Beat Yeast Infections on a Budget

The best way to manage yeast on the cheap is by managing what you put into your mouth. Having no money and an itchy, sore, oozing vag isn’t a great time, but there are things you can do that will help that do not directly involve money, or much money.

Food to skip

Simple carbohydrates – all your ‘whites’, white rice, potato, white bread, pizza bases, pasta, sugary drinks – are all simple carbohydrates, and what people refer to when they go on diets where they cut out ‘carbs’.

Yeast feeds on these carbs, so cutting them out of your diet completely for a few days until your yeast infection resolves can actually quickly clear up a yeast bloom in your intestines, and therefore in your vagina. You’d be amazed at how much things can improve by removing the yeasts’ food source.

You want to try to eat only vegetables and protein (meat, fish, eggs), without bread, burgers, pizza, toast, pasta, fizzy drinks, sugary drinks, cakes, biscuits, chocolate, sweets, etc.

This isn’t always easy, but if you can talk to whoever prepares your meals about this and are able to explain this idea to them and what you are trying to achieve, that could help. If you are responsible for your own food, then that makes it a bit easier. It doesn’t even matter if the vegetables or meat come in a can – just keep the carbs out.

Getting good bacteria into your system

The next thing you could try is to try to find someone in your area with milk kefir grains, and try to figure out how to get some for free. Milk kefir grains are these weird little things that ferment cow’s milk into yoghurt, basically, but the yoghurt you buy at the shop is not alive – which you need to have any effect – so you need to essentially make a bacteria farm in milk. The main cost is the milk.

Fermenting is actually kind of fun once you get the hang of it. Fermenting is how cheese, wine, beer and pickles are made – the good bacteria in them keeps the bad bacteria out, and so mould can’t grow and it can’t go ‘off’. Before we had fridges and freezers, people used to ferment and pickle and use salt to preserve food for long periods of time, like over winter, to keep them fed. It’s pretty crafty. Yoghurt is also fermented.

You can go onto Facebook or another social media platform (or your neighbours, family, friends – ask around – most people won’t know what you are talking about but you only need one person to be like, oh yeah, so and so does that!), and look up fermentation groups. People absolutely love this stuff, and the beauty of the milk kefir grains is that they multiply on their own, and therefore people always have some to sell or give away, like eggs or fruit or whatever people grow where you live.

You need a tablespoon of fresh milk kefir grains to ferment at home to give you the lactobacilli bacteria you need to knock out yeast if the diet changes don’t clear up the problem. Just be aware that some milk kefir has naturally high numbers of beneficial yeasts, so if you find it makes your problem worse, stop.

When you find some of these fermentation groups, you will need to plead need and poverty and ask nicely if someone would be kind enough to send you some for free – you can private message people who seem friendly, or just post inside the group so everyone in there can see, something like:

Hey there, this is a bit embarrassing but I have a yeast infection, and a naturopath online has suggested that I get some milk kefir grains and ferment my own milk kefir at home to help. The thing is, I don’t have my own money/can’t afford it because of XYZ, and I don’t have anyone to buy this for me, and I was wondering if someone in my area had an excess of fresh milk kefir grains they wanted to get rid of! I live in blah blah. Thanks! Your Name.

Someone will respond to that plea! They can post them in the mail too, so actually, they don’t need to be in your area. Just the country would work.

The only reason this may work is that A) people love fermenting and can’t wait to share and B) these things grow by themselves essentially for free. People sell them for about $10 online, on eBay. Don’t get dried grains, fresh only. Essentially this will not cost anyone anything except maybe a buck in postage at worst.

If you can start fermenting your own milk kefir, and keep it alive for a long time, you will have a great source of good bacteria forever – the milk kefir grains stay alive, and you just change the milk, drinking the milk kefir yoghurty drink or using it vaginally.

Do your homework about these grains. They may save your vag – and the vag of your friends and family – many times in the future because the bacteria are the same sorts that live in our intestines and vaginas. It’s good stuff to have around because it is pretty tolerant of abuse (not feeding it regularly enough, nearly killing it!) and you and your friends will no doubt need it. It’s basically a nearly-free probiotic. It’s great for your belly too.

HERE’S ALL OUR INFO ON MILK KEFIR:

Read everything you can on yeast infections too, and just make sure you are all over it.

If you have yeast biofilms – that is, your yeast infections flare up very easily and recur endlessly – you will need another type of treatment to break down these biofilms.