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The most wonderful time of the year can also be the most stressful. Travel, hosting, dealing with difficult relatives…these factors and more can lead to common side effects of stress: fatigue, breakouts, changes in your weight—the list goes on.
Some side effects you might not be expecting? Discomfort down there.
The gift nobody asked for.
Right? Research has shown that cortisol levels can have wide-ranging effects on feminine health. It can make your period irregular and dial-up PMS. It can also cause dryness and throw your vaginal pH out of whack, leading to a heightened risk of yeast infections and bacterial vaginosis.
Break it down for me.
The pH scale measures how acidic a substance is. Maintaining healthy pH levels in different parts of your body—including your vagina—helps your immune system fight off infections and carry out other essential functions.
Anxiety causes your body to produce stress hormones like cortisol. This can lower estrogen levels, throwing off the pH balance in your vagina and leading to dryness, excessive discharge, and infections.
Now I’m even more stressed.
Deep breaths! Maintaining good self-care habits, like exercising daily, maintaining a balanced diet, meditating, and pampering yourself every now and then, can help you regain control when you feel your stress levels spiking. Remember that anxiety and stress are part of our everyday lives, and it’s normal to deal with heightened levels around the holidays.
You know what else is normal? Dealing with a vaginal infection. They affect millions of people each year.
However, unlike awkward conversations at holiday parties, you don’t have to sit through the discomfort vaginal infections cause.
Sounds like a holiday miracle.
It’s all about being prepared. The faster you can identify what’s going on with your body, the faster you can get treatment that will soothe your symptoms and get rid of your infection.
You don’t need to make an appointment with your doctor or visit an urgent care, either. We ship our feminine health testing kits right to your home. All you have to do is scan the QR code on your kit and a proctor will walk you through the steps for collecting your sample and testing it.
You’ll have your results in about 15 minutes. A prescription for treatment will be sent to your local pharmacy the same day if your results suggest bacterial vaginosis or a vaginal yeast infection.
We currently offer two feminine care kits—one that tests for UTIs and one that tests your vaginal pH levels to identify yeast infections and bacterial vaginosis. Our kits last for an entire year, so keep them on hand. Vaginal infections can happen at any time due to a wide range of reasons, not just stress.