Why you shouldn’t use cucumber to ‘cleanse’ your vagina

This is the latest trend sweeping the web that’s been labelled bizarre and dangerous.

Bloggers have touted the act of peeling a cucumber and inserting it onto your intimate parts before twisting it for 20 seconds as the new ‘vagina facial’.

Apparently using the vegetable down below is great for sanitising the region, even reducing the chance of getting an STI.

But Canadian gynaecologist Dr Jen Gunter says you should definitely NOT do this.

Despite a cucumber’s high vitamin content, she says trying this trend could actually leave you at a greater risk of infections, even HIV.

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“Vaginas are not dirty. 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,” Dr Gunter she wrote on her blog.

She says that attempts to ‘clean’ the vagina will actually end up doing more damage, and funnily enough lead to more odour.

“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 and/or disrupting the mucosal surface,” she explains.

Dr Gunter goes on to warn that cucumbers can be prone to carrying fungi, not something you generally want around your lady parts.

“I just don’t think anything capable of getting blossom end rot should go in a vagina.”

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