Tampon Health

Tampons are designed to catch menstrual flow. They are easy to use, affordable, and preferable in many cases. Simplistically speaking choosing the right tampon shouldn't be difficult for most women and fairly quidkly we learn that both the fit and the absorbancy have to match your anatomy and physiology to be comfortable and safe. Tampons that contained certain types of fibers in the 1970s and 1980s that were too absorbant encouraged the overgrowth of bacteria that caused Toxic Shock Syndrome.  Once these polyacrylate rayon-containing tampons were removed from the market very few of these cases are ever reported. Tampons are packaged to be sterile from production, but most are not sterile, and rarely there have been recalls of sanitary products that have been determined to carry bacteria from the manufacturing point. Tampons are not a typical source of infection. Tampons come in many sizes, and larger ones will retain more menstrual blood, for the most part. Most physicians will encourage relatively frequent change of your tampon to decrease total wearing time of any one tampon, and pad use at night will prevent a woman from wearing any individual tampon for too many hours. Night use for the most part is not harmful, but discouraged as a general rule. While tampons come in a variety of sizes and there are some variations in fiber content many have cotton as their primary fiber. The way the tampons are designed few fibers are ever shed during use, but some women will notice some.Tampons used when you do not have flow at all, or when the flow is extermely light could cause drying and even 'catch' the lining of the vagina so that some flakes of tissue are passed. The shedding of a body part is medically called desquamation, and there are vaginal infections that cause this producing a discharge that under the microscope would look like many cells. Actually yeast infections can do this as can a disorder called inflammatory
vaginitis. Toxic Shock doesn't produce vaginal desquamation. Actually with Toxic Shock a rash develops, and many days later if desquamation occurs it's usually of the hands or the feet one to two weeks after the infection started. Fibers from cloth or sanitary pads can work their way into the vagina, so it's not only tampons that cause cause the presence of fibers. It is not known if stray fibers can be a chronic source of infection, but when women have chronic vaginal infections an source of contamination should probably try to be eliminated, including tampon use until cured.