Recurrent Vulvovaginal Thrush

I think it felt to me quite quickly that alternative therapies might carry more of an answer than the doctors I was going to, based on all the Googling, because all the things that you would find on Google were people who were like, ‘my GP was useless, and then I found this,’ and alternative therapies: accessing that was expensive, whereas I was going to the free healthcare and that was all that I could get to.

Yeah, I remember some... I remember one being like... to... get a like... was it... a few spoons of like plain yogurt and to like insert it inside and just to leave it in for as long as possible, but I don't know, that’s... I don't think we should be putting anything inside our bodies like that. And then there was kind of... or was it... I think it was like rubbing garlic down there as well or something, I could go forever with all the different weird and wonderful things they advise on websites, that sometimes even will have the word ‘health’ in the website name, so when you're younger you're more kind of influenced to thinking that’s kind of medical advice.

Most of the information online doesn't make much sense. It’s quite contradictory. It’s misleading, and some of it’s quite dangerous. I've tried the majority of the things online. Some of them have made me feel a worse. Some of them have caused me to react, and some of them, looking back, were just really stupid, but when... I know when you're desperate enough you’re... you're willing to try anything, especially when you feel like it’s just you and you can't go to anybody else.

Yeah, it’s on TikTok there are different people who’ll be talking about different medication. They are the like a community that says... that talks of mainly apple cider vinegar, they talk of natural yogurt, and they talk of different natural supplements. Some of them haven’t been tested or have been approved by the medical field.

I went on the internet, I started researching what other forms of  medication, meaning holistic medications that are available, and then  the internet was saying different types of things. I have not yet tried them and I’m still yet to get the guts to actually do it, but there are a type of different herbal medications and some herbal supplements they were saying you can put down there, some are even going as far as saying you can put natural yogurt and stuff, and these are things I’ve researched.

People have suggested home remedies to me before, things like Greek yogurt, natural yogurt and all that stuff, but I... that’s just not my cup of tea. And then again, having probiotics daily, but again that they’re not cheap, and I can’t buy the yogurt drinks because I’m lactose intolerant, and the probiotic tablets are really expensive and I’m not the best at remembering to take medication either because of my ADHD, so those are not things that I’ve kind of been able to do.

Like I saw someone the other day talking about putting the Greek yogurt down her pants because it’s natural and I'm like, ‘that doesn't do anything, it won't help, you need to get treatment properly because it’s not going to go away with some Greek yogurt,’ and people... but people do still really believe in it. And my probiotics, if you eat them and ingest them, probably help, but I don't think putting it on your skin is going to do masses because it’s not being digested and broken down in the way you need it to be.

I did read up on all sorts of things like what was it... was it some sort of acid and all this? And all this crazy stuff, I've never tried any of that, I only started trying like probiotics and things like that just to see like the things that I... were verified and are actually made by actual people in you know proper scientific labs I suppose or whatever.

I've been taking these probiotics at the minute: that seems to have helped. I don’t know if that’s a long-term solution, I've no idea, but... and like I said, it has sort of... it hasn’t gotten rid of the symptoms and I don't think anything like that would, but it definitely... the intensity of it definitely reduced, but like I said, they are expensive and I bet if I stopped taking them, the intensity would come back, and I... I know that, but I... I need something when I've got the little ones, yeah, it is what it is at the minute.

Then the doctor was great and he was like, “Your pH balance in your vagina is just off by, like, quite a way, and I think that it’s like a breeding ground for bacterial nonsense because you're not set at the right level,” and then he told me to start doing these baths with like bicarbonate of soda twice a week, or three times a week, and so I was running these like warm baths and it did really clear up the thrush, although it felt like it... it was the Victorian era [laughs], and also was like, ‘why did no one tell me this 10 years ago?’ because I've been whacking loads of chemicals on my vagina and I could have just been sitting in bicarbonate of soda, and that really cleared it up.

And also I use raw apple cider vinegar, organic apple cider vinegar which has... if you've not heard of it, it’s got something called the ‘mother’ in it, which is another... the mother is part of what ferments the vinegar initially, so that’s another kind of live bacteria, and I use that diluted, and I have a cup of that next to my toilet, so every time I use the toilet I then kind of wash with that, I kind of dab with that to just keep the area super, super clean, and that’s very dilute, that’s probably like, I don't know, a teaspoon or two teaspoons full in a normal size mug of kind of hot water and then I let that cool down. That, I think that makes a really big difference.

So yeah, I would... I would say that the... the organic apple cider vinegar with the mother, which is the live bacteria, I would say that is probably my most helpful daily tool that I use that I couldn't imagine life without, and I probably wouldn't have tried it if I hadn’t heard it through sort of women’s wisdom in the past and then had it corroborated by the... the Facebook group, you know so many women saying... for some of them, they found that really helpful, I thought, ‘well it’s worth... it’s so worth a try,’ isn't it?

Personally for me it’s probably a point of contention, but something I think you know as a woman we grow up and then you’re like, ‘oh my gosh, there’s this thing that’s down there and I don't know what it is,’ and then older ladies they say, “No, it’s thrush,” and then there is the old wives’ tale where you’re told get apple cider vinegar, just, you know, ‘wash with apple cider vinegar, by morning you’ll be fine,’ and then you do that and it doesn’t work.