New Year, New You: 5 Resolutions for Your Gynecological Health

Entering a new year is a great time to take stock and make changes to improve your life. If health is top of mind for you and you want to optimize it on every level, starting with your reproductive health is an excellent choice. 

As you probably already know if you’re reading this, your gynecologic health has no small impact on your overall health and wellness.

As women’s health care experts, the team here at North Atlanta OB/GYN certainly understands this influence, which is why we want to discuss ways to boost your gynecologic health this year.

1. Lose those unhealthy pounds

Weight loss tops many New Year’s resolutions lists and for good reason — nearly three-quarters of the population in the United States is either overweight or obese. 

Carrying extra pounds casts a wide net over your health, including your reproductive health. For example, 40%-85% of the millions of American women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are overweight or obese.

Other conditions linked to obesity include:

• Irregular periods
• Infertility
• Higher risk of miscarriage
• Reproductive cancers, including endometrial, ovarian, and breast cancers

Carrying extra pounds can also make you more vulnerable to pelvic floor dysfunction and pelvic organ prolapse.

2. Keep your pelvic floor strong

Your reproductive organs rely on a strong pelvic floor (a band of muscles and soft tissues that creates a sling at the base of your pelvis) for support. 

As you go through life, this floor can weaken thanks to pregnancy, childbirth, carrying extra weight, and the natural aging process. As a result, you can develop pelvic organ prolapse (POP), which affects about 40% of women worldwide. 

POP can affect the function of any organ that shifts out of place and lead to issues such as urinary incontinence.

The good news is that you can avoid POP by strengthening your pelvic floor through targeted exercises called Kegels, which every woman should plug into her wellness regimen. Click here for a quick how-to.

3. Practice safe sex

You might think safe sex practices are for the young, but women of all ages can contract sexually transmitted infections (STIs). There are 20 million new STI cases each year in the U.S.

If you’re on the dating scene this year and meeting new people, we urge you to practice safe sex to protect your health and your fertility.

4. Remember that less is more for vaginal cleaning

You want to stay fresh and clean everywhere on your body, but when it comes to your vagina and genitals, less is more. Your vagina has its own microbiome with a delicate balance of bacteria and flora that create a front-line defense against infection and other issues.

Using harsh cleansers wipes out the good and bad bacteria, disrupting this balance. A better bet is to use only gentle soaps or water and use them externally.

5. Keep up with important, and even life-saving, screenings

Did you know that the rates of cervical cancer are less than half of what they were 50 years ago, thanks to screening? And by screening, we’re referring primarily to the quick-and-easy Pap test that we often perform during your well-woman exam.

Aside from cervical cancer, we can also screen for breast cancer, the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women, outside of skin cancer. Screenings can also involve the aforementioned STIs, including HIV and human papillomavirus (HPV).

Be sure to keep up with your annual visits with us so we can track and screen your health to stay one step ahead of disease and issues, this year and beyond.

If you’d like to learn more about being proactive with your reproductive health or schedule your well-woman exam, contact us by phone or online today at our office in Atlanta, Alpharetta, or Marietta, Georgia.