It’s not a crime to want to take good care of your lady bits.
But ladies, using a cucumber to cleanse your vagina is not the way to go.
Yes, you read that right.
Bloggers, vloggers and a number of alternative health therapists are encouraging women to cleanse their lady garden with the salad staple – but only after peeling it (a thinly veiled attempt at safety advice, perhaps.)
The odd trend – dubbed a “vagina facial” – apparently involves inserting the cold cucumber into your vagina before twisting it around for about 20 minutes.
Some even suggest sleeping with it you-know-where and others say you should leave it in until it’s completely warmed through.
They claim the fruit’s high vitamin content “helps sanitize and maintain a pleasant odor” down there and can even ward off sexually transmitted infections.
But any doctor worth their credentials will tell you that is wrong.
The fact is, vaginas are self-cleaning – they don’t need any extra help to keep them fresh – not even soap.
And using a cucumber as a form natural douche could actually leave you at a greater risk of infections like gonorrhea and even HIV, by upsetting the natural pH balance of your intimate bits.
Dr. Jen Gunter, a Canadian gynecologist, warned that “if you have a vagina you should definitely not do this.”
She said attempts at cleaning your lady garden in this way can actually 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 cleaning increase a woman’s risk of contracting gonorrhea or HIV if she is exposed.”
“Paradoxically, it will also cause odor.”
And if that hasn’t got you squeezing your legs together at the thought of such an utterly bizarre trend, this might:
All kinds of fungi and anything else that can be picked up in a vegetable patch could end up thriving in your very 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 bottom line is if you are really worried that your vagina is not clean enough take comfort in the fact that they are designed to be self-cleaning.
It produces a discharge that is a form of mucus produced from the cervix, the opening of the womb.
It’s a completely normal part of female life and is the vagina’s way of keeping itself clean and healthy.
And when it comes to washing, water and a mild soap is best.
Dr. Vanessa Mackay, a gynecologist and spokeswomen 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.”