Ep. 66 Recurring Yeast Infections & UTIs: What Your Hormones Have to Do With It

Hey Friend,

Have you ever felt like you’re stuck in a cycle you can’t escape?

👉 You finish antibiotics—only to get another yeast infection.

👉 The UTI finally clears up—then it’s back with a vengeance.

👉 You feel embarrassed, frustrated, and like your body is betraying you.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. In fact, your symptoms aren’t random—they’re signals that your microbiome and hormones are out of balance.

🎧 In this week’s episode of The Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast, I’m breaking down:

• Why the vaginal microbiome is just as important as your gut health
• How perimenopause hormone shifts make infections more common
• The science behind “biofilms” and why these infections keep coming back
• Root-cause strategies to finally stop the cycle of yeast infections and UTIs
• My go-to supplements from Microbiome Labs (Vaginal Balance, MegaIgG2000, and MegaMycoBalance) that support the microbiome naturally

I’ll also share the food and lifestyle habits that protect your body long-term—without harsh medications or band-aid fixes.

Your body isn’t broken. It’s communicating. Let’s learn how to listen and finally heal from the inside out.

In health,

Tracy Erin

✨ Join The Balanced Hormone Solution Today!

If your hormones feel out of control and you don’t know where to start, this is for you!

I’ll walk you through:

✔ Functional labs that reveal what’s really happening in your body

✔ Meal plans designed for balanced blood sugar and hormone support

✔ A 90-day supplement plan tailored to your root causes

✔ Lifestyle strategies that rebuild energy, confidence, and intimacy

➡️ Apply now for The Balanced Hormone Solution

Follow along on Instagram: @tracyerinwellness

Transcript

0:01

Reoccurring yeast infections, burning UTIs, embarrassing odor. If you've ever felt like your vaginal health has a mind of its own, today's episode is for you because I'm gonna connect the dots between your microbiome, your hormones, and the very real symptoms that you have been struggling with. So welcome to the Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast.

Speaker: 0:31

Welcome to the Balance Hormone Solution Podcast. If you're a woman 35 plus feeling exhausted, struggling to lose weight, and wondering where your libido went, this is for you. I am Tracy Aaron, a functional medicine practitioner who helps women balance their hormones naturally. Without prescriptions, guesswork, or trending Nonsense.'cause here's the truth, your symptoms aren't random. They're signals. And if you know how to listen, you can fix the root cause and start feeling like yourself again. If you're ready for real solutions, let's get to it.

