during menstruation you can do it twice.
How much do choice of panties affect my vaginal health?
Choice of panties is also important to a woman’s vaginal health. Bacteria and fungi like wet areas with little or no air, you should aim at keeping your genitals dry and well ventilated.
Go for cotton panties, as they absorb moisture around the genitals, keeping it dry.Also, avoid tight underwear, and unless you are on the last days of your period do not use any panty liners as they block air circulation.
Did you know that some perfume and deodorant found in panty liners irritate and change the acidity of the vijina?
Do tampons affect my vaginal health?
Having your periods can be hectic, 3-7 days can feel like a lifetime, which is why most women prefer tampons as they offer physical freedom.
But they may not be your best friends after all, using tampons regularly dries out the vaginal mucosa which is important for protection against diseases.
It is advisable to interchange tampons with pads, a break of 2-3 months, then go back to tampons. Tampons should not be kept on overnight or longer than 8 hours, the high absorbency of tampons may seem helpful but studies have linked it to promoting spread of bacteria which can lead to toxic shock.
How do I keep my vagina healthy if I’m sexually active?
Vaginal health will not be complete without the popular sex topic. Young girls should especially take care, in a research, scientists found out that girls who became sexually active at an early age(17-21) had a 1.8 times higher risk of being infected with herpes virus, the human papilloma virus and cervical cancer.
This may be because their vagina’s are not fully developed and the many number of sexual partners they acquire in their lifetime. If you are a teen and had no reason to abstain, isn’t your vag health reason enough?
If you are sexually active, then you might want to consider taking the HPV vaccine which prevents infection by the human papilloma virus.
Also go for a regular pap smear exam as a precautionary measure, remember early detection of disease means high chances of effective treatment.
You can learn more about natural vagina remedies on our homepage by clicking here.