If you are suffering from recurrent vaginal yeast infections, don’t let your healthcare provider just prescribe you an antifungal medication thinking all is going to be fine. It won’t. What happens is that you get a partial and transient reduction of symptoms then they come right back.  There are two problem here. First, if this is the recommended approach, your provider lacks the expertise to address the underlying problem and second, it’s not like you can do anything about it either. What has happened is that there has been as shift in the vaginal micro-flora with the vaginal secretions now being more conducive to yeast growth.  Also when frequent yeast infection occur, they often cause irritation to the external genital tissues resulting in chronic itching, soreness and burning. Even if the yeast infection is adequately treated for a time, the symptoms persist and intensify with each cycle of yeast recurrence. Consider the experience of a patient who presented to a vulvovaginal expert, board certified gynecologist, Dr. R. Stuart Fowler who founded FowlerGynInternational.com:

“Finding Dr. Fowler has changed everything for me!  I have been suffering with chronic recurrent yeast infections for the past 4 years.  I have seen 5 different doctors who kept putting me on boric acid suppositories for weeks at a time, all to no avail. The infection would clear for a bit and then the symptoms would start creeping back again.  Not one doctor could figure out why this was happening to me. I am an otherwise very healthy 42 year old woman.  I was in constant discomfort with burning, itching and discharge and became very depressed.  I tried everything on my own, from following an anti candida diet, taking probiotics, drinking tons of water, weekly acupuncture, holistic candida cleanses, nothing worked.  One evening while I was on line doing even more research, I googled excessive discharge and Dr. Fowler’s site popped up.  I figured I had nothing to lose at this point and decided to fill out his questionnaire and see if he could possibly help.  Just speaking to him made me feel better, as he was empathetic, understanding, compassionate and made me feel like I wasn’t crazy.  It’s hard to suffer from an invisible illness!  It’s hard for others to truly understand what you are going through, but Dr. Fowler did understand. I knew right away that I was on the right track. After taking the Vaginal Fluid Analysis Test, he was able to come up with a diagnosis of Inflammatory Vaginitis.  He immediately put me on a protocol of medications and products that I was to use for a four month period.  Today I am 90% better!  The constant burning and itching was gone after the first couple weeks of treatment and now I’m feeling almost completely back to normal!!  After 4 years of hell, I have my life back and I can’t thank Dr. Fowler enough.  He is even easier to reach on the phone than my local doctors.  Dr. Fowler is the real deal and he will help you!”   T. Valley Village, California

Dr. Fowler of Fowler Gyn International (FGI) is the “real deal” and treats women with chronic vulvovaginal conditions from across the entire US. If you have been told you have chronic yeast, don’t even bother to use yeast diets, probiotics, acidophillus, acupuncture, holistic cleanses, and medicated douches, because none of them work. Unless you are diabetic or on recurrent antibiotics, the problem is that the vaginal flora is all out of wack. Or in medical terms, there has been a shift in the type of bacteria that dominates the vaginal flora, known altered vaginal micro-flora pattern. Any one of these patterns can create “culture media” so to speak that promotes the growth of yeast in the vagina. You are asking yourself, what causes a shift in the bacterial flora? There is a list of vaginal insults some of which are age related including that amount endogenous hormone secretion which can be affected by lifestyle stress, bordering weight/anorexia, excessive physical activity, proximity to menopause, and smoking. Others include the functionality of hormone receptors in the vagina, presence of foreign body devices in the vagina, excessive ejaculate or douching with natural secretion being flushed out, and tissue effects of vaginal radiation or systemic chemotherapy. Now you are asking yourself, so how do I fix it? Leave this part up to board certified gynecologist Dr. R. Stuart Fowler. In the aftermath of years of clinical observation and research, Dr. Fowler developed a more sophisticated technique of wet preps known as Vaginal Fluid Analysis or VFA Test. This gives a quantitative analysis of the constituents in the vaginal secretions from which treatment protocols are formulated to “push” the altered micro-flora back towards normal. Then the secretions are not conducive to supporting yeast and voila, the recurrent yeast resolves. To register to become a patient of Dr. Fowler’s, this is done online at FowlerGynInternational.com or call FGI Headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona at 480-420-4001.