Dear Miss Candida

Dear Miss Candida...

"After 3 weeks, 2 whole tubes of canesten, 4 pessaries, frozen yoghurt tampons and just about every anti itch home remedy under the sun, I knew I had a problem..."

BY: VH

UPDATED: 21/10/2023

We’ve all had our struggles with thrush.

That familiar antagonising itch. Ants not just in your pants, but what feels like a whole colony setting up camp near your cervix.

Grim I know, but accurate right??

Well lucky old me had a visit from miss candida for the best part of 16 weeks.

Sore, itchy and smelly are the PG adjectives i'll give you to start off with. Just in case for some reason you decided to start reading a post about thrush whilst eating your lunch…?

But seriously, it was hell.

Since becoming sexually active a few years back, I’d had several episodes of thrush. Nothing crazy, just the typical 2 or 3 day discomfort and a bit of funky discharge.

But back in February this year, I experienced the onset of the craziest thrush I've ever had or known anyone else to have in my whole life.

Around 3 days after a new sexual partner,

my vulva started to look like I'd blown it up with a bicycle pump, and not even in a fun way.

My labia was so sore and inflamed, I was barely able to waddle down to the pharmacy and pick up some Canesten.

I couldn’t work, I couldn’t go to the gym and I couldn't even go for a wee without having a little cry.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t this acute for the whole 16 weeks, It did ease up slightly after the first 5 days. But after 3 weeks, 2 whole tubes of Canesten, 4 pessaries, frozen yoghurt tampons and just about every anti itch home remedy under the sun, I knew I had a problem.

However...

The research and information I came across actually helped me to understand a lot more about candidiasis and the effects it can have across the body as a whole.

In many cases, as with this one, it proves more effective to discover the root of the infection and then work forward from there. After 16 weeks, I'd pretty much figured out that there was a little more going on than what could be cured by OTC antifungals.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a long and painful journey. But taking a deeper inspection into my overall health and more carefully considering what I was putting in my body, ended up not only curing my thrush but positively influencing my health overall.

So it turns out, candida overgrowth (the type of yeast in the body that causes thrush), is actually a problem for thousands of people all over the world and if left untreated, can influence some pretty nasty health complications.

Beyond vaginal yeast infections, when candida growth spreads all over the body it can cause digestive issues, joint pain, urinary tract infections and in severe cases can lead to infections in the bloodstream and major internal organs.

Candida is a typical inhabitant of the digestive system and can live inside us without causing any health issues. However several factors can lead to an overgrowth of this yeast causing it to become problematic.

Antibiotics, alcohol and smoking are among several other causes that can lead to candidiasis.

But what stood out most to me was how much influence your diet can have.

Annoyingly, I now had to consider that perhaps it was actually my lifestyle choices that landed me with this chronic infection, rather than quite conveniently placing the blame on my one night stand…

Sex can be the root cause of a myriad of vaginal health problems, but I think it’s also important not to place blame/explanation there just for convenience.

Taking accountability does make you feel vulnerable. But suffering from chronic thrush has taught me that often we are a lot more responsible for our health problems than we would like to admit.

It taught me that our intimate health and lifestyle are a lot more interconnected than we may initially think.

Sometimes it’s not just sex that can throw us off, but our attitudes towards how well we treat ourselves and what we choose to put into our bodies.

It’s all about balance, so don’t be scared to learn more about your health.

To read more about causes and treatments for candidiasis here is some useful information:

• ‘Vaginal Microbiome: Everything you Need to Know’ https://www.ombrelab.com/blogs/vaginal/vaginal-microbiome-everything-you-need-to-know

• ‘Candida Overgrowth: The Full Lowdown’ https://thegutstuff.com/candida/

• ‘The Candida Diet’ https://www.thecandidadiet.com/

I couldn’t even tell you how many GP, sexual health clinic and 111 telephone calls I had between February and June.

Forget a loyalty card, I had the clinic secretary liking my dog pics on Instagram.

All jokes aside though, this was a pretty difficult time for me. In all honesty it sent me into a bit of a depressive episode.

As a 22 year old woman, unfortunately I was not unfamiliar with the incredible lack of knowledge, understanding and research into vaginal health.

So given my circumstances and being the obsessive and over analytical girly that I am, I dove into a bit of a research rabbit hole. I spent countless hours scrolling through websites and forums just trying to find the magical key that would release me from my candida cage.

For any fellow sufferers reading along, I do hate to break it to you but I didn’t manage to find that one key.