Natural Treatment Methods for Candida
There are a few natural ways to treat candida.
Candida flourishes in high, basic, PH levels, and can't stand low, acidic, PH levels.
So, anything which helps lower PH to the recommended vaginal levels will help treat candida, as detailed here.
The PH scale, is a scale measuring from 1 to 14, lower numbers indicating a "sour", acidic levels, and higher numbers indicating a "sweet", basic level.
You can also combine certain foods which don't encourage a "sweet" basic environment, reintroduce "good" microbial agents and bacteria to the digestive system to re-balance the flora of the body.
Detailed here are natural "grandma's recipes" ways I found to be effective with clients.
Yogurt
Using unsweetened yogurt, which is very sour and acidic, as an ointment on your vagina, immediately lowers PH levels and usually causes instant relief with the itching and burning sensation. It is recommended to put on at night before going to bed, and let the yogurt work undisturbed throughout the night.
Some women even dip a tampon in yogurt and insert it vaginally, but I wouldn't recommend it as a first treatment, but start with the "ointment", since tamponing up is a more extreme measure and we don't want to create body "immunity" to the yogurt. So - only if rubbing the yogurt doesn't help, move on to tamponing it.
Yogurt works wonderfully not only because of the lowered PH levels, but also since it contains tons of probiotic microbes (discussed below)
Tea Tree Oil
The Tea Tree oil's strong aroma works as a fungicidal agent. Drip 1 or 2 (no more!) drops on your underwear and let the aroma do its job while it evaporates upwards. It is important not to put the tea tree oil directly on the skin since it will burn!
Foods
Some theories suggest that avoiding certain foods will "starve" and thus eliminate the candida out of the digestive system, and that way it will also help vaginally. Anything basic, sweet or that is containing some sort of mushrooms or yeasts (both are fungus family) are to be avoided. These foods are - alcohol sugar, sweets, dough, pastries, dairy products (the non-sour ones, as apposed to yogurt).
Using this diet, together with probiotics with recommended dosages, is supposed to re-balance the natural flora of the intestines and eliminate the candida.
But, in my experience - these diets don't work, or at least - they don't work well enough to be recommended on such a broad scale as they are being these days. I see a lot of exhausted, frustrated clients who have been starving themselves for months if not years, avoiding almost anything edible - and no results.
I feel, that these diets not only don't work in most cases, but they might even create more harm.
Self starvation, and obsessing about food, not only don't these behaviors address the emotional issue which might have brought the candida in the first place, but they also might enhance it since they create a feeling of self punishment inside,
Candida has an energetic frequency of shrinking, of limitation and restriction, and so creating the same kind of ritual with pleasurable foods certainly doesn't help to bring back the joy to like.
In my experience, candida often arises from a complex emotional state - and this is what needs addressing.
Probiotics
Our digestive system is full of huge amounts of bacteria and other "good" microbes. Each of these microbial organisms live naturally in a specific level in the body and keeps the other species from taking over. Since they all compete on the same resources, they all restrict each other from multiplying radically and throwing the body off-balance.
Antibiotic medication are one of the best discoveries of westen medicine, and help recover from bacterial infection, but their main downside is that they are not specific to the bacterial cause of the disease and cannot distinguish between "good" bacteria and "bad" bacteria in the body. Therefore, antibiotics also destroy the natural "good" microbial environment, in the body in general and the digestive system in particular. In the absence of the other key players, the "spot" is theoretically free for candida and it may thrive.
Therefore, health experts recommend consuming probiotics while taking antibiotics, according to doctor's or pharmacist's instructions.
But if you didn't take probiotics, and the candida has already begun to thrive, sometimes it is too late, and not enough to consume probiotics by itself, especially since the probiotics remedies in the existing brands contain only a very narrow amount of "good" microbial strains. It is best to combine with local treatment as described above.
Soap
Don't use any of those "intimate" soaps in your vagina and vulva area. All they do is disrupt your natural PH levels. And what is going on with the "mint" sensation there? As if to suggest that you need this area to smell "refreshed". These soaps make you feel that this part of your body is "disgusting" and needs to be thoroughly washed. It isn't, and it doesn't. The catastrophization of this part of the body which always needs to be obsessively clean and sterile, disrupts the natural microbial growth, the fluids, the natural smells which are supposed to be there.
If you are very sensitive - don't use any soap at all and just use water.
Look inside
Use a mirror, and look. Put a timer on your clock and for 5 full - minutes look. Talk to your vagina, tell her everything that comes up. Listen to your vagina and ask her what she wishes to tell you.
If you have a partner, create a ceremony together, in which you open your legs, and s/he looks at your vagina, in a compassionate and loving way, for 5-15 minutes. Not in a sexual way, but to give your vagina the message that she is oved and accepted.
Another nice trick that Lena Dunham once mentioned was to "sunbathe" your vagina. Do not use direct and strong sunlight on it of course, but spread your legs out into the open air, let your vagina breath, see a little bit of the sun, liberate her and feel liberated!
A Little Bit About the Menstrual Cycle
During the month, the PH level changes too in our vagina. Before ovulation, PH levels rises, the area becomes less acidic, in order to encourage sperm survival. After ovulation PH level drops again, to protect the potential fertilized egg from any foreign agents. That's why some women feel an itching candida sensation that was allowed by the higher PH levels around ovulation times, and only feel a relief from it when they get their periods.
Also, taking the pill shuts down the natural cycle - there is no ovulation, no changing PH levels, which might also cause candida to thrive.
Emotional Aspects
If there is a recurring candida condition, I would suggest to check how are you doing emotionally. The labia majora and labia minora are called "lips" for a reason, and I mean this sincerely. In my experience, when there is something that we are not saying - our lower lips will try to speak for us, shutting their doors.
Ask yourself - what is it that I am not saying? Is it to my partner, my mother, or even myself?
And be gentle and kind to your body.
Love,
Daphna
