Bacterial Vaginosis Relief (2 page)

are taking birth control or who are pregnant. Changes in the vaginal

lining make it an ideal breeding ground for funguses and Bacteria.

Symptoms

Symptoms of Bacterial Vaginosis include:

• Vitamin B deficiency

• Abnormal or excessive vaginal discharge

• Discharge with a foul fishy smell

• A slimy feeling or feeling like you can never feel clean

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• Painful penetration during sex

• Severe vulvar pain

• Odorous discharge during and after sex

• Itching

• Chronic yeast infections

• Chronic urinary tract infections

Needless to say these symptoms can have an enormous impact on your

well-being.

First of all, if you have had a number of these infections you might be losing

B vitamins and especially Folic acid.

B vitamins have a lot to do with the way we process energy. You may feel

fatigued and irritable and like you can’t get through your day. Foggy

thinking and feeling weak is also a symptom of this type of deficiency. It

could get so bad that you might be feeling dizzy or like you need to go to

bed all day.

If you have any symptoms of fatigue like this then you need to immediately

start supplementing with a good B complex and Folic Acid!

To add to your woes you may have the excessive vaginal discharge. This is

just uncomfortable. You may find yourself walking around in slimy feeling

underwear all day or having to bring an extra pair to work.

You might also feel like it is inappropriate to go swimming or work out

because you smell, and the discharge is worse after you take part in these

activities.

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The excess discharge and fishy smell is also very distressing in terms of just

feeling sexy. It can definitely affect your sex life. You may find yourself

avoiding sex, which can cause rifts in your relationship.

Many women spend all kinds of money on mini-pads, deodorants, douches,

perfumes and anything they can to disguise the odor. The problem is that

these measures often serve to make things worse.

Another terrible problem is that the odor just gets worse during and after

sex. This makes many women avoid the sexual act altogether because they

are terrified that their partners will be repulsed by the smell.

Sex may also be more lubricious than normal which is not necessarily a

desirable trait.

Then there is the itching. Many women can barely sit still in their office

chairs because of the itching. You need to scratch but it is hard to do it in

public. There is always the risk that someone will see you.

Constantly running to the washroom all of the time to take care of

discharge, smells, or itching might also have your bosses and colleagues

wondering about you as well.

Yet another problem is the side effects of the antibiotics. If you are on a

diet you often end up blowing it because you might have to take pills three

or four times a day and you need to take them with food.

Antibiotics have all kinds of side effects including depression, lethargy,

upset stomach, burning esophagus, and most importantly – Candida yeast

overgrowth. Over the long term antibiotics can also do things like soften

tooth enamel, damage your intestinal walls and stress out your kidneys and

liver.

Long-term exposure to antibiotics can also cause you to be more

susceptible to earaches, respiratory infections, athlete’s foot, and any kind

of disorder that is provoked by a lowered immune system.

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Anything that causes Candida yeast overgrowth is going to eventually cause

you to have a yeast infection. The reason that yeast will thrive in this

situation is because the antibiotics have the effect of lowering your

immune system.

Antibiotics also create an acidic condition in your entire body, which allows

yeast to thrive. It wil be especially prevalent in your intestines and

throughout your entire pelvic and urinary tract system.

Why should you be concerned about yeast growing in your colon and other

organs? Yeast and funguses migrate very easily to other parts of your body

including the vagina.

Many women who have been treated for Bacterial Vaginosis over a period

of years often find themselves vulnerable to urinary tract infections as well.

This is a consequence of having the immune system persistently lowered

due to endless rounds of antibiotics.

The ultimate danger of being prescribed endless antibiotics is that it can

also lower your resistance to them.

The consequence of this is that the antibiotics are either:

1) Not effective when you really need them to defend you against a

serious disease or

2) You actually develop intolerance to the antibiotic and suffer an

allergic reaction

You are also at increased risk for BV if you:

• Have multiple sexual partners

• Use an intrauterine device for conception

• Douche after sex

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The fact that promiscuity is associated with contracting BV does not help

you much either when it is time to visit the doctor.

Many doctors appear to have a stigma or a bit of attitude when it comes to

the disorder. It seems almost like the doctor assumes you are promiscuous

if you have contracted which makes it even more embarrassing to get

medical help!

In most cases, BV causes no complications. But there are some serious risks

from BV sometimes. For instance:

• Pregnant women with BV more often have babies who are born early

or with low birth weight.

• The Bacteria that cause BV can sometimes infect the uterus (womb)

and fallopian tubes (egg canals). This type of infection is called pelvic

inflammatory disease (PID). PID can cause infertility or damage the

fallopian tubes enough to increase the future risk of ectopic

pregnancy and infertility. (Ectopic pregnancy is a life-threatening

condition in which a fertilized egg grows outside the uterus, usually

in a fallopian tube and it can result in having to have all of your

internal sexual organs removed!)

• BV can increase a woman's susceptibility to HIV infection if she is

exposed to the virus. The problem is that you are just less able to

fend it off.

• Having BV increases the chances that an HIV-infected woman can

pass HIV to her sex partner.

• BV can increase a woman's susceptibility to other STDs, such as

Chlamydia and gonorrhea.

