Vaginal Odor

Herma · Newbie Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 1

I found that my normal vaginal odor has somewhat changed. I am familia with the normal fishy smell and usually douch whenever It comes up. But lately I have been having this strong almost bleach or amoniac smell, acidic type odor which increases even more during menstration. I have never experienced this before and have an appt to see my doctor but am trying to get some answers in the mean time.

Laylah · Silver Member Joined: 27 Mar 2006 Posts: 178

Hello, I would first like to address your douching when you notice fishy smell. This is very wrong because douching may actually worsen the condition.

When an abnormal fishy smell occurs from vagina, it is usually due to fungus overgrowth in the vagina. Fungus normally lives in the vagina but there are also bacteria that are maintaining good balance. It happens that fungus levels go up while bacteria’s down and this causes different symptoms like heavy, cheesy discharge, redness, itchiness, swelling and of course fishy odor. Not all of these symptoms need to be present. This is called yeast infection.
Yeast infection usually occurs after antibiotic treatment that kills good and bad bacteria and makes fungus levels increase. Besides antibiotic treatment, other things may cause yeast infection. One of them is excessive douching.

So, when you already have developed yeast infection, additional douching won’t actually help but may even worsen things. This is because fungus looooooves moist environment.

As for this other smell you’ve been experiencing, it could be some kind of bacterial infection since bacteria usually causes that kind of smell but it is essential you saw a doc to determine what it really is.

Vaginal Odor

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