[beetlegrl]

thanks chacha....

I do know it's BV only because I have been to my reg Doc for it, which of course was given metronidizole to cure (which it did for a while) and also been to my gyno TWICE and he told me it would just go away on it's own. Well guess what, it HASN'T. So here I am.

I am really not into taking meds for anything, but decided to try seasonale due to my heavy periods. I don't need to be on any BC due to a tubal I had about 4 yrs ago. I really think it's the pill giving me this since I have NEVER EVER had problems before and have had the same boy for 4+ yrs, and I get my annual PAPs religously. Not to mention, you treat BV with antibiotics and woo hoo, now were are in yeast infection hell!

At this point I'm willing to try anything NATURAL....oh and I'm staving off the seasonale.....I am at the end of the pack last week, so I'm not takin no' mo.

[chachaheels]

You can buy boric acid suppositories over the counter or through a compounding pharmacist who will make them up for you. The usual dose routine is a 14 day supply of 600g. boric acid suppositories, which you take one or two times a day. The Yeast Arrest someone posted about on here seems to be one brand name. Check the ingredients to be sure.

There is an ovule product that contains hydrastis and calendula--these are clear gold in colour, and they are made by boiron. It's an herbal product many women use successfully to relieve the symptoms of their yeast. I don't see why it wouldn't work for BV as calendula and hydrastis (golden seal) are both disinfecting agents. You would likely find the Boiron pruduct in your health food store or a pharmacy which sells high quality alternative medicine supplements.

Symptoms which look like yeast often result from hormonal imbalance, so if you are using the birth control pill or any kind of hormone product, (this includes asthma sufferers, too, who might use cortico-steroids) you will not be balanced hormonally, which will make you susceptible to yeast or BV (and many other things, but let's stick to these for now). You might want to make certain what you have is indeed yeast or BV before treating an ailment you don't really have--then you can figure out what's really going on and take it from there with more suitable treatments.

[beetlegrl]

Hello everyone,

Well, here I was searching the internet AGAIN, for some natural BV remedies and stumbled upon this forum. WOW....while it might not be PC to say, but I feel so much better knowing I'm not the only one with this. I was really getting depressed over this.

I have tried the acidophillus pills, both orally and the suppositories. I have been drinking this stuff called BioK+ which is helping, but only for a day or two.

After reading all the inputs on here, I'm thinking of starting the HP douche and possibly the Boric Acid stuff.

I also noticed their is a natural Doc in here and I am searching for one in my area, the closest one to me is about an hour.

Before I get my appt with the Doc, I am curious to know the best way to use the Boric Acid, I have to admit, some of the after effects I've read on here have me somewhat suspicous of it.

I also read on here where someone starting getting this after taking seasonale, which is when I got it too, I'm wondering if there is a direct correllation between this? I've had other BC's and no problems....just a thought.

[latinrican]

chachaheels...

Thank you!!! My grandmother drunk the kombucha drink as if she was drinking water..lol. I did like the fact that I was so energized when I was drinking it so I am starting it up again. I am willing to try Kvass, so yes...please post the recipe.

[Lebrat]

Hi Ladies,

Glad I found you all. After reading, I am going to try the Yeast Arrest to help with my embarassing odor. One question though. Is it safe for my partner to perform oral sex while I'm using boric acid? The stuff is poison, right? So could he get sick from doing this? Thanks.

[qjo]

Has anyone tried the hydrogen peroxide and boric acid... in rotation of each other..... example ... every night the HP and then once a week the boric acid.... The boric acid does work ... but only until that time of the month.... and then the smell returns I was think of mixing the two regimes and seeing if it works..... any feed back would be helpful

Still battling with BV. For the past few months I've found some reprieve with first acidophilus milk/water , hydrogen peroxide and water and betadine and water douches. The first course of treatment yielded the longest results. I used hydrogen peroxide/water in the morning and acidophilus milk/water or kefir milk/water at night for about two weeks. I had no malodor or symptoms for a month even after my period but then one day I noticed a light malodor. Suffice to say I was very angry.
I began the hydrogen peroxide and water regimen again but found that if I missed more than a day mild symptoms would begin to surface.

I stopped using the hydrogen peroxide and moved on to Tea Treel Oil suppositories which seem to do nothing for BV but are good for yeast.

Next I began using betadine and water douches but much like the other regimens it yielded temporary results. The results never lasted as long as the the one month symptom free results I achieved with the hydrogen peroxide and acidophilus regimen. If I stopped for a day the mild symptoms would return.

