Gynecological health tips

Don’t wash your private parts indiscriminately, don’t take hormone health supplements indiscriminately, and don’t ignore your discomfort and avoid medical treatment. The rest of the details are all real clinical experience accumulated over many years, and they are not false.

I just saw a 22-year-old college student last week. When she came in, she blushed and said that her vulva had been itchy for almost three weeks. She secretly bought several Internet celebrity lotions to wash it. The more she washed, the more itchy she became, and her leucorrhea turned into tofu. After checking, the leucorrhea was found to be dysbiosis and vulvovaginal candidiasis (also known as fungal infection). After asking, I found out that she loves to be clean. She washes her vulva every day with a shower gel called "for private parts", and occasionally irrigates the inside of the vagina. The good weak acid environment is completely destroyed. As for whether lotion can be used for private parts, there is currently no completely unified conclusion in the industry: Mainstream Western gynecological guidelines definitely recommend that only warm running water be used to wash the vulva on a daily basis. The vagina itself has a self-purifying function, and random washing will wash away the beneficial lactobacilli, allowing pathogenic bacteria to multiply. ； However, some TCM gynecology or grassroots clinical opinions believe that if mild itching and odor have occurred, and it is confirmed that there are no organic problems, the vulva can be cleaned with mild, regular medicinal lotion to relieve the symptoms in the short term. But one thing is a consensus recognized by all schools: you absolutely cannot buy lotions from WeChat merchants or Internet celebrities, let alone irrigate the inside of the vagina without permission.

Speaking of messing around, many girls are more obsessed with patching up than messy washing. 35-year-old Sister Zhang discovered a 1cm small fibroid during her physical examination last year. The doctor said that regular check-ups would be enough. She didn’t know who she heard said that cranberries and royal jelly can nourish the ovaries, so she asked a friend to bring a lot of them from abroad. She ate them once in the morning and evening every day. After half a year, she rechecked and found that the fibroids had grown to 3cm, and her menstrual period was also prolonged. In fact, the controversy about this type of gynecological health supplements has never stopped: evidence-based medicine currently only supports that cranberries may have a weak effect on preventing recurrent urinary tract infections, and are basically useless for gynecological inflammation and ovarian maintenance. Moreover, many compound supplements secretly add estrogen, which will stimulate the growth of fibroids and breast nodules. ； However, there are also supporters of natural medicine who believe that purified natural plant extracts are helpful in regulating endocrine. We do not deny this, but the premise is that you must first make sure that you do not have estrogen-dependent diseases (such as fibroids, adenomyosis, breast nodules, endometrial hyperplasia, etc.). It is best to ask your doctor before eating, and do not follow the trend of buying.

To be honest, I have been doing outpatient clinics for so long, and I have found that many people wash and put on their underwear wrong. Like to wear tight-fitting lace and chemical fiber styles, save three or four pairs or even a week of underwear before throwing it into the washing machine together, and mix it with socks and outerwear during washing. These are all high-risk causes of fungal infection. Our department has done a small-scale patient survey before. Among the 10 patients with repeated mold recurrences, 6 are accustomed to washing their underwear in the washing machine at home. If you think about it, if the washing machine tank is not washed for several months, there will be more mold hidden in it than the toilet seat. Washing underwear does not mean inoculating the underwear with germs. Oh, by the way, many people debate whether underwear should be boiled in boiling water for 5 minutes every day to disinfect it. In fact, both opinions are correct. It depends on the situation: if you are experiencing an inflammation attack and are wearing pure cotton underwear, boiling it for 5 minutes can indeed effectively kill the remaining pathogenic bacteria and help reduce recurrence. ； But if it is a daily health condition, there is no need to bother so much. After washing, rinse the laundry detergent residue with running water, hang it in a ventilated and sunny place and expose it to the sun for more than 4 hours. The sterilizing effect is stronger than anything else. There is really no need to cook it every day, and it will be useless even if you are tired.

Another point that everyone is most anxious about is abnormal leucorrhea. Many girls are scared to death when they browse the popular science on the Internet and see that their leucorrhea is yellow. They rush to buy suppositories. It is really unnecessary. Normal leucorrhea is not static. It is transparent and stringy like egg white during ovulation. After ovulation and before menstruation, the leucorrhea may become sticky and a little yellow. As long as you don’t have any discomfort such as itching, pain, burning, or fishy smell, it is not a disease at all, so don’t worry about it. I met a girl a while ago. She judged that she had vaginitis based on pictures on the Internet. She took medicine for a week to check. Her leucorrhea routine was all messed up. The normal lactobacilli were almost gone. It was purely a problem she had caused.

In fact, after all, gynecological health is really not that mysterious. It is just like a cold or a fever. There is something wrong with a normal body part, so don’t feel embarrassed. If you really feel uncomfortable, go to a regular hospital to get a gynecological appointment. A regular check for leucorrhea costs more than ten yuan, which is 100 times more effective than just spending a long time at home reading popular science and making random guesses. Oh, by the way, here’s a little reminder. You really need to have an annual gynecological examination. TCT and HPV together don’t cost much. If you find problems early and solve them early, they are more reliable than any skin care products.