To understand yeast infections you have to understand about your body. Your body is an ecosystem that supports a whole host of living micro-organisms including yeasts, bacteria and fungi. It doesn't matter how good your personal hygiene is these microscopic life forms will be there.

Some of them do benefit you but most just use your body as a feeding and breeding ground. As gross as it may sound they do no harm as a healthy body is able to cope with these opportunist life forms. However if something changes in the body environment then all this can change and problems can occur.

It's these changes in surrounding that cause yeast infections. You aren't suddenly being infected by something you've just caught. What is happening is that the yeasts present on your body are reacting to changes that have allowed them to multiply.

The majority of people on the planet have yeasts living somewhere in or on their bodies. Their preference is for warm, moist areas like the vagina, under folds of skin, etc. Usually they are kept in check by some forms of bacteria and the slightly acidic nature of the human body.

The type of yeast that causes most problems is Candida Albicans. It is very opportunistic form that will quickly take advantage of changes that cause the body to become warmer or moister. If they breed quickly enough then they can swamp the good bacteria that normally keep them in check.

The increase in numbers causes a rise in the alkalinity of their surround area. This favours the growth of yeasts still further. Once numbers have increased to a certain point the body will start to react against them and a yeast infection occurs.

Just how quickly your body starts to react against an overgrowth of yeast depends very much on individual tolerance levels. It's clear that some people are very sensitive to increases in the levels of yeasts.

Causes of changes to the body environment include taking antibiotics as they are quite indiscriminate in the types of bacteria they kill off so "good" bacteria is killed off along with the bad. Getting hot and sweaty can also be enough to start off an attack for some people.

So you can see that having yeasts living on or in your body doesn't mean that you have an infection. You and them can coexist quite happily unless something else comes along and triggers off an overgrowth.