Researchers are investigating the role of Bacterial Vaginosis in pelvic

infections that result in infertility and tuba (ectopic) pregnancy. There is a

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growing body of evidence suggesting an increase in adverse outcomes of

pregnancy such as premature and low-birth-weight infants among women

with BV.

Just keep in mind that not all BV infections are the result of taking too

much antibiotics or a less than alkaline body state. It is also possibly the

result of having a more serious disease where the immune system is

compromised.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that when it comes to a chronic condition like Bacterial

Vaginosis you need to take your health into your own hands.

Like so many other problems that afflict women, there is a lot of

embarrassment (on the part of the patient) and intolerance (on the part of

the doctor) to this kind of problem.

The doctor often sees it as a minor inconvenience, and the type of problem

that can only be managed by antibiotics but never cured.

The doctor may even perceive this as a condition that you are bringing on

to yourself from having too much sex!

The patient does not necessarily realize that the doctor has no intention of

curing her and simply continues to take courses of prescribed antibiotics

that make the problem worse. Before you know it, she also has yeast and

urinary tract infections.

This book is about teaching you how to take charge of your health again so

that you are not at the mercy of a health system that has neither the time

nor knowledge about how to cure this condition for good.

The great news is that there is a relief for this condition.

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Read on to find out how to end the vicious cycle of antibiotics and recurring

infections as well as all about my 3-Step Plan of Attack for getting

immediate relief from painful symptoms such as itching, discharge and

odor.

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Chapter 2

How Antibiotics Keep BV

Around

Introduction

By now you have probably heard just a little bit about how Americans are

overusing antibiotics for common ailments and how this is leading to a

concern about the entire population eventually becoming immune to the

positive effects of the drugs.

People are loading tons of antibiotics into their systems, often with no

benefit except to the manufacturers of antibiotics. The end result is not

pretty in terms of what we are doing to our collective immunity against the

big diseases, which of course mutate more and more every day into super

bugs.

Do you really want to be part of this trend towards lowering humanity’s

resistance to disease? All of this over prescribing of antibiotics is leading to

even more resistant Bacteria.

We also perpetrate stronger strains of fungus and Bacterial the more we

allow ourselves to be medicated with antibiotics.

Women who take several rounds of antibiotics a year to treat Bacterial

Vaginosis, end up with more difficult-to-treat secondary infections (like

urinary tract infections) AND quite commonly, uncomfortable side effects.

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Is there an alternative? - Yes! We are going to discuss it more detail in the

third and fourth chapters of this book. The alternative is to wake up and

realize that life style changes, not magic bullets are the key to getting off

this treadmill of antibiotic intolerance.

In a very wide variety of complaints, doctors may prescribe antibiotics

without a clear indication of a "bug" that is susceptible to antibiotics - "just in case". The problem is that sometimes there are no Bacteria to kill, only

a virus. Antibiotics simply do not work on viruses – only Bacteria.

That is why it is so crucial for you to make sure that you are actually

suffering from Bacterial Vaginosis and not infectious Vaginosis which is

caused by sexually transmitted viruses. Viruses simply wil not respond to

antibiotics and you will be lowering your resistance and immunity for no

good reason.

Worse yet, people without proper medical training may push antibiotics or

misguided persons may "self-medicate" with them. One really nasty habit

is to never finish the initial round of antibiotics that was prescribed you.

The reason this is a disaster is because every time you do this you give the

bug time to mutate and overcome the power of the antibiotic.

The “prescribing antibiotics” just in case approach to life is bringing super

bugs and their damaging consequences closer to the fore. We are not far

away from the day when a new strain of BV that is not treatable at all by

existing antibiotics.

The result in the long run is a massive amount of the population developing

life threatening infections that can’t be treated by antibiotics.

The overuse of antibiotics to treat BV is in fact an excellent example of how

allopathic medicine sometimes benefits from keeping us sick.

It works like this, the more attacks of Bacterial Vaginosis that you have, the

more visits you will make to the doctor. The doctor profits!

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The more trips to the doctor you make the more antibiotics prescriptions

he will write to treat your condition. The pharmaceutical companies profit!

The more antibiotics that you take the more likely you are to require

treatment for a yeast infection or urinary tract infection. The

pharmaceutical companies profit again!

These treatments are only a temporary quick fix for your problem and

before you know it, your infection is back and you return to the doctor’s

office where, the doctor profits again.

The only person that does not profit from this situation is you.

You keep spending money for treatments that don’t work. All the time this

medical treatment is not working, you are led to believe that it is somehow

your fault and not the fault of the drugs or doctors.

The more money you give to your doctor and pharmaceutical companies

for this, the more medical problems you’ll have. This is what I call the cycle

of profit.

Over the long term your immune system may become compromised and

you will find yourself donating even more money to the pharmaceutical

companies to treat the following conditions that are caused by the overuse

of antibiotics:

• Bad breath

• Depletion of helpful intestinal Bacterial

• Chronic Candida yeast overgrowth

• Chronic urinary tract infections

• A lowered resistance to viruses, fungus and Bacteria

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These physical problems are mostly the result of how antibiotics affect our

intestinal Bacteria, which in turn affects our ability to ingest nutrients,

creates unfriendly Bacteria in our intestines and lowers our immune