In addition to the
advice already given in this
node,
women who've had trouble with
recurrent yeast infections should try the following things:
- Try switching to a laundry detergent that is free of dye and fragrance. These things can irritate your skin and spark a yeast outbreak.
- When you wash your undies, wash them in very hot water to make sure they're not harboring yeast. Give them an extra rinse cycle to make sure you've got all the detergent out. Do not, however, heat your undies in a microwave. Some women's magazines in the past suggested this as a way of killing off lingering yeast, but this can cause a fire.
- Avoid bubble bath; it, too, can cause yeast-promoting irritation in one's nether regions.
- Condoms can cause irritation in some women that can start up a new yeast infection. Since AIDS and herpes are quite a lot more serious than yeast, doing without condoms is often not an option. But you should try different brands if you suspect they might be the cause of trouble. But the real culprit might be your lube: lubricants that contain glycerin are known to promote yeast. Look for a brand that is glycerin-free. Also, if you're not using latex condoms, you might try olive oil; there have been several reports that it can help ward off yeast infections.
- In addition to avoiding sugars and refined carbohydrates, try drinking lots of grapefruit juice and/or eating grapefruit. Women who've had success with this method say that it takes about a grapefruit a day to keep the yeast away. It's unknown whether it's a matter of acidifying one's system or due to a substance in the grapefruit juice (as is the case with cranberry juice fending off bladder infections), but the stuff seems to do the trick for a lot of women. Other citrus fruits don't seem to work nearly as well. One side effect of this dietary change seems to be the tendency to get canker sores in acid-sensitive people.
In response to lara68's writeup below: be careful.
A lot of websites lead you to believe boric acid is perfectly harmless; it isn't. Full-strength boric acid may cause irritation on regular skin; prolonged exposure to regular skin can cause inflammation and rashes. Applying said powder to a delicate mucous membrane might be a bad idea for many women.
There is a small body of research that indicates that boric acid (specifically 600 mg -- about a half-full gel capsule -- inserted intravaginally twice a week) may help women with infections that are unresponsive to other medications. However, insufficient research has been done (see http://www.ama-assn.org/special/womh/library/scan/vol_3/no_23/stdcom2.htm). Miconazole is readily available most places, so if you've got a garden-variety infection, it seems safer to use that drug instead of a chemical that could potentially give you a nasty internal rash.
Boric acid toxicity references: http://www.camd.lsu.edu/msds/b/boric_acid.htm, http://www.sas-centre.org/trace/tracepages/boron.html, and http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/REDs/factsheets/0024fact.pdf