How to Prevent Yeast Infections While Taking Antibiotics

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Kayti Brosnan. I'm a registered nurse here in Austin, Texas, and today, I'm going to talk about how to prevent yeast infections while you're taking antibiotics. This is something that's really good and important to consider when you're on antibiotics. And probably the simplest way to do this is when you have the antibiotic prescribed by your doctor or your physician is also to ask for an anti-fungal. Diflucan or Fluconazole are...it's an anti-fungal that you can take alongside the antibiotic to help prevent any sort of offset of the balance of the bacteria and the yeast in your body. A home remedy, which I prefer, would be increasing the acidophilus that you're intaking. So this is through...we call them probiotics. This would be through yogurt or milk -- something that's going to reintroduce more acidophilus that the antibiotic is killing off. So that's kind of what's going on. When you're taking the antibiotic, it's killing the natural bacteria in your body or lowering the levels of it, and then it kind of gives yeast a route to overproduce, causing yeast infections. Other things you can do is eat healthy, avoid a lot of sugar, especially if you have a chronic illness like diabetes. You want to avoid an overconsumption of sugar, which the yeast is going to thrive on. You want to wear appropriate clothing -- cotton underwear, don't stay in wet clothing for too long of a period. And then if you find that you're having a yeast infection, if this is starting to occur, then you can move to steps like over-the-counter Monistat creams or capsules. You can do some home remedies, making your own... You can take a bath in vinegar or you can take a tampon, dip that in yogurt, and insert that like you would a normal tampon. And you can do that two to three times a day, leave it in for a couple of hours and help prevent the overproduction of yeast from occurring. So those are just some ways that you can prevent a yeast infection while you're on an antibiotic."