The Other Side of Summer

Party Time for Yeast Infections

Hip, hip, hooray! It’s everyone’s favourite time of year! When the sun shines, the days are long and the evenings full of the promise of fun and adventure; even the biggest problems are a little easier to bear. But someone else feels like clapping happily… but he doesn’t have hands.

Summer is full of symbols: warmth, clothing which reveals more than it covers, bathing in water and your own sweat, feeling like a shower morning, noon and night, freer, more playful and statistically the most unsafe sex all year round, cool drinks, holiday laziness which tries to enter our ordinary working days…The list goes on, but we all know what we’re talking about.

But perhaps we’re a little less aware that all these symbols are grist to the mill for the tiny organisms which live in peace and comfort – with a few exceptions – with us, or rather in us. However, in summer the chance that they will break their chains and become bad is at its maximum. Ow, how it itches! How it burns! And not anywhere, but exactly THERE, in the most sensitive and intimate place. Oops!

Multiply, girls!

These organisms are candida yeasts. They live naturally in the female body: in the intestines, mouth, throat, oesophagus and in the vagina, where it’s warm and damp. They don’t cause any harm as long as there aren’t too many of them and as long as the pH in the vagina is naturally acidic, that is under 5.5. However, summer fun can quickly change all this, the acidity falls and this is an order for the yeasts to have a huge reproduction party. The result? While we were fine in the evening, in the morning we’ve got an unpleasant mycosis on the cards.

Do I have it or not?

That’s the million-dollar question! If it itches and burns, then you probably do. A visit to the doctor’s is required if it doesn’t resolve within three days. Over-the-counter nutritional supplements from the chemists can also help. Several products are available and those containing oyster mushroom extract – beta glucan – have been recently making their way to the top of the nutritional supplement chart for treating and preventing mycosis.

This is thanks to the excellent results of many clinical and experimental studies, the possibility for administering it, its general harmlessness without counter-indications and the transformation of theoretical knowledge into specific products. In my experience as a doctor, I can confirm that it solves infections, has a significant effect on mycosis and the symptoms and course of HPV disease; beta glucan also modifies the menstrual cycle and reduces premenstrual syndrome,” says gynaecologist Dr. Eva Žďárská from the Centre for Gynaecology and Assisted Reproduction in Brno, praising these products.

But if after three days of treatment at home it still itches and burns, or if everything down there has swollen up, if it hurts during urination or sex, don’t be embarrassed and head straight to the doctor’s! Otherwise it will get worse and the yeasts from the vagina will spread throughout your body. Brrr!