Taking care of your lady bits is no crime.
However, using a cucumber to cleanse your vagina is not the way to go, ladies.
That’s right, this is the newest trend in self-care.
Many bloggers, vloggers, and health therapists are encouraging women to cleanse themselves using cucumbers – but only after peeling it.
This odd trend is called a “vaginal facial”, where you peel and insert a cold cucumber into your vagina and twist it around for approximately 20 minutes.
Some of the suggestions include leaving it in while sleeping, others suggest just leaving it in until it is no longer cold.
The claims say that the fruit’s high vitamin content “helps sanitize and maintain a pleasant odor” down there and may even help with warding off sexually transmitted infections.
However, most doctors will tell you this is wrong.
In fact, vagina’s are self-cleaning and don’t need help in keeping them fresh and clean, they don’t even need soap.
This trend upsets the natural pH balance of your vagina, possibly posing a greater risk for infections like gonorrhea and even HIV.
Dr. Jen Gunter, a Canadian gynecologist, said that “if you have a vagina you should definitely not do this”. She warns that attempting to clean your lady parts like this will cause more harm than good.
“This idea that some kind of vaginal cleansing is required, be it a peeled cucumber or the ‘feminine washes’ sold at drugstores, is misogyny dressed up as health care and I am having none of it,” she wrote on her blog.
“Vaginas are not dirty. Study after study after study tells us that douches, cleanses, steams, vinegar, pH balancing products, aloe, colloidal silver, garlic or whatever else passing as the vaginal snake oil du jour at best do nothing but have real potential for harming good bacteria or disrupting the mucosal surface.”
“By damaging lactobacilli and the mucosa, attempts at vaginal cleansing increases a woman’s risk of contracting gonorrhea or HIV if she is exposed.”
“Paradoxically, it will also cause odor.”
As if that wasn’t reason enough not to participate in this trend, a variety of fungi and anything else that can be picked up from vegetables may just end up growing and thriving in your own lady garden.
Gunter added: “Cucumbers seem prone to all kinds of nasty fungi and I just don’t think anything capable of getting ‘blossom end rot’ [a type of vegetable rot] should go in a vagina.”
“All in all I’d say it’s probably wise to not introduce an object with unknown plant microorganisms into your vagina.
“And no, a little wash in the kitchen sink it’s going to sterilize the cucumber.”
The point is, if you are truly worried about the cleanliness of your vagina, take comfort in knowing that they are in fact self-cleaning.
Vaginas produce a discharge that is mucus produced from the cervix.
This is a normal part of the female body and is the vaginas way of staying clean and healthy.
When it comes to washing, only water, and mild soap are recommended.
Dr. Vanessa Mackay, a gynecologist and spokeswoman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, previously told The Sun Online: “Mild soap or a mild shower cream and water is all that you need to wash the outside of your bottom, front and back.”
“And you don’t need to wash your vagina – it self-cleans. If you have any concerns about odor you need to contact your doctor.”
Ladies – if “cleansing” is your rationale for using a cucumber anywhere near your vagina, perhaps you should rethink your motive.
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