It's been three months yet I remain vigilant in my efforts to remedy this ailment without resorting to antibiotics. Currently I take Natren probiotic(orally) while now using the Yeast Arrest by Vitanic Boric acid (600mg) suppositories. They also contain Calendula and Oregon Grape Root. I take Garlique as well. I noticed results after the very first insert of the Yeast Arrest suppository. I inserted the first capsule on Friday November 3rd before bed and have used them once in the morning and once at night ever since. I am on day 5 now and still no symptoms. I bought a supply of 28 suppositories which will allow me to continue twice a day for 14 days. The malodor is gone; however i plan to purchase more, along with Candaclear (acidophilus suppository) that I saw at Whole Foods. Candaclear is a probiotic suppository that is recommended as a part of the BV protocol by rockwell nutrition. I will also try to find another good oral probiotic like Jarrow to take longterm.

There is a lot of maintenance, money and patience required in treating/curing bv whether naturally or with prescriptions. After being on and off antibiotics for the past 5 years I've decided that enough is enough. If after about two months of occassional protected sex and using the Yeast Arrest, Candaclear suppositories, Garlique daily and an oral probiotic I don't see improvements I will try the flagyl orally again.

This time, however, I'll take it while using the Yeast Arrest suppositories for about a week or more (to acidify the vagina and restore the pH) and then using the Candaclear for two weeks (to replenish the good bacteria) while taking a acidophilus orally. This should work. Recurrent BV needs considerate yet aggressive treatment and maintenance.

I do believe that maintenance -like no unprotected sex for 3 months or more, boric acid for a few days out of the month like maybe during my period and ongoing consumption of garlique tabs and acidophilus as a life long regimen- will be necessary even after desired results are achieved.

Good luck to you all and I will keep you posted.

[chachaheels]

Latinrican, I doubt you did anything wrong! The kombucha may not have had any effects for any number of reasons. It's supposed to provide a general support, which should enable your body to do whatever it's got to do to cure itself (like any "boost" for the immune system) but sometimes (many times) there are other factors at work that have to be considered or changed (are there any hormonal drugs being used? Is there a problem with sex partners and re-infecting yourself through contact with them? Could there be other maintaining causes which keep you susceptible?). I don't think you should do more than 2 cups a day unless you want to. How much of the kombucha did your grandmother drink?

The kvass might be a better option for you than the kombucha (course, it doesn't taste as good but it is an option to use for a short amount of time). It's the same idea but maybe the kombucha mushroom is not as effective for you as a lacto-fermented kvass might be. Want to try it? I can post the recipe.

[neverending]

I just received my estroil suppositories.
WISH ME LUCK!

[klee]

Hey sassy - yes, hydrogen peroxide that we buy is already at 3%. That's the percentage being used in the studies I posted a week or so ago. And since I don't have a syringe, I grabbed a small funnel that I did have and hoised my hips up in the tub. I pour HP into the funnel and keep balanced. The nice thing about the funnel is that if you keep it in place, the HP will stay put for the entire 3 minutes.

Good luck!

[latinrican]

Chachaheels,

Its funny that you mention Kombucha because my grandmother is a true Kombucha fanatic and I've witnessed the miracles that drink has done to my grandmother and so I ordered it just to see if my symptoms will get better and they didn't. I was drinking it at least 2 cups per day for a looooong time and didnt see any improvements so I stopped drinking it. I was just thinking this weekend about going back into drinking it everyday just to see since I still have it. Can I ask your opinion if 2 cups per day was enough? or if I may have been doing something wrong?

[sassy]

klee--You just used plain, undiluted hydrogen peroxide?? Did you just sort of put your vagina at a tilted angle and pour some in it?

[klee]

I did the peroxide straight from the bottle for 3 days only. I guess a week is okay to do, based on what I've read, but perhaps not more than that. I don't think I needed as much as I did but seeing as how it's so cheap, I didn't worry about it too much. At any rate, everything is kosher in the cooch. Much more than when I'm doing boric actually. I've noticed just today, after not doing the peroxide thing for two days, I had a small bit of the clear sticky discharge like I used to have mid-month when my vagina was super healthy!!! This is so encouraging to me, despite the fact that I used to hate having that weird discharge.

There is absolutely no smell and you might notice a bit of chunkier discharge the day after the wash - it clears out and then there is very little...also like when things are healthy! Haven't eaten yogurt in about 4 days. I'll try to remember to post an update after my period.

[chachaheels]

For what it's worth, and stated purely as a means of public service:

When someone suggests finding alternative medicines to treat a chronic condition which conventional medicine cannot treat, they don't mean "go to the drugstore and see what's labelled "alternative" on the shelves. They mean seek out an experienced, well trained practitioner who uses an alternative medical system which CAN treat your illness. Or, at least, they should mean that.

