Vaginal Discharge Colours | Is My Discharge Normal:Thrush, Bacterial Vaginosis, STI, Yeast Infection

vaginal discharge is really common it can happen at any age but it's more common after puberty and it will vary in amount consistency color smell depending on whereabouts you are in your menstrual cycle and also depending on whether you are pregnant ovulating sexually aroused it changes all the time but what happens when the color is completely different to what your usual vagina discharges or it's just something that you're not expecting in this video we will be talking about the different colors of vaginal discharge what do they mean are they normal and actually can you just treat yourself at home and focus on self-care or is it time to just ditch that and go and see your doctor hi ladies i'm dr simi former surgeon current gp and cosmetic doctor welcome to my channel where we discuss all things skin and women's health already done a video where i talk about the different types of smells that can be associated with vaginal discharge and you can watch that video here in this video though the main focus is about the color of the vaginal discharge so the first color that i want to focus on is yellow green okay this is not normal my alarm bells are ringing and i'm thinking to myself s t i the sti that characteristically gives a frothy yellow green vaginal discharge is this little guy here so say hello to trichomonas vaginalis this is a microorganism or a parasite that causes the sti that's called trichomoniasis this is usually caught by having sex without a condom with somebody that is infected with trichomonas vaginalis comment down below if you've never heard of trichomonas vaginalis because when i mention it to my patients most of them have never heard of it they've heard of other stis so chlamydia gonorrhea genital herpes but they've never heard of tv which is really interesting because it's the commonest non-viral sdi in the world more than 270 million cases of trichomonas vaginalis occurred in 2008 and that was more than the total combined numbers of chlamydia and gonorrhea cases i'm just going to let that sink in 270 million and the thing that's a little bit worrying about it is the fact that some women don't even know that they've got trichomonas vaginalis so 50 of women are affected don't have any symptoms and of course if you don't have any symptoms and you're having unprotected sex you don't realize that you are spreading the infection to other people when symptoms do occur though they're really characteristics so as i've mentioned you get that frothy yellow green vaginal discharge it can smell quite offensive as well and there can be other symptoms so for example burning and stinging when passing urine soreness around the lips of the vagina and itching around the vagina as well if you have got these symptoms you would need to go and get yourself checked out in sexual health clinic in the uk we call these gum clinics but most countries will have something similar the good news is that trichomonas vaginalis is treatable treatment for this is actually antibiotics which both you and your current sexual partner will need to take as well as your previous partner or partners in the last four weeks also once you've had the antibiotics you'll need to avoid sex for at least one week whilst you're taking them the other sti that can give a yellow discharge is gonorrhea so again gonorrhea is another sexually transmitted infection that in women can be what we call asymptomatic i.e it doesn't give symptoms so you don't know that you have it so 50 of women don't have any symptoms if they've got gonorrhea and this means that it can go untreated for a long time in the women that do have symptoms though you can get this yellow vaginal discharge and get abdominal pain or pelvic pain there can be burning and stinging when you're passing urine intermenstrual bleeding can also cause pain during sex pain during set's actually really common so much so that i've made a video about it for you here and i discuss all the common causes i also give recommendation and tips for how to improve the condition the next discharge i want to talk about is red or pink this can be normal or abnormal it depends on the circumstances so for example if you are having a red or a pink discharge around the time that you're expecting your period then this could just be completely normal it means that there is blood around and that's what's causing the red and the pink color of the discharge you know what i mean you know we've all been there you go to the toilet you wipe and you look at the tissue and you're like yep she's coming and i'm going to be wearing black knickers from tomorrow towards the end of the period a lot of women though find that the discharge becomes more kind of like a dark brownie color and this is because the flow of the blood is so slow and the blood is hanging around for much longer in the vagina it's becoming oxidized and this is giving that brown or dark red tinge to the vaginal discharge this is nothing to worry about you don't need any treatment and it usually clears up when your period has completely finished another time when you can get a pink discharge or a red discharge is shortly after sex i'm talking about kind of within the first 24 hours sometimes even within the first 30 minutes this can be due to the fact that during sex there's friction so you can have tiny cuts and scrapes in the vagina which bleed and then cause the vaginal discharge to be like a pinky or tinged color sometimes some women experience a pinky discharge or red discharge or just frank blood in between their periods so they're not expecting their periods let's say for another few weeks but they're getting a discharge that's looking like their periods about to come so this is called spotting and in medical terms we would call it intermenstrual bleeding so bleeding in between your periods sometimes intermenstral bleeding is a sign that you need to go and see your doctor so have a look at my