Bacterial Vaginosis

[Corpsebreath]

I stumbled upon this interesting post by a woman who used to suffer from BV (Bacterial Vaginosis). The symptoms are similar to halitosis, but its the vagina that's affected instead of the mouth. Bad smell, smelly discharge, things like that. Basically it's caused by an over abundance of bad bacteria, or its natural flora has been disrupted.

Anyway, she managed to cure herself from it. What's interesting is they way she did it, and what she sais about hygiene and over-cleaning.

She cured herself by stopping cleaning herself down there all together. At first it got worse, but after about a week, the symptoms went away. And she's now been cured for over a year.

Here is her post:
http://patient.info/forums/discuss/-com ... ar--487560

So the idea is that, when you clean, you remove the majority of the microbes, but if your flora is out of whack, it's always the bad/aggressive ones that keeps repopulating again. So it's a temporary fix, but gives no chance for strains which are much reduced in numbers to reestablish.

Listen to what she sais here:
"and when we hear 'bad bacteria' we rush to 'clean' it all out, immediately feeling better but frustrated when it returns the next day, so we clean it out again and it comes right back. Vicious, frustrating cycle. All the other treatments-probiotics, sit baths, supplements and herbs, diet, etc., can certainly help lessen the symptoms, but if we keep flushing and douching the inside of the vagina, it will always come back."

How many of us don't do the same thing with our mouths immediately when we fear they're smelly? We just want to get the bad bacteria out, so we keep scrubbing and brushing away, not thinking about the ones we actually want to increase. But what if halitosis could be cured similarly to how she cured her BV? The idea is simple, stop cleaning your mouth all together and eventually the good bacteria will come back.

[DontBreath]

I've definitely been thinking about this for a while.Generally, halitosis sufferers have the best dental hygiene of anyone. Could over cleaning and scorched earth hygiene practices be contributing? I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Lately, I always get some probiotics after brushing and cleaning. I would be fascinated to see what kind of impact a rebalancing experiment could have on bb.

[Corpsebreath]

I'm of the thinking that over-cleaning isn't what caused bb in the first place, but once you have it, the cleaning might be a factor (maybe the biggest one in some cases), of what's hindering it from ever being able to rebalance again.