How do You Know if You Have a Yeast Infection
Yeast infection symptoms
As for the question of whether or not you are suffering from yeast infection, firstly you need to know that there are two major types of yeast infections. One is oral yeast infection, or oral thrush. The other is genital yeast infection, which represents vaginal yeast infection in women and penile yeast infection in men separately.
For oral sufferers, the symptoms yeast infection is quite obvious. Oral thrush normally leads to creamy white lesions inside your mouth, especially on your tongue, gums, the roof of your mouth, inner cheeks and tonsils. Other symptoms of yeast infection also include taste loss, lump in throat feeling and difficulty swallowing and so on.
Main vaginal yeast infection symptoms are vaginal discharge that looks like a cottage cheese and itching. Other signs also include irritation, burning in vagina and even pain during a sexual intercourse.
For yeast infection in men, the symptoms of a yeast infection are quite similar to the situation in women. It also features white discharge and itching. Other signs of a yeast infection also include pain and cracked skin around male genital organs.
Yeast infection causes
Now we come to realize that the culprit of yeast infections is the fungus known as Candida albicans. Actually the Candida albicans fungus does no harm to healthy people at all and it can be found easily in all of us. However, once excessive growth of candida is sparked off by some certain factors, Candidiasis or yeast infection thus occurs.
Factors that can trigger Candida yeast infection include antibiotics abuse, chemotherapy, taking too much sugar and birth control pills and the like.
Causes of yeast infection in women from TCM
From the perspective of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the main causes of yeast infection in women or men is not a certain kind of bacterial and fungal infection although TCM also believes that thrush yeast infection and female yeast infection are closely associated with bugs, toxic and heat-dampness. In other words, Chinese medicine is not targeting one certain bug but the whole person. In the case of chronic yeast infections around genital organs, Chinese medicine tends to think it is caused by damp invasion of lower energizer.
In general, Chinese medicine believes that dampness, indigestion and blood stasis are the three important inner factors that can cause illness. There are no exceptions to recurring yeast infections too. This theory is very different from West medicine, which tends to focus on pathogenic microorganism. This is for sure that Western medicine thinks one certain pathogenic microorganism contributes to one certain disease. However, if a person is healthy and his immune system is strong enough to defend the attacks from germs, does a guy get sick easily?
I don’t think so. As the old Chinese saying goes, worms appear only when things have gone rotten. There is also a similar proverb from west like “When a man lays the foundation of his own ruin, others will build on it.” This is a unique finding in Chinese medicine. Compared with the lurking risk of dampness, indigestion and blood stasis, germs is the external cause. Once our body’s immune system is impaired by these lurking facts, germs will take advantage of it and take root there in no time. To get rid of those germs or fungus, our priority is to find ways to remove those factors impairing our body, rather than to kill germs. This is not only for herbal remedy for yeast infection. Actually it is also the main principle in any TCM treatments for any kind of diseases.
Anyway, are you satisfied with the answer to ‘how do you know if you have a yeast infection’ now? If you still have doubts about your condition, a better way is to visit your physician and for sure he will give you a clearer diagnosis. As for the yeast infection treatment, I would like to introduce some basic herbal remedy for yeast infection and yeast infection home remedy next. If you are interested, please stay tuned for the next update.
Comments