1:11

I am your host Tracy Aaron, a registered nurse and a functional medicine practitioner helping women 35 plus balance their hormones naturally without prescriptions, guesswork, or that white knuckle hustle, or all too familiar with. So if your energy, mood, and confidence have been hijacked, you are a hundred percent in the right place. So let's go ahead and dive into this today. Such a fascinating topic. Uh, I just got home from three amazing days in Nashville with the, um, microbiomes lab company. They had a three day conference, really great food, great venue, great keynote speakers, and you know, it's. In, in functional medicine, there's so many pieces to the puzzle all the time because the body's very complex, right? I always tell my clients that healing is simple and complex at the same time. So it takes time to put the puzzle pieces together and sometimes the body is screaming with its symptoms and it's really easy to see and other times you really have to do some more detective work, which is what is so fascinating about functional medicine for me. Um, as a practitioner of it, because it definitely, every single case is different and it keeps things interesting, but sometimes we forget about the basics. Sometimes we go so deep into the weeds that we forget about the most foundational pieces. And so hearing about the microbiome and the importance of our gut health for three days over and over and over just really reminded me how basic and how important this is, no matter what we're trying to heal. Okay. And I always have to say this to my clients, like, it doesn't matter to me. I care. I'm empathetic about it, but it's not going to change things. If you come to me with a big diagnosis, let's say you have Lyme disease. Somebody's told you you have mold illness, you've got an autoimmune disease like Hashimoto's or hypothyroid, or. Or Graves disease or multiple sclerosis or recurring active viral infections, right? Parasites you can't get rid of. It doesn't matter what is over on the other side over there, we have to start at the root, and that is exactly why in the balanced hormone solution, I start all women in the same exact place because even though our expressions of disease can look different the way that our bodies are getting into. Grooves of oxidated stress, inflammation, and beginning a disease process often has a very similar story. So we always have to come back to foundations, and one of those big foundations is gut health, the microbiome. Something that, what you will probably find fascinating is this idea that scientists have found that we actually have more bacterial and viral cells in our body than we have human cells. I mean, supposedly if I wasn't a Christian, that would pose some kind of anthropological, philosophical dilemma, right? Like, then what are we? But you know, as a Christian, I definitely have that worldview that God has made us and we are here for a purpose. And so, um, you know, I most certainly am a human being and a female at that. So all that to say. The microbiome is tremendously fascinating. I don't think we'll ever get to the end or the bottom of fully understanding it. However, there is so much we know. About it and how the various things that can go awry within our own gut health has multiple expressions into what we might consider, um, unwanted symptoms and most certainly disease today. So let's get to this really hot, heavy. Hitting topic that we've all dealt with at one point or or another in our female journey, and that is our vaginal health. Okay? So women, like we might whisper about this. We might mumble, we might even tell our bestie, but we're rarely getting real solid answers for vaginal health. Okay? Because like, maybe this sounds familiar, you just finished a round of antibiotics for something that you had to quote unquote had to take them for, and boom, here comes another yeast infection. I don't know about you. I've been in the shoes and then, or it's like you finally get rid of that UTI and it sneaks back a few weeks later. Right. And it's embarrassing, it's uncomfortable. And honestly, when these things come back and back and back, you just start to feel betrayed by your own body. Like, what's going on here? What am I missing? And when is this all going to end? Um, I mean, I've had clients who tell me that they keep a just in case bag in their. You know, full of like cranberry pills or wipes, extra underwear or pads or, um, the little fungal tube, the antifungal tube that you can get in the over counter, uh, yeast infection medication, right? Because she never knew when symptoms were gonna flare. And the problem is, is that these types of things could be so troublesome. They keep you from saying yes to life, and that is no way to live. And yet this is the reality for so many women. So let's get down and dirty. No pun intended when we talk about this. So like point number one, the vaginal microbiome is a key player. I want you to think about this. It's not just the gut that has its own microbiome, this living source of microbes that are always at play. And there are, let's say. Um, good bacteria and bad bacteria. Just to minimalize it, you know, we've got, um, keytones, we've got commensal, we've got pathogens, we've got viruses. We have other, uh, parasitic infections, right? But, but they all, the key is that they all need to work together. We're really not trying to eradicate everything. Guess what? It's the same thing in your vagina. We have. A microbiome inside the vagina cavity, and it has its own ecosystem of bacteria and yeast. It's so similar to the cavity of your gut, right? And the star of the show of this ecosystem is the lactobacillus species. Now this is in charge of keeping the pH balanced and our yeast in check. So things like antibiotics and sugar and birth control, pills and stress, and even low estrogen and perimenopause, they all shift this balance. Okay? So you don't even need antibiotics, and you could be finding yourself suffering from