Thank god Canadian gynecologist Dr. Jen Gunter exists. Without the author of The Vagina Bible: The Vulva And The Vagina: Separating The Myth From The Medicine, who else would be out there telling people to keep certain items out of their vaginas? (Certainly not Gwyneth Paltrow, whose Goop site pushes vaginal jade eggs that “do everything from fix your hormone levels to help with bladder control” and was subsequently fined by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, says Vox.)
Every once in a while, some new vaginal trend will spike, and Gunter has to weigh in. A few years ago, hand to god, it was ground-up wasp nests. This week