If there’s one thing we all know about vaginas is that they have tons of bacteria. Like, millions. The vagina is a small world where organisms cohabit and make friends with each other, causing unending stress for women who think that there’s something wrong with the abundance of little creatures that live within them. It may be weird, but these bacteria are normal, and for the benefit of our health we just have to learn to live with them.
There are some things you can do to create a healthier environment for your vagina. According to Larry Forney, a microbiologist from the University of Idaho, you can take probiotics orally and they’ll naturally affect your vagina, improving its environment and health. With this in mind, the people from Motherboard decided that making vaginal yogurt, and eating it, must be the best possible thing you could do for your vaginal health. They wondered, aren’t there tons of sperm treatments? Why aren’t there any vaginal ones? For some reason, people really stress out over these things.
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The experiment was conducted by Cecilia Westbrook, a MD/PhD student from the University of Wisconsin. She made three different groups,: a positive control group made with yogurt as a starter culture, a negative control group made with plain milk, and a third group that contained her own vaginal bacteria with some yogurt. Left overnight, biology did it’s thing and the portions of yogurt increased in size.
According to Westbrook, when she ate her own yogurt, it didn’t taste that bad. In fact, it reminded her of Indian yogurt. But this turned out to be a bad idea. Forney claims that when you collect vaginal secretions, you also collect everything that comes along with that, including positive and negative bacteria, infections, fungus, and more.
In conclusion, vaginal probiotics are a no go. The FDA sums it up best, stating, “vaginal secretions are not considered ‘food’, and they may transmit human disease, a food product that contains vaginal secretions or other bodily fluids is considered adulterated.”
So now you know. If you’ve ever felt the impulse to cultivate your own vaginal bacteria for cooking, don’t, because it’s a bad idea. The vagina is not that magical.