There is no such thing as just an alternative medicine to treat a particular ailment. There is no such thing as an alternative medicine to treat a chronic disease. No medical substance works that way--you need to undergo a process of treatment and case management, not just a dose or two of some mineral or vegetable substance from a drugstore shelf.

I treat patients with yeast infections, BV, endometriosis, fibroids, hormonal imbalances which directly affect things like BV and yeast all the time with homeopathy. But I treat patients. Not BV, or endo, or fibroids, or hormonally influenced illnesses like yeast (and BV). Those ailments are just a bunch of symptoms, among many, which show me that the patient is expressing that sickness physically (and mentally, too). If I just used one of the medicines I have in my kit to just get rid of the symptoms of BV and nothing else, my patient would (guaranteed) become much sicker--and it might take me years to find out exactly how much sicker, too. If I treat the patient with the right medicines specifically chosen for her case (among which the BV will only be one aspect) then my patient's own body will have everything it needs to get rid of the BV for good, as well as address all the factors (physiological as well as mental/emotional and spiritual too) which made them susceptible to an illness like BV.

If you haven't worked with a practitioner to treat this (not someone who knows about a couple of items you can find in the health food store, but has no real training in any alternative medical system), you haven't tried alternative medicines. You've just gone to the store and picked out supplements or dietary aids like the acidophilus. It is impossible to get results this way.

Making Progress, lactofermented foods of all kinds do much more to support the body's immune system's response and overall health, which creates the conditions by which the body can heal itself. You don't take them as a kind of "natural" anti-biotic, you take them to make the body more effective at doing what it's supposed to do--curing this thing itself. So, yes, Making Progress, there's a ton of science and research (including long term, cross cultural, research--pretty rare in science, but certainly very valuable) to suggest that lactofermented foods are absolutely necessary to achieve and maintain optimum health.

Anti-candida diets, in a word, don't work. They can be helpful for some people in that they temporarily relieve some of the symptoms as long as they're followed religiously, with no deviation; but they don't provide enough nutritional variety to sustain anyone over the long term (and they are untenable, let's face it). If they only work as long as they're followed, they're not curing or treating anything, either; they're just suppressing the illness, and that is never good.

If you're opposed to taking the acidophilus, you can try things like kombucha or kvass--these work very quickly at boosting immune function significantly, and some people prefer them to using acidophilus because they can make them themselves and they taste good.

Perhaps, Making Progress, you get better not from cutting out lactofermented foods but from addressing a deep B vitamin deficiency--lots of people suffer from this and it rarely gets diagnosed. It was a good idea for you to point out the need for B vitamins. I would suggest, however, that since the vast majority of breads which claim to be "whole wheat" on the market are not whole wheat in any way (ever seen how those breads are actually made?), supplementation with injectible or sublingual drops or tablets with B12 and B6 might work better all around.

[autumnbreeze]

"AutumnBreeze – Antibiotics kill off everything good and bad in your body. After they kill off the sickness, they leave you susceptible to anything that can take hold. Yeast is not the only thing, but do you see the connection? If you kill off the bacteria, the yeast takes over. If there is no yeast, you get BV"

Making Progress: Thanks for your feedback. I do understand the distinct differences between a yeast infection and BV...trust me. I also understand antibiotics and how it's all connected. However, I do not believe that an absence of yeast (after antibiotics) causes BV. If we knew exactly what causes BV (aka, the PH imbalance), we wouldn't be here in this forum! I wish I could definitively blame it all on antibiotics but that would oversimplify this complex condition and insult the intelligence of many. I think different people respond to different treatments/regimens in various ways. For instance, some women are given metrogel for BV one time and is rid of it forever. Others are not so lucky. I recently began using probiotics (to include acidophilus) and that has helped my symptoms significantly. But I will keep the folic acid and wheat bread in mind for future reference.

[Eralc Alegna]

I just started trying probiotics orally each morning and vaginally every night with some peroxide during the day. I'm hoping this will work since the peroxide isn't supposed to affect the good bacteria biut kill off the bad. I don't know how it would work with boric, you'll just have to wait and see. I quit taking it since I was using it for about a month.

Klee - when you do the peroxide washes, how much peroxide are you using? Before I was just letting 10ml run out using a syringe 3x. All the articles say to use 30 ml so i tried doing the shower/prop myself up/hold it in thing for 3 minutes, but it was way too much. I couldn't take all that in and a lot went to waste. now i'm doing between 10 and 20 ml...

