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Do you ever think about how insane it is that you have the vessel to bring about life right there between your legs? You sit on it. You ride a bicycle on it. You shave it. You put cute underwear over it, and you allow other people to interact with it in a number of ways – like during sex, or simply when you let your esthetician wax you. It’s easy to forget just how truly magical and fragile the vagina is. As an opening to your body, it really is delicate. It’s the entryway to your reproductive organs. It’s a gateway to your entire body. Keeping it in good condition is rather important. You know this because of how uncomfortable you’ve been when your vagina wasn’t in good shape. A urinary tract infection, bacterial vaginosis, a yeast infection…these are things that can plague the vagina, and they’re quite uncomfortable.
You have a health routine for your mouth, your skin, your gut — doesn’t your vagina deserve one, too? That’s one area of the body that proves the saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” to be very true. When you have to go to the doctor to get a prescription for an antibiotic while fighting frequent and burning urination, you likely find yourself wishing you’d just peed after sex or taken your probiotics more. Your lady parts deserve some love. Here are tips for keeping your vagina healthy.
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Always wash new underwear
Apparel company Tommy John surveyed thousands of customers and found that 42 percent don’t wash new clothes before wearing them, and 35 percent don’t wash new underwear before putting it on. This video from the show The Doctors might have you thinking twice about that. Researchers collected underwear from bins at several different women’s stores, sent them to a lab, put them under a microscope, and found a lot of nasty stuff, including fecal organisms and staph (that causes staph infections). Think of how many individuals run their hands through underwear in stores. People who may not wash their hands and can be carrying all sorts of germs. You have to wash new panties before wearing them.