yeast infection simply because you're in perimenopause, right? Because of the decrease in estrogen over time. So then what happens is we get this overgrowth of yeast. Or opportunistic bacteria start to flourish and boom, there's that itching odor that burning the discharge. We all know those dreaded symptoms. Okay, so we're looking for the very delicate balance of microbes in the ecosystem within the vagina microbiome. Now, point number two is that our hormones, our specific hormones and our microbiome are connected. Okay? So estrogen, that's that sex hormone, that's, you know, keeping us like juicy and, and thick and wet, right? So estrogen keeps the vaginal lining thick and full of glycogen. Just think of, yeah, like, like, you know, a grape versus a raisin. Right? Estrogen is keeping tissue plump and saturated. Now this, this glycogen feeds good bacteria, but when estrogen dips in perimenopause, we're gonna get less glycogen. Which means we're gonna have a weaker microbiome defense, but you have less soldiers at play. More opportunistic infections are going to come out, right? And also the cortisol and insulin imbalance. How does that work? Well, these things raise systemic inflammation all over the body. Now, inflammation and oxidative stress is going to automatically lower the immune defenses. Okay. We don't need any more reasons I don't think, to control cortisol and insulin imbalance like they. Their effects are rampant and we definitely need to get on top of those the best that we can and, and if we're suffering from getting sick all the time or lower immunity, it's something to really consider prioritizing cortisol and insulin first. Now, another hormone that has to do with our microbiome is progesterone, and that's because this is that calming hormone. It not only. Helps calm our moods, our anxieties helps us to sleep, but it calms inflammation in the body. So when it's low, hello perimenopause, your body is gonna become more reactive because you've lost this defense. Right? So the last point, point number three is this whole like science of recurrence. What are we talking about here? UTIs often. Um, have like a biofilm around them. These bacteria protect themselves. That means that they hide in the bladder wall and they're waiting to reemerge. So simply because let's say you took that quarter teaspoon of baking soda and water, boom, you don't have burning when you pee anymore, doesn't mean the bacteria are gone. Right. We've just suppressed that symptom and hey, in the middle of pain, I'm all for that. And take a note of that.'cause that is, that is a, a wife's not a wife's tale. What is it like a grandma's trick that we all need to use, um, when we're, when we're having that, um. Burning pain during urination. However, we still have to deal with the actual infection at play. So yeast that's, you know, floating around in this delicate ecosystem, it can form resistant colonies in this vaginal canal. Right, and so this is why we can get stuck in this endless cycle because let's say we continue to use antifungals, well, they build this yeast builds itself up against that. So same thing about antibiotic resistance use. Same thing happens in the vagina. If we utilize treatments over and over and over again, our bodies can become desensitized to them, and this also weakens this microbiome here. Now, if our microbiome has less diversity. Then we're going to get what we call poor immune modulation. This is where immune system is not doing the job that it normally can do. So then both our gut and the vaginal ecosystems, their communication, they're consistently talking through the immune system, and all of a sudden they've lost the communication system. There is no more way to get messages back and forth and systems simply. Begin to fail. So I was just reminded while I was at this conference about how powerful it is to keep our vaginal cavity in Tiptop Health, and they have some amazing products that they're getting great results with right now. And I actually had been using vaginal balance in particular with many of my clients and seeing good things too. But it was really great to see doctor, after doctor, after doctor stand up on stage and talk about how many thousands of women are being helped by this protocol. And this is one I'm gonna share with you now. So with, uh, microbiome Labs, they've got three products that are really changing the game when it comes to yeast infections and reoccurring UTIs. And number one is that vaginal balance. So vaginal balance. You take two caps a day, and what it is, is it's contains this targeted probiotics to restore specifically the lactobacillus dominance. Okay. We need that to be the highest strain present in the vaginal cavity, and it's got a couple other strains in there that will do it their job, but that's really what it's, it's aimed at restoring the health of that vaginal microbiome. The next thing is something called mega IgG 2000. Now this is something specifically for. For the immune system, it is an immunoglobulin, and what it's gonna do is it's gonna bind to toxins and it's gonna support the immune defenses so your body can fight off invaders. Okay. So we have to, we have to attack this from multiple ways. Okay. We're not just trying to give more good guys. We're also trying to strengthen the health and vitality. Of all of the army, right? And so sometimes our defenses get low when our immune system is beginning to suffer. So these immunoglobulins really strengthen the army that's already present. And the last thing is something called mega micro balance. Now this is a specific set of antifungal herbs like capic acid and and oleic acid. And these are gonna help balance yeast without wrecking the overall system. These three things at play really for a maximum of two weeks is all you need. Well, I say that, but let me give you some food strategies too.'cause there's always food. Food first. Well, I really like to say, you know, lifestyle first, then nutrition, then