A small percentage of women often find that a yeast infection cure actually makes their yeast infection worse. Fluconazole is an oral antifungal drug prescribed by doctors to kill the mutated Candida Albicans yeast that is the common cause of vaginal yeast infections. However, the result of the treatment is not always as expected.
Fluconazole works by breaking down the fungus that is causing the infection so that it can no longer survive in the human body. The problem with this type of treatment, and any other type of antifungal treatment, is that once the treatment is over, there is nothing to stop the fungus from re-infecting you if your body’s natural defenses are down.
Your body’s immune system and its colony of friendly bacteria are your body’s natural defenses against bacterial and fungal infections. If these are weakened in any way, the fluconazole you take will not cure your yeast infection. Once you stop your treatment, the yeast infection will easily recur. Everyone swallows Candida naturally when they eat. In a healthy person this is not a problem. Stomach acid kills yeast, and what makes it to the intestines is taken care of by friendly bacteria.
Friendly bacteria are also needed to keep your immune system strong. So if your intestines have few friendly bacteria, then they can’t protect you from re-infecting yeast, and they can’t boost your immune system, so it doesn’t take long for the yeast infection to come back.
When it comes back, it’s usually worse because the antifungal medication will weaken your immune system and also have an effect on the levels of friendly bacteria. When your body gets used to medicines that fight infections, it becomes dependent on these medicines, so it stops fighting infections naturally.
Your infection will also get worse if the fungus has been exposed to fluconazole before. When fungi are exposed too often to the drugs that are there to kill them, they develop a resistance to them. This resistance causes the fungi to mutate into a stronger strain that becomes harder to kill and causes worse infections.
Another reason these antifungal medications make yeast infections worse is because more women are using them without their doctor’s guidance. They are easily available online to buy, so women buy them when they want and use them however they think they need to.
You need your doctor to tell you how to take them and for how long. Sometimes you only need one dose, or it may be at the other end of the scale and you have to take them for weeks. Only your doctor can give you this information, so it is important to consult your doctor before you start using these medications. It will mean the difference between underexposing or overexposing yeast to these powerful drugs.
Once you get a resistant yeast in your body, you may end up on medication for a long time when you are trying to cure an infection that should have cleared up in a few days.