Women Urged Not To Put Garlic In Their Vaginas

Libre Shot/Pixabay

Let me preface this with the admissions a) I don’t have a vagina and b) according to my exes I’m probably not an expert on the subject, but according to an expert you shouldn’t put garlic in your vagina – if you do have one.

I wanted to start this off with: it’s 2019 and apparently sticking a clove of garlic up your foofoo is a thing, and yet bizarrely this act of hiding a clove inside your genitals is based on an old wive’s tale.

Garlic, a common go-to in the kitchen, has been used in another room downstairs, reportedly to treat yeast infections. Now gynaecologist Dr Jen Gunter has taken to Twitter to explain why that’s a very bad idea.

Dr Jen opened up proceedings with the highly catchy intro ‘Why you should not put garlic in your vagina. A thread’ and the #vaginaisanogarliczone hashtag.

She noted while garlic does contain allicin which may display antifungal properties in laboratory petri dishes, a vagina is not a dish of cells.

It appears ‘vaginal garlic aficionados’ have fallen at the first hurdle by not realising garlic needs to be crushed for the allicin to be released.

I’m feeling better about my ownership of a garlic crusher right now.

Dr Jen then turns to bacteria which the garlic could carry from the soil. Bacteria could inflame an already yeasty site. As they say, ‘You don’t fight fire with fire.’

If putting vegetables up you isn’t already causing you to squirm, you might not want to read the next bit if you’ve already learnt this valuable lesson. Of course, if you’re still sitting uncomfortably on the pro-garlic side of the debate, you need these details.

Dr Jen tweeted:

So for garlic to work you would have to crush it and stuff it up somehow. There is still the dirt thing. And the cut up garlic on raw tissues thing (OUCH). And the fishing of the garlic out by the gyno thing.

Still with us? You know how irritating it is to get stuff caught in your teeth. Now replace ‘teeth’ with ‘vagina’.

Dr Jen explains that because garlic can cause biofilms on braces it could plausibly do so on vaginas.

Dr Jen then turns her attention to the ‘vaginal garlic aficionados’ (which, sidenote, I’m stealing as a name for my next band), over half of whom ‘never had yeast to begin with so the irritation they had may have been a temporary thing and resolving wasn’t garlic related’.

Placebos can be strong things, as we can see from the subject Dr Jen is crushing, and she notes you may feel better temporarily.

Dr Jen rounds off advising ‘do not take medical advice from anyone recommending vaginal garlic for yeast or anything else’.

Some people in the replies stood strong behind their belief in the garlic method, accusing ‘Big Pharm’ (sigh) of scaring people off natural remedies.

Although, for a visually disturbing picture, take this advice:

I mean, we all know how hard it is to get garlic out of a garlic press and it’s *supposed* to go in there.

So, there you have it. If you have been self-medicating sexual health issues with items from the pantry, stop. Consult a medical professional and action their advice.

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Tim Horner

Tim Horner is a sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated with a BA Journalism from University College Falmouth before most his colleagues were born. A previous editor of adult mags, he now enjoys bringing the tone down in the viral news sector.