supplements, then medicine if necessary. So, but let me just start with food here. Like we, we, obviously everybody knows this. We're, we're all taught this and we try it and it doesn't work on its own. No, it's not gonna work on its own, but it is going to compliment the above. So when we lower sugar and refine carbs, like,'cause the yeast is thriving on the excess glucose that is just hanging around in those cells. So we need to get rid of that supply. Now we need to prioritize fiber. And that's because fiber in our gut, it's feeding that beneficial bacteria. Okay? And, and it's, if we're not pooping, we're not detoxing estrogen. And when that estrogen recirculates, we are going to stack up the. Unbeneficial or harmful bacteria in both our gut and our vaginal microbiome. Uh, I'll never forget things like fermented foods. Do we need a lot of them? No, but you know, half, uh, a table spooned, a quarter cup of sauerkraut. Couple times a day. Perfect. Unsweetened yogurt. Amazing. My family drinks keefer every single day. Kimchi, if you like, the vinegar, spice, these are gonna help encourage the microbial diversity, right? Because we don't want a bunch of different kind of soldiers, not always just one. And then, um, lastly, in terms of like food, it's all about hydration. But it's not just water, it's mineralized water. So we need to keep those mucus membranes healthy. We really, really need to make sure that we are hydrating on a cellular level. So what are the things that we can do from a lifestyle perspective that will help with this overall picture is, uh, this hopefully is a no brainer, but avoid harsh soaps like nobody's douching anymore, right? Okay, let's stop that. If we are, let's, that disrupts totally disrupts the pH. And especially as you move into perimenopause, we can't handle that anymore. Our system has become so sensitized and delicate that any amount of shifts is going to make drastic changes. We don't want that, so let's just throw those harsh soaps and, and, um, douches away even, I would say no, no essential oils as well. So supporting estrogen naturally. With seeds, right? If you like the seed cycle, I've got a great recipe for you that you can make these fun little balls. They're like dessert, and you get one a day. It's a perfect way to be, quote unquote, balancing your hormones by eating something fun. So send me a message if the, if you want that recipe there. But things like flax, pumpkin seeds, protein forward meals, these really make a big difference managing stress. Okay, because high cortisol is gonna deplete the immune system, right? High cortisol is going to prevent us from making more progesterone, so those daily nervous system practices. Okay. Whatever you can incorporate on a daily basis. Things like deep breathing, prayer, stretching, pausing before meals. All these things make a difference. And then let's talk about intimacy like sex health tips. So for women, like get up and urinate after you've been intimate. Um, you can also, uh, you know, just make sure that you're keeping that area clean and if you really, really, really are suffering with especially something called bacteria vaginosis over and over and over, reoccurring infections, maybe it's time to get your partner checked. That's a real possibility, and there are things that we can do to improve his microbiome that will improve your microbiome as well. So don't neglect that connection there. But, um, obviously if you've had a round of antibiotics for whatever reason, a hundred percent. We need to be beefing that gut health back up with the right types of probiotic. Promise me you're not gonna go to Amazon. Promise me you're not gonna go to Walmart or Whole Foods even and buy some of these probiotics that you can get over the counter. I'm telling you, you're gonna waste your money and you're gonna waste your time. Then you're gonna wonder why you're still sick. Okay then done that. So this, this lesson, this podcast here, this is all about like, what I want you to take away from this is for you to start thinking about patterns. Okay. Notice the patterns. So for you in your own life, what are the reasons that are leading you up to your expression of discomfort and disease? Like, are your symptoms worse after sugar? Are they worse around your period? Is it simply just after antibiotics, like jot it down. Awareness is step one in breaking the cycle in anything that is reoccurring. Okay, so my message always, you're not broken. Your body is simply sending you signals that your microbiome and your hormones are needing attention. So with the right root cause approach, things like nourishing foods, intentional supplements, lifestyle shifts. Okay? You can finally break the cycle. Of recurring infections, you can, and by doing so, you'll reclaim that confidence in your body. So if you want these guided protocols, like the exact strategies that I use inside the balanced hormone solution in my practice, you don't have to live in survival mode anymore. I want you to know that get in touch with me. There is so much hope. And help, and it's not as difficult or as expensive or as time consuming as it may sound. All right, so next time I would love to talk more about what's happening inside this vaginal microbiome and, um, what is the real factors at play here and more tips on how we can turn this around so that we can be a little bit more comfortable. In terms of all that's going on down there. All right. Until next time, I will see you on the next Balanced hormone solution.

Speaker 3: 20:08

That's it for today's episode of the Balanced Hormone Solution Podcast. If this resonated, don't just listen. Do something about it. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you know another woman who's tired of feeling like a stranger in her own body. Send her this way for more support. Check out the show notes. I've got resources to help you get started. Just remember, your body isn't broken, you just need the right tools. See you next time.