I’m just gonna warn ya – if you don’t like talking about what is a woman’s time of month, please click off this post now. (Why not head over to my beauty posts instead?!)
Back in November I started a new series: ‘The Nitty Gritty of Being A Girl’. I wanted my blog to be about all parts of my life, including the not so pretty aspects of being a girl. I also wanted to try and encourage people to talk about things – it’s all only natural, so why are we ashamed of something that mother nature created?
So, in this post, I’m talking about periods. In particular, the age old argument of tampons vs pads. There are pros and cons to both, but at the end of the day it just comes down to personal preference.
I used to be scared of tampons when I was younger – it seemed so gross and I was worried it would hurt. I actually spoke to someone recently who told me they were still scared of using tampons – and they’re in their twenties! Let me just clear one thing up: a tampon, if used correctly, will not hurt. Of course, there is the widely known scare of TSS (Toxic Shock Syndrome) the rare but life threatening bacterial infection. As high absorbency tampon use makes up roughly 50% of TSS cases, it is definitely something you should be aware of.
Pads don’t have any known links to TSS as far as I’m aware, so can be safer in that aspect. Many people don’t like pads due to the increase of an accidental leak, or the possibility of it being seen. Then again, many people wear pads for comfort and ease.
Personally, I prefer to use a tampon during the day as I feel more secure and there is just less chances of having an embarrassing leak situation, and then I use a pad at night to let myself rest a bit (lol).
The lovely people over at Veeda sent me a selection of tampons and pads to try*. Veeda is a little different from your average sanitary wear company in that their products are 100% natural cotton so contain no synthetics, no chemicals and no dyes. Both tampons and pads can have nasty chemicals and materials like bleach and plastic in them – do you really want all those chemicals near your intimate area? Veeda also claims to reduce the risk of TSS due to not containing such chemicals, as there has never been a case of tampon-related TSS when using 100% cotton tampons.
The packaging used on all of their products is also biodegradable so completely environmentally friendly too – just remember to pop it in the bin and not to flush it down the loo!
I did actually prefer the Veeda pads to my normal brand of pads – they were softer and smelled a little ‘fresher’. Whilst I didn’t notice a massive difference by using the Veeda products, I did feel much better in myself for using them. Knowing that I wasn’t using products with nasty chemicals definitely made me feel better about demolishing a big bag of chocolate (hypothetical, of course).
Of course, there are many alternatives to tampons and pads – menstrual cups, for example. Do your research and use whatever the hell you want to use!
Have you ever tried 100% cotton sanitary products? What did you think of them? Let me know in the comments below!
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