Maintaining good vaginal health should be every woman’s priority. If you are wondering about the best ways to do that, there are at least five tips you could follow to get started. Let’s explore the top five tips below:
1) Keep Your Vaginal pH Balance Normal
A healthy vagina must have a balanced vaginal pH level. Unfortunately, a woman could jeopardize her balanced vaginal pH levels if she washes her vagina with harsh soaps or cleaning products with harmful fragrances and chemicals. Once the vaginal pH levels get thrown off balance, it causes too many harmful bacteria and yeast to grow in the vagina. The result is a vaginal infection.
It is difficult enough for a woman to maintain balanced vaginal pH levels even when she puts forth the effort. Fortunately, there is Pro-Fem, an over-the-counter pH balancing vaginal probiotic that helps with odor and is specially formulated to restore the vaginal pH balance in a woman.
2) Always Engage in Safe Sex Practices
You or your partner should always wear condoms during sexual intercourse. Safe sex practices like this are the best ways to prevent one of you from contracting a sexually transmitted disease (STD).
Condoms have a high success rate of preventing the transmission of STDs like gonorrhea, human papillomavirus (HPV), herpes, and chlamydia. You’ll know if you have an STD because the symptoms typically include lesions, burning, itching, vaginal pain, and odor.
3) Maintain Good Vaginal Hygiene
The vaginal cleans itself naturally for the most part. However, you still need to clean the entire genital region and keep it dry. But again, ensure you don’t use soaps with harsh ingredients.
One recommended soap product for cleaning the genitals is a Dove-branded mild soap. Use mild soap to clean your genitals from front to back so you don’t accidentally contaminate the vagina with bacteria. This cleaning technique is particularly critical if you do it after defecating.
In addition, you should wear cotton undergarments to prevent water, sweat, or moisture from accumulating in the vaginal region. Then you’ll have a better chance of avoiding yeast or bacterial growth there.
4) Vaginal Lubrication
Too much vaginal dryness can cause irritation, pain, tearing, and chafing during vaginal sex. It is best to lubricate your vagina with over-the-counter lubricating and moisturizing products like Replens and KY. Then you should feel less irritation and discomfort during sex.
Women going through menopause will usually experience more vaginal dryness because they produce less estrogen. In this case, you could use a vaginal estrogen cream supplement to increase vaginal estrogen and decrease vaginal dryness.
5) Maintain Your Overall Body Health
The health of your entire body plays a role in maintaining your vaginal health.
For example, if you have diabetes, you must watch your blood sugar levels to reduce the risk of a vaginal yeast infection. Also, overweight women need to make every effort to lose weight because all the added weight puts too much pressure on their vaginal, pelvic, and bladder muscles. Once these muscles weaken, a woman could experience a pelvic organ prolapse.
Do you smoke? If so, you have one more reason to quit because smoking increases the risk of infection and the development of vaginal and cervical cancers.
Conclusion
See your primary care doctor or gynecologist for a yearly pap smear to test for cervical cancer. In addition, request a comprehensive medical examination from your doctor if you experience vaginal symptoms like dryness, burning, itching, odor, discharge, lesions, and pain, especially
