Why Some Women Are Giving Up Tampons For Good

Maryann Flasch, a 32-year-old office manager from Austin, Colorado, used to suffer from vaginal itching, dryness and infections when she got her period, which she attributed to using tampons and pads. She had resigned herself to buying tube after tube of topical painkillers — until she discovered the menstrual cup.

“I suffered for years with the side effects of using tampons/pads because I didn’t know there was another option,” Flasch wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. “Not only do [menstrual cups] reduce garbage and mess, but they are a lifesaver for women that find tampons and pads to be highly irritating.”

Sara Austin, a 25-year-old occupational therapist from Gainesville, Florida, also says that cups are easier to use than tampons and pads. She cited relief from vaginal dryness — as well as a more pleasant olfactory experience.

She’s not the only woman who admitted to experiencing a few leaks before learning how to insert and remove a menstrual cup properly. When it’s time to empty a cup, a woman pours the collected blood into the toilet, washes the cup in the sink with warm soapy water, and then reinserts it into her vagina. If she happens to be somewhere where she can’t wash the cup, she can just empty it out, wipe it off with some toilet paper and then reinsert.

That airtight seal Tierno mentioned can also get users in trouble: In a single-patient case published in the International Journal of STD & AIDS, a researcher writes about a 20-year-old patient whose Mooncup was stuck so far up her vagina that even the doctor had trouble prying it away.

But most of the research comparing cups to other menstrual products find that women either like them as much as tampons and pads or prefer them over other options.

The Huffington Post