Is This Why Your Vagina Smells?
By Naweko San-Joyz

So what do you do when your stinky midsection betrays an otherwise healthy vagina? The first step is to actually make sure that your vagina is in tip-top shape.

What’s a Vagina Supposed to Smell Like?

Throughout your menstrual cycle, it’s normal to have a variety of vaginal discharges. Vaginal discharge can take the form of the non-fertile, viscous- and sticky-type discharge to the very fertile, slippery- and clear-type discharge that occurs close to menstruation.

Abnormal discharges are accompanied by itchiness, raunchy smells, and/ or gray-, yellow- or green-colored discharges.

The second step to restoring your vagina to health involves to ruling out the possibility of having vaginal conditions like bacterial vaginosis, a yeast infection or trichomonas vaginitis.

Bacterial vaginosis
Bacterial vaginosis (BV), while more common than yeast infections, doesn’t get much attention in the media.

The cause of bacterial vaginosis remains unclear but this condition is linked to sexual activity and douching. According to a University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) study, a sexually transmitted virus that infects vaginal lactobacilli may cause bacterial vaginosis.

Vaginal lactobacilli are required to maintain a healthy pH and bacterial balance within the vagina. Once this balance is disrupted by a virus, the vagina no longer has a protective barrier and is more susceptible to infection.

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