During my journey to get rid of the bladder infections that used to plague me, I visited doctors all over the world –mostly male- who told me the kind of nonsense that eventually made me feel like an exasperated Alice in Wonderland.

One French specialist even claimed I still had my hymen and needed to have it surgically removed. Let’s just say: that freak was SO not chique. Then one day, a woman gave me a priceless tip; a tip she had received from another woman. I started passing it on to my girlfriends, and I realised this: we need to challenge a system that devalues women, maybe even start our own female health movement!

In 1900, a woman’s life span was about 50 years. Women often became wives and mothers when they had barely left their own childhood. Menopause or old age were not our concerns; we simply did not live long enough. We are doing much better now, with a life expectancy of 82. But to enjoy a better quality of life throughout those hard-won years, we have to start taking charge of our own bodies.

Take my bladder infections. I’ve had them as long as I can remember, but it took me a while to realize that the antibiotics they kept giving me killed so many ‘friendly’ micro-organisms that they left me weaker and more susceptible to… a new bladder infection! (Not to mention those nasty yeast infections that came as a bonus.)

Even though literally millions of women and girls each year have at least one episode of acute bladder infection, the many doctors I visited had no cure and no clue. And then a woman I worked with told me about a naturally occurring simple sugar called D-mannose. It doesn’t kill bacteria, ‘friendly’ or ‘unfriendly’. It simply helps to relocate misplaced E.coli –the bacterium found in over 90% of all bladder infections- from inside our urinary tracts to outside. The best part: it actually works!

I’ve already helped so many other women with this tip and am very grateful to the woman who passed it on to me. It’s such a great excellent example of a network of women helping each other with information about their sexuality and reproductive health. So let’s make a deal. Dare to ask and dare to share. Talk about these things with your mother, your sisters and your girlfriends. Talk to complete strangers even. How about we start the real vagina dialogues?

Here are some sites and books that changed my life:
– for information about D-mannose: www.schoneblaas.nl
– to take charge of your hormonal balance and fight ageing the natural way: www.uzzireissmd.com
– for evidence-based information on girls’ and women’s reproductive health and sexuality, and lots of inspiring stories: www.ourbodiesourselves.org/health-information/