At the beginning of this article you need to know that douching can double the risk of developing ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer is a disease widely known as the ‘silent killer’ and a surprising number of women are affected by it.
According to many US scientists in the US, vaginal washing, which is practiced by some women who think it makes them feel cleaner, could be really dangerous.
In case you do not know, douching is the practice of squirting water, or fluids into the vagina. At this point you must know that most doctors are against this practice, mainly because it changes the natural balance of healthy bacteria and can make it easier to pick up infections.
According to a poll, conducted by Express.co.uk, 29 per cent of the 232 people who were asked admitted to regularly douching, while 57 per cent said they had never done it.
One 14% of these women admitted to have done it once or twice.
Many experts claim that the vagina is self-cleaning.
According to many studies, douching can be linked with cervical cancer, reduced fertility, yeast infections, pelvic inflammatory disease (which is an infection of the uterus) and ectopic pregnancies.
A study, conducted by the National Institute of Environmental Sciences, has linked douching with ovarian cancer.
According to Joelle Brown, an epidemiology professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study, douching and ovarian cancer are linked.
She also added that many women continue to douche, even though most doctors are strongly against this practice. Women think that douching increases the cleanliness of the vagina, but in fact, this practice can cause you some serious health problems.
Which is why Joelle says that women need to stop this practice immediately.
The ovarian cancer is widely known as the silent killer of women. This is mainly because women often experience no symptoms until the disease has progressed to an advanced stage.
According to Cancer Research UK, each year around 7,300 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer and long-term survival remains just 35 per cent.
Meanwhile in America, around 20,000 American women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer and about 14,500 die from it annually, confirms the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
According to the analysis, published in the journal Epidemiology, followed more than 41,000 women throughout the US. and Puerto Rico since 2003.
Namely this participants were 35 to 74 years old, and every participant had a sister who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. However, when they became part of this study, these participants were free of breast and ovarian cancer.
As time went by, in July 2014, researchers found 154 cases of ovarian cancer among participants.
According to the results from this study, women who reported douching during the year before entering the study nearly doubled their risk of ovarian cancer.
This link between ovarian cancer and douching became even stronger, as soon as the scientists looked only at women who did not have breast-cancer genes in their family.
Last but not least you need to know that according to several recent studies ovarian cancer is the world’s fourth biggest cancer killer.