video about seven signs that something might be wrong with your period where i give more information about that so there are some circumstances where having a pink or red vaginal discharge starts to ring my alarm belts first example is if you're expecting your period and you've also recently had unprotected sex so i'm talking about sex without condom and then you get this pink or red vaginal discharge around the time when your period would normally come that is bringing my alarm bells because you could be pregnant so this tinge of pink or red that you're seeing that you think might be the beginning of your period could actually be something called an implantation bleed what happens with that is that your uterus has been preparing itself to have a period so the lining is nice and thick and it's got lots of blood vessels and it's nice and plump and then along comes a fertilized egg and it attaches itself to this nice plump lining and it burrows itself in and this causes tiny amounts of bleeding which you may then see as a pink vaginal discharge and you may think oh okay cool my period's coming soon no you may not see that period for another nine months or so because you're pregnant so if this is you you're in a situation where you're seeing a pink vaginal discharge it's not your normal period you're a little bit late for your period and you know you had unprotected sex the best thing to do is get a pregnancy test so you know whether you're pregnant or not the second one that rings my alarm bells is if you are already pregnant or in early pregnancy and you start noticing a blood stained or a pink vaginal discharge this could be a sign of an early miscarriage so in this situation you definitely want to seek medical advice urgently the third example is if you have entered menopause so if you're a woman who hasn't had a period for like a year or close on a year and then suddenly you start getting vaginal discharge that's pink or tinged with red even if it's not frank bleeding that is a worrying sign because it could be a sign of endometrial cancer so please go and see your doctor so that you can have the appropriate tests and have the diagnosis made and have early treatment if necessary the next one is cream or white vaginal discharge if you have a thick clumpy white vaginal discharge this is most likely going to be thrush a thrush is a yeast infection and it's not that the yeast has suddenly come and infected the vagina the yeast is resident in the vagina it normally lives there anyway but its growth is kind of controlled because there are other bacteria that are competing good bacteria that also live in the vagina if there's ever a situation where those competitive bacteria that are living in the vagina are killed off such as when you have a course of antibiotics then they're used to like it's time to come out and play and they over grow and this is what's giving that kind of white cottage cheese like discharge actually i'm not sure who was the first person to describe this discharge as looking like cottage cheese but it's a really spot-on description so i love it maybe i don't love it i'm really sorry if i've put anybody off having cottage cheese for the rest of their life this is not the only type of discharge that you can have with thrush it doesn't always look like cottage cheese sometimes it can look like cream or double cream oh my god i'm literally using all of these different food analogies that's probably putting people off food so again really sorry if you now no longer want to put cream or double cream on your dessert but thrush can look like that not all women are aware when they have thrush so some women can have thrush and have no symptoms and that's quite common so there have been situations where i've had to do a gynecological examination on a patient and i've put the speculum in and i've had a look and i'm like oh it looks like you've got flash and the woman's like oh i didn't realize that i had rash because she didn't have any symptoms if you do get symptoms with rush the common ones are volval itching or burning or stinging and sometimes the lips of the vagina can actually look red and swollen it can be uncomfortable to sit down it can be uncomfortable to have sex so this is another cause of dyspareunia painful sex sometimes if there's just small amounts of thrush and it's not causing you any symptoms it doesn't necessarily need to be treated because it can clear up by itself but there are some situations in which even if you don't have symptoms if you're found to have thrush we recommend that you treat it and one of those conditions is during pregnancy so we treat thrush with anti-fungal or anti-yeast medication and this comes in the forms of tablets pessaries and creams a quick note about the tablets and the pessaries please take note because this one goes in your mouth and this one goes in the vagina so you don't want to get those two mixed up cream or white vagina discharge can also be normal especially if it's not associated with itching or burning or stinging and if your usual vaginal discharge is cream or white and it doesn't have an offensive smell and they're only small amounts so it doesn't always mean that you've got thrush if you have a cream or white discharge the next vaginal discharge we're talking about is gray characteristically this is a common type of discharge that you get if you've got bacterial vaginosis so bacterial vaginosis is not a sexually transmitted infection it's classed as a sexually associated infection and what all that's saying really is that you don't tend to get bv if you've never had sex and it's not caused by having sex but it's associated with women that have sex the main thing that contributes to having bv is a change in the ph of the vagina so the ph rises it becomes more alkaline maybe due to for example washing inside the vagina with certain soaps douching using perfume products all of these change the ph of the vagina and cause an overgrowth of a certain type of bacteria which then gives this