And that my dear is the $64,000 question!! They aren't 100% sure why some women are prone to it and others aren't. Sometimes it's a lack of "good" bacteria down yonder. Most times it's as much about bad luck as anything.
Have you tried switching your bc pill?
grace
Thank you. Im going to look into that. It started when i was 17 and i am now 21. I have tried the metrogel, flygal, and the cream that starts with a c it think it is clendess or somethig like that. I would like to use condoms but they give me a yeast infection:( It really sucks. I was told that i may not be able to have children (but we all know how that goes) and so was my boyfriend. He was paralyzed for a few months and the doctor told him that too. Should i stop taking the birth controll??? Im ready for an upgrade (hint hint) lol.... Also what causes bv? I cant ever get a real answer.
I never had good luck on boric acid :( It just irritated my skin even more and triggered my herpes to act up. It also gave me a funky discharge. It's also gotten very hard to find since most places no longer carry boric acid.
I also have a booger of a time with bv. The things I have found that helped for me was - I had best results when treating it both orally and genitally. That meant oral flagyl and metrogel at the same time. Yeah it didn' t make me feel all that well physically but it seemed to take that to knock it out of me for longer than a month or two at a time ( my doctor suggested this and I did find a study on pubmed on it - a case study of a gal who had had bv for 3 years I think it was ) . Then I went on probiotic therapy with femdophilus by jarrow. Check out their website - you can even find online distributors to order it from if no one near you carries their products. Start out by taking it twice a day for 5 days and then go down to once daily. It helps to restore the "good" bacteria in your urogenital tract. Unlike regular probiotics that usually contain L acidophilus which doesn't colonize the urogenital tract - femdophilus contains strains of bacteria that actually do colonize and have been found in a lot of research to be present in large amounts in folks who don't get vaginitis and uti's. Here is one study that shows that the 2 strains of bacteria in this product are effective for bv - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17045832&ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum this study used the strains vaginally. There are others by dr reid that show that the oral preparations also are effective. Just search for his name on pubmed to read more.
Also I"m not sure what you've tried but if you have a regular partner - sometimes using condoms is also helpful. Sometimes just our partners sperm can alter our ph enough to trigger the overgrowth of bacteria :(
Also I"m not sure of your age but sometimes, no matter what our age, we get dry, thining vaginal skin from our hormones and also from birth control pills. It also can contribute to allowing bacteria to more easily over grow. If your genital skin seems to tear easily - you might need to treat the underlying cause with topical estrogens to restore skin strength too. This seems to be something that many medical professionals tend to over look - especially if we are premenapausal they seem to think it's not something to think about :(
Good luck getting rid of this or at least getting it down to a dull roar!!
grace