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Comment by daed | Hacker News Reader

Was this something you actually did and had success with? If so, did you have chronic BV or just acute BV?

Things we’ve tried: - boric acid suppositories (this helps but the BV always comes back) - hydrogen peroxide douche (no results) - a couple essential oil mixtures (no results) - antibiotics (BV comes back)

Through research it seems the problem may be biofilms. You kill all the bacteria except those hiding in the biofilms and so they just repopulate.

A cursory google shows iodine may bust biofilms, so this May be worth a try.

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I’d gotten my partner’s microbes... After some searching I decided it was the male equivalent of BV. I’ve used various kinds of iodine on myself successfully, but I don’t have a vagina to experiment on. I’d like to experiment on my current partner, but she’s not interested in the experiment, and her condition is very minor in comparison to the partner who motivated my searches.

Another factor to look at is the person’s body temperature. People who are a few degrees below normal supposedly have different intestinal bacteria than people who have a normal body temperature.

There are unique carbohydrates in medicinal mushrooms (uhm... “polysaccharides, glycoproteins and proteoglycans“) and cranberries (D-Mannose) that might be useful to you too...

There are some probiotic blends that focus on lactobacillus that some have found helpful. These can be used externally or internally. See papers like https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1198743X1... and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24299970 for instance. If interested in this, check out the particular types of lactobacillus mentioned in these articles and make sure the product you're purchasing has those, rather than a general lacto blend. It appears that antibiotics should be a short course and probiotics a long course: killing is fast, growing is slower.

The science isn't conclusive but there are ~ zero negative side effects, so it's a good expected value.

Yeah I’d neglected to mention that we’d tried some of that as well... but the only available probiotics matching the “correct” lactobacilli strains were in Europe... so we tried a few weeks of them but between their cost and not being certain they’d even survive the long journey to California we didn’t get many doses and as mentioned weren’t confident they’d be active on arrival.

I'm a bit late to this thread but have you looked into RepHresh Gel?[1] It's a vaginal suppository that supposedly encourages lactobacillus growth. It's approved in the EU for the treatment of BV[2] but sold in the US for "odor elimination." It's definitely a bit pricey - $16 for about a week's worth on Amazon and from what I understand the EU guidelines suggest using it somewhat long-term to treat BV (something like 12 IIRC) so it's far from a quick fix.

[1] http://www.rephresh.com/RepHresh-Products/RepHresh-Vaginal-G...

[2] https://www.onmedica.com/NewsArticle.aspx?id=f7138438-b72c-4...

Yeah we’ve tried that and unfortunately it didn’t work... but we definitely didn’t do 12 weeks of it. Thank you for that info!

I grow medicinal herbs. I have found that with Ayurveda there are herbal washes that help with restoring vaginal pH towards slight acidity.

I don’t grow them as I am not in the right zone, but I have read that there are many herbs that does this function. Plus..Ayurveda takes a whole systems approach and includes dietary changes and lifestyle tips. Most of it was targeted towards menopausal and perimenopausal women who go through the changes and will affect whole body pH. The kind of herbs depends on the individual’s constitution.

I am pretty sure TCM has similar protocols for women’s health but the names were not familiar to me and I didn’t feel confident enough to enquire in a language that I wasn’t fluent in..

Unfortunately Ayurveda and TCM has little to scientific backing, at least as far as I know.

Define ‘scientific backing’. Please.

I'm assuming they're using backing and validation interchangeably.

The type of research that goes into normal medical treatments before they become approved treatments. Studies that show safety and efficacy.

Do you know where in the timeline of human history did ‘science’ appear?

Is boric acid protocol for BV transplanted vaginal microbiome be considered ‘science’?

(Nice. The downvoting begins. And I haven’t even started. What’s the point? You guys please continue to enjoy talking amongst yourselves about scientific ways to deal with vaginal pH.)

Around the time of the enlightenment I'd say.

Please note that I'm not saying that Ayurveda or TMC doesn't contain things that work. I'm just saying that a lot of those things haven't seen any proper testing done, so we don't know whether they work better than a placebo, or even whether they are safe, and of the things we did test, few worked particularly well.

Boric acid for example has been studied and found to work okay: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21774671

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