gray discharge it's usually not associated with itching or irritation although some women can experience that as well the other characteristic thing about this discharge is that it has a fishy smell some women also notice that the smell is stronger after they've just had a shower and washed down below with soap or after sex if you have this kind of discharge please see your doctor because it can be treated the way that we treat it is with antibiotics either as tablets gel or as a cream the final color of vaginal discharge that i want to talk about is clear so this is your normal vaginal discharge and it can have no smell or odor or it can have a slightly acidic smell and it varies in amount and inconsistency depending on where you are in your period cycle if you are ovulating sexually aroused or breastfeeding you can have more of this kind of discharge the discharge changes in consistency so at times it's more kind of stringy and stretchy and watery and other times it thickens up and it can be a little bit kind of snotty or it can be more runny and stringy and a bit more like egg white this doesn't need any treatment especially if it's not associated with any itching or burning or irritation of the vulva now that we've gone through all the different types of colors that you can get a vaginal discharge i want to talk to you about what you can do at home to help yourself to reduce your risk of having abnormal vaginal discharge or when to just go and see a doctor let's talk about self-care to reduce your risk of having abnormal vaginal discharge practice good personal hygiene so what i mean by that is make sure that you are washing the vulva daily so wash the outside of the vagina avoid douches where you're washing inside the vagina because this changes the ph and can cause you to have bv and the discharge that's associated with bv avoid kind of perfumed soaps bubble baths vaginal deodorants femme fresh or feminine white all of these can increase your chance of having that great discharge that's associated with having bacterial vaginosis some of these can also predispose you to having flush i know for some of you you're going to be like i don't need to be told this but not everybody knows but when you've gone to the toilet and you've done your pee wipe from front to back because what you don't want to be doing is transferring all of the bacteria from the anus towards or into the vagina because that can give you an abnormal vaginal discharge the next tip is practice safe sex so in the past when i've said this to some women they've gone yeah i'm practicing safe sex i've got my contraception i've got my pill no that's not safe sex that will protect you from pregnancy i'm talking about protecting yourself from getting an sti and the only thing that's going to do that is a condom so as well as your usual pill or implant or whatever contraceptive method you've chosen you also need to use a condom to prevent stis such as trichomonas vaginalis wear cotton underwear so sometimes this one seems like a fluffy one you know like oh wear cotton underwear everything is going to be nice and fresh and down there it it kind of is but it also kind of isn't because synthetic underwear is more associated with kind of sweating and moisture down there and that can encourage the growth of certain bacteria or yeast to give you thrush so this is why we recommend wearing cotton underwear there are some instances when you just need to ditch the self-care and go and see your doctor so those instances are if you are having bleeding in between your periods regularly if you're having a blood stain discharged after menopause or if you've got unusual vaginal discharge such as that green yellow discharge that i've mentioned other instances are if you have a discharge that's associated with a fever or feeling unwell crampy lower abdominal pain then you really need to be seeing your doctor so that you can have a proper assessment and a diagnosis of the cause i hope that you have found that video really informative and please don't be embarrassed i say this a lot in my videos when i'm talking about women's health because i think that we don't like discussing certain things because we feel that we may be judged don't let embarrassment stop you from taking control of your own health and going to see your doctor for most doctors there is nothing we haven't seen or heard so it's quite difficult to embarrass us and i think you're often more embarrassed about having to tell the story of what's happened if you are having an abnormal vaginal discharge that is your body's way of telling you that something is up so go and seek the right help if you found this video useful please share it and of course comment below i love reading your comments and i'm happy to answer any questions that you've got

Channel: Dr Simi Adedeji

Views: 5,692,407

Rating: 4.9601817 out of 5

Keywords: discharge colors, vaginal odour, discharge from vagina, is the colour of my discharge normal, Does My VAGINA Smell Normal, thrush symptoms, smelly discharge, Vaginal discharge colour, colour of my discharge, is my discharge normal, yellow discharge, grey discharge, white discharge, vaginal discharge types, vaginal discharge treatment, vaginal yeast infection, Yeast infection symptoms, yeast infection discharge, red discharge but no period, green discharge

Id: 3jsUgrYBp-g

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/IrieReign]

Thank you for sharing this! I love seeing this kind of representation in the health and wellness field. Hearing a crusty, old white man talk to about vaginal health is getting REAL old 😂

[u/UnsettlingAura]

This is very helpful! I'm so glad you posted this

Also her accent is adorable, I loved listening to her talk

[u/thisaintprada]

This is perfect timing. I just had a transvaginal ultrasound done 2 days ago and I still have the permanent cringing 😬 face.

[u/amitaf999]

Thanks so much for sharing! I subscribed to her channel and will be playing much closer attention to my vaginal health 👍🏽