[pympmama1]

Has anyone tried the hydrogen peroxide and boric acid... in rotation of each other..... example ... every night the HP and then once a week the boric acid.... The boric acid does work ... but only until that time of the month.... and then the smell returns I was think of mixing the two regimes and seeing if it works..... any feed back would be helpful

[klee]

That's interesting about the lacto-fermented foods and acidophilus. Mainly because I always noticed that my bv would get worse, never better if I started a regimen of acidophilus. I stopped doing this about 6 months ago. If I think back on things, I started eating yogurt religiously about 3 years ago and this is about how long I've been dealing with bv. I also read somewhere that folic acid is supposed to assist in clearing up bv but haven't tried it.

The thing is that everything I read regarding vaginal health indicates that yogurt is beneficial. I mean, how can EVERYONE be wrong???

[Making Progress]

I have had BV on and off for almost four years. I first got BV after I took some antibiotics. I am now 37. I have tried all the medications. They failed miserably. In fact, my symptoms got worse after using them. My doctor refused to try anymore of them on me and encouraged me to try alternative medicines. I couldn’t find any alternative medicines for this because everyone seems to have this condition mixed up with yeast infections.

AutumnBreeze – Antibiotics kill off everything good and bad in your body. After they kill off the sickness, they leave you susceptible to anything that can take hold. Yeast is not the only thing, but do you see the connection? If you kill off the bacteria, the yeast takes over. If there is no yeast, you get BV.

Chachaheels – There is no harm in eliminating lacto-fermented foods for two to four weeks to see if your BV symptoms are reduced. Your body does not require it. Lacto fermented foods have only been around for about 2,000 years. I don’t eat it, and I don’t get sick that often. When I did take it for yeast infections years ago, I got sick more often. I don’t think it was because of the acidophilus, but I don’t agree that it helped prevent sickness that much. Acidophilus can help though if you have a problem with Candida. When I was in my 20s I used to get yeast infections often, and the doctor was very clear about not eating bread, vinegar or yeast. Why can’t the opposite be true when you lack the normal amount of yeast in your pap? If you don’t like wheat, then go for an alternative grain bread. I don’t mean that you should eat processed bread. The bread I eat contains little more than wheat, yeast, eggs, and water.

Here are four key points that have been consistent for me over the past four years:

1. When I eat lacto-fermented foods or take acidophilus capsules, my symptoms get dramatically worse within 24 hours.
2. When I make sure I eat two slices of bread a day, my symptoms get better.
3. When I remember to take folic acid, my symptoms get better.
4. When I avoid acidophilus, eat bread, and take folic acid everyday, I have no symptoms at all! That’s about all the proof I need. I encourage everyone to try it.

[sassy]

Hey guys...I work at a hospital, doing PR, and this was on our intranet this morning:

Generic Metronidazole Approved
WEDNESDAY, Nov. 1 (HealthDay News) -- The first generic version of MetroGel-Vaginal (metronidazole vaginal gel) has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat bacterial vaginosis, the agency said Wednesday.
The condition, caused by an overgrowth of vaginal bacteria, may be accompanied by symptoms including discharge, odor, pain, itching or burning, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says. It's the most common vaginal infection among women of childbearing age.
MetroGel-Vaginal is produced by 3M Co.; license to produce the generic equivalent was granted to Colorado-based QLT USA Inc.
Generic drugs, now used to fill more than 50 percent of all prescriptions, can cost a fraction of the price of their brand-name equivalents, the FDA said. "Consumers and health professionals can be assured that an approved generic drug is bioequivalent to the brand-name drug and is its equal in dosage, form, strength, and route of administration, quality, performance characteristics, and intended use," the agency said.


Just thought I would show it to you all. At least it will be cheaper now!

[chachaheels]

That's good to hear, Svea. It's also great to hear that doctors are quite often becoming more and more interested in using treatments their patients say work, and work well. Especially when those treatments are quite old, and often an old fashioned or even homeopathic treatment. It must mean that they're hearing good things from many of their patients.

I think everyone will have an individual response to the boric acid--like Svea, tried to do 14 days but felt an irritation, so she stopped--and that was all she needed. It does say in my materia medica reference that it can irritate, so if you come at all close to feeling that after a period of time when the boric acid seems to work, just stop using it (that's when you know you've had enough). As for the discharge, don't just expect it, think of it as a positive sign that something is being resolved in there. If there weren't any waste from the disinfecting nature of the boric acid, there wouldn't be anything to get rid of, so the discharge should tell you it's working.