A doctor has today warned women not to succumb to a bizarre and dangerous trend of using a cucumber as a douche for the vagina which is currently sweeping the web.
Dubbed the ‘vagina facial’, the odd craze involves inserting the peeled salad staple into your intimate parts before twisting it around for about 20 minutes or longer.
Bloggers claim the fruit’s high vitamin content sanitises your genitals and gives it a pleasant odour, and can even reduce the chances of getting sexually transmitted infections.
But an expert has warned the practice could actually leave you at a greater risk of infections like gonorrhoea and even HIV.
Canadian gynaecologist Dr Jen Gunter says this is because washing with a cucumber upsets the natural pH balance of your intimate bits.
Dr Jen Gunter warns about the health risks of carrying out a ‘vagina facial’ using a cucumber (stock photo)
Furthermore, she said that it will in fact cause a bad smell as she warned ‘if you have a vagina you should definitely not do this’.
‘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 cleaning increase a woman’s risk of contracting gonorrhoea or HIV if she is exposed.
‘Paradoxically, it will also cause odour.’
And cucumbers are not the only strange thing women have been putting in their vaginas – women were reportedly ‘glitter bombing’ their vaginas which experts said was dangerous.
Risk of fungal infections
Dr Gunter also warned that all kinds of fungi, and other bugs that can be picked up in a vegetable patch, could end up thriving in your vagina.
She 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 sterilise the cucumber.’
Vagina’s are ‘self-cleaning’
She stresses that women should be assured that douches are unnecessary as vaginas are designed to clean themselves.
Dr Gunter even posted a Tweet to say: ‘A vagina takes care of itself. Like a self cleaning oven.’
If you want to assist it or are worried about odour, experts advise water and a mild soap is best just around he outside of your genital area.
But studies suggest applying irritating products inside their intimate areas poses health risks.
Women who douche are twice as likely to develop ovarian cancer, a national US study in 2016 by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences revealed.
And previous research also found that women who use shower gels and soaps in intimate areas are putting themselves at higher risk of developing sexually transmitted infections.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, say that soaps and lubricants can damage sensitive tissues and raise a woman’s chance of becoming infected with herpes, chlamydia and HIV.
Study leader Joelle Brown said there is ‘mounting evidence’ that using these products internally can increase the risk of bacterial vaginosis – a condition that occurs when the bacterial balance becomes disrupted – and sexually transmitted infections.