Cleansing your vagina with a cucumber is a thing - and it's not advised

So far 2017 is shaping up to be the year of the vagina. We’ve had the woman who turned her labia in to jewellery, the vagina inspired catwalk show at NYFW and the artist making vulva nails a thing.

There have also been several warnings about the things you really shouldn’t insert into your ladyparts.

ICYMI the list of things you need to avoid putting up there includes make up sponges, glitter bombs, ozone gas and wasps nests. Why women why?

But just when you think we might finally have learnt we should be leaving our vaginas the hell alone, there’s something else to add to the please don’t insert down-there list – cucumbers.

Yep, according to Metro women are putting cucumbers into their vaginas to give them a ‘cleanse’.

The team googled ‘cucumber vagina’ and found a whole bunch of YouTube tutorials showing women how to cleanse down-there using the fruit.

If you’re anything like us, you’ll be wondering why on earth anyone would even attempt this, but apparently those who’ve tried it claim that a cucumber’s high water content and vitamins help clean your vagina, get rid of bacteria, maintain your vagina’s pH balance and keep odours at bay. Right!

Cucumber cleansing advocates advise peeling the cucumber, then inserting it and leaving it there for around 20 minutes. But according to down-there experts THIS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA.

As Metro points out your vagina is self-cleaning which means it doesn’t need any additional cleansing and anything you use to try and clean it could disrupt the good bacteria and pH balance, which could lead to discomfort at best, infection at worse.

“Cucumbers seem prone to all kinds of nasty fungi and I just don’t think anything capable of getting blossom end rot should go in a vagina,” vagina expert Dr Jen Gunter explains on her blog on the subject of down-there cucumber cleansing.

“There has been an increase over the past few years of opportunistic fungal infections, organisms that typically don’t cause human infection making the jump to humans when the right opportunity presents itself. An opportunity like say direct inoculation into 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.”

Dr Gunter goes onto say that because of their size and er, hardness, cucumbers have also been known to cause internal injury such as something called bladder perforation. Yikes! Although this has been more commonly witnessed when cucumbers are inserted for sexual pleasure rather than cleansing.

“So keep the cucumbers out of your vaginas ladies, whether for cleaning or masturbation,” Dr Gunter continues.

“Vaginas are a great self-contained ecosystem and do not need any additional support from vaginal vegetables to stay healthy. Anyone who tells you otherwise is misinformed, selling a product, or both. And remember, don’t give opportunistic infections an opportunity is a good motto.”

You heard the woman!

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