Below are some ways can help you to avoid the itching, burning, and other discomforts of a vaginal infection. You can’t always avoid one, but you can help lower your risk of getting one. Here are the 10 ways to prevent them:

1. Wearing cotton underwear or panties with a cotton panel at the crotch will help. Stay away from the panty liners, which can increase your risk of recurrent vaginal yeast infections. Yeast can overgrow in moist environments so keeping moisture away from your body can help prevent yeast infections.

2. Don’t wear tight-fitting pants or shorts. This will keep you cool, dry, and “airy.”

3. Stay away from the nylon pantyhose or synthetic leotards every day. If you got have them, find the kind with a cotton panel to absorb moisture away from your body.

4. Change clothes from wet workout gear or a wet swimsuit as soon as you can. Damp places are an ideal spot for a yeast infection to grow.

5. Don’t use douches, scented powders, scented tampons, and feminine deodorant sprays. They contain chemicals and perfumes that upset the natural balance of “good” bacteria and other micro-organisms in the vagina. Having an infection and douching is a bad idea: Douching can spread a yeast infection up through your cervix and into the uterus.

6. Let’s get graphic: Wipe from front to back after using the bathroom to avoid spreading bacteria from the anus to the vagina.

7. For diabetics: Control your blood sugar levels to reduce your risk of yeast. Yeast infections and diabetes are linked. High blood glucose levels from uncontrolled diabetes is linked to all kind of infections.