Ladies, would you love to feel as knowledgeable, confident and empowered about your intimate health as you do in your favourite outfit?
I love pulling on a gorgeous Yours Clothing dress, grabbing my favourite clutch and heading out into the night, confident in myself. However I haven’t always been as confident about my female intimate health. If this is you, then don’t worry because there’s always the chance to expand your knowledge, just like I have.
Read on as I have all the information you need plus a chance to WIN £50 in Amazon vouchers!
When I was growing up, the internet was only just getting started. I was around in the days when ASOS was As Seen On Screen and you still had to actually leave the house to do your food shopping, purchase cinema tickets and check your bank account.
Now, the whole world is at our fingertips on a multitude of devices. We should be well read in lots of important topics yet why is it that so many girls have the lyrics to the latest Little Mix song down to a T and know far more about the cast of Love Island than they do about their female intimate health?
For the most part, discussing down there is still seen as such a taboo subject. There’s this persistent stigma associated with talking about our “privates” for that reason… we’re taught to keep them private. This can create a huge obstacle in itself if we encounter a medical or sexual concern about our vagina that we really should talk to someone about.
When I was younger, I didn’t feel as though I had anyone that I could speak to about my intimate health and I think a lot of people are in the same boat. There are plenty of times that I’ve felt too embarrassed to talk about about things and, admittedly, it even led to me putting off my first smear test for longer than I should have and mistreating a condition that I thought I had.
I know I’m not alone in feeling like this as so many women are nervous about such matters and mistreatment is far more common than it should be but times are changing.
In recent years, I’ve found the gaps in my knowledge surrounding intimate health are beginning to close for a few reasons. For a start, I do think that as I’ve grown up, I’ve started to care less about what others think about me and that’s led me towards being more open about a lot of things in life because I fear judgement far less than I ever have done.
Plus with age comes life experience and as you get older and you experience just how precious life can be, you realise just how important sorting out our health concerns are as the potential consequences of not doing so are far more terrible than the short term embarrassment of just asking for help.
In addition, the internet has become the most fabulous resource to provide us with so much information about any topic, including female intimate health, from official resources such as pharmacies, the NHS and even Canesten themselves.
As well as this, there are now so many treatments for conditions like Thrush and Bacterial Vaginosis that are available over the counter. Having a little bit of knowledge about the two conditions can help to save you time from having to go to the doctors if your case isn’t severe, money from buying the wrong products until you find the right one and, most importantly, save your health by treating the condition in the right way early rather than mistreating it and having the condition become far worse.
All it takes is knowing the difference between the two and what symptoms to look out for in order to choose the right course of treatment. This is only something that I’ve become particularly clued up on in the last year or so after the Canesten TV adverts prompted me to find out more.
Having that little bit of knowledge can make a wealth of difference to your health and all of the points above together have helped me to become far more confident in talking about female intimate health, choosing the right course of treatment and asking for help if needed.
How much do you really know about female intimate health?
How confidently can you talk about it?
Canesten want women just like you to better understand their intimate health and specifically the differences between Thrush and Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) so that if it is ever needed, they’re able to choose the right over the counter treatment for their concern. This is important because opting for the wrong medication can have detrimental consequences as we really don’t want that, do we girls?
There’s no shame in admitting that you know very little about intimate health, hey, I’m holding my own hands up here but what is wrong is not finding out more about it when there are so many resources at our fingertips. As women, its so important that we’re able to approach our intimate health openly and confidently and we need to feel empowered to make the right choices for our own bodies.
To help you to do that, Canesten have created the Myth Buster Quiz. Its quick and easy to take and at the end it’ll tell you how many you got correct (for me that was 4 out of 6) and it’ll let you know more information about the correct answers.
Fancy winning yourself £50 in Amazon vouchers?
Simply take the Canesten Myth Buster quiz.
COMMENT with your score below AND what you have learnt about your knowledge of intimate health!
The one winner will be chosen at random on Thursday 21st September 2017. Entries must be from the UK ONLY.
*This post was created in partnership with Canesten, all words and opinions are my own.
Oh dear I only got 1/6! My knowledge is terrible but I didn't think it would be. I have learnt the word Squalene and that it exists in birds and the vagina but I have no idea what it actually is so I'm off to google it now 🙂
4 out of 6. Learnt something today.
3 out 6 learned a lot, thanks Laura for the info it's good to know x
I got 2 out of 6, thanks for sharing this information i know more now than i did before x
2 out of 6, that's so bad isn't it!
2/6 – I'm so shocked that I didn't know more! I was surprised sharks have something in common with us, I thought it was cats! Hahaha! I'm not afraid to ask about things when it comes to my imitate health as it's super important. So glad I took this test! xxx
I got 5/6 – although the shark question was an educated guess. I learned that a healthy vagina is actually acidic when I thought it was PH neutral :o)
You've taken some lovely photos for this post, I got 5/6 I am pretty impressed with that! It's great to learn new things, especially for things which are as important as female intimate health x
I got 3 out of 6- not as knowledgeable as I thought I would be! I'd never heard of squalene before, or that it's also found in sharks, so definitely learnt something today!polkaspotsandfreckledots.blogspot.co.uk
4/6 here, not bad, and I'm comparable to a shark, who knew?
5/6! Quite proud of that score. Not a perfect score though, so have learned things! Amy x
5 out of 6! Yeah! I'm not afraid to ask things to my doctors, but I'm not sure I'd be confident enough to talk about it to anyone else x
Love the outfit pictures girl. I'm now going to take the test however I bet I will be extremely embarrassed with how little I know X
4 out of 6 for me and the shark one was defo a guess and I got it right haha go me x as I busy mum.of 2 kids and a hubby that's like a kid lol I'm sometimes left behind for the health side so good to know some of that stuff x
Got 5 out of 6! I missed the last question. Never thought that my instinct will work well. Great to learn something new today.
3/6! I don't even know what squalene is! Emma M
2 out of 6 – Learnt lots!
I had no idea What number of women will suffer from BV!
I got 4/6, I'm surprised "down there" is acidic and not neutral. I think it's great to get people talking about women's health. So many people seem embarrassed to and must suffer irritating problems in silence rather than asking someone for advice.
4 out of 6 , not bad! I was surprised about the shark one!
3 out of 6. All the ones I got wrong were my second choices but as a guess, I'd never heard of squalene before
I scored 5/6, I didn't know how many women have BV
My score was rubbish I got 1/6 I have learned a lot today from this quiz.lynsey.buchanan@yahoo.com
I got 3/6 which is good in my eyes and I have learnt squalene exists in sharks and that the vagina can clean itself which I never knew. Definitely something to google
I am quite scared to take the test but here I go! Wish me luck!!!
I got 4/6! Great post with lots of good information. Even though I suffer from lots of health issues so talk to my doctor regularly, I still struggle with anything about that kind of problem which I know I shouldn't!
Like Saetana above, I got 5/6! The shark question was also a guess for me, and the one I got wrong was the PH balance one, so learnt that a healthy vagina is acidic, not neutral x
I scored 3 and now know the vagina is acidic