Something else? Ask Aunt Vadge – bottom left of your screen!
If you are stressed or anxious, high cortisol levels can inhibit glycogen deposits – good bacteria food – in vaginal cells. Protective bacteria run out of resources and the system keeping your vaginasymptom free comes under pressure.
A lack of glycogen and impaired immunity is a real problem when trying to resolve bacterial vaginosis (BV). Finding ways to calm your system down (read: to reduce cortisol levels) is a really personal thing, but it often needs to be addressed when dealing with BV. Stress can also contribute to urinary tract infections (UTIs).
Stress isn’t necessarily going to make or break your BV, but it needs to be taken into account if your symptoms aren’t resolving, despite good treatments.
Understanding your stress response
Most of us don’t understand our own stress response. All we know is that we are freaking out, can’t sleep properly, suffer small (or large) bouts of panic, and worry a lot about everything.
By its very nature, stress can cause us to quickly lose perspective, which is kind of the point – stress hormones are designed to get us through a hard time, not help us understand ourselves and others and life and the universe.
This is a physical response that affects our brain and body – your body is producing hormones that is making you feel like that. If you can learn how to control these hormones, you can keep the outcomes of stress on your body at bay.
This is why meditating, yoga and laughing come so highly recommended – they, like a drug, lower your cortisol levels (demonstrated by science).
It’s not complicated in theory, but it can be really hard to figure out how to do when you feel really bad. Anxiety makes you feel tense, and so trying to chill yourself out can feel like trying to swim through syrup.
Managing stress in your life – easier said than done
Figuring out your stress response usually gets easier as you get older because you learn to avoid the stressors – including people you don’t like, jobs you hate, lovers who cause you never-ending drama.
When you don’t have a lot of control over your life – you gotta pay the bills, go to school, take care of people, take care of yourself. Life can be exhausting.
Go get a massage, foot rub, head massage, get a physical therapy to help solve some physical tension (osteopaths are fantastic, shiatsu, acupuncture, reflexology).
Go to an herbalist or naturopath and say, I’m stressed! Help! and they will make you a delicious concoction of herbal Xanax – herbs, in therapeutic doses, can work true non-pharmaceutical magic on the nervous system, without the hangover.
You can do a lot at home for free. Eat dinner in the bath with a glass of wine and watch movies, spend time with people you like who make you laugh, look up funny cat videos on the internet, give yourself a reflexology session, cook nice food, clean your house, meditate, whatever floats your boat and helps you feel calmer.
If you have tried everything for your BV, but are chronically stressed, it needs addressing. If you’re not sure what to do, book in with a My Vagina naturopath and they’ll help you.
- Harville E, Savitz D, Dole N, Thorp J, Herring A. Psychological and biological markers of stress and bacterial vaginosis in pregnant women. BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology. 2007;114(2):216–223.
- Amabebe E, Anumba DOC. Psychosocial Stress, Cortisol Levels, and Maintenance of Vaginal Health. Frontiers in Endocrinology. 2018;9.
- Nansel TR, Riggs MA, Yu KF, Andrews WW, Schwebke JR, Klebanoff MA. The association of psychosocial stress and bacterial vaginosis in a longitudinal cohort. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. 2006;194(2):381–386.
- Hruzevskiy OA, Minukhin VV. The stress hormones effect on the progression of vaginal bacterial dysbiosis. Reports of Vinnytsia National Medical University. 2020;24(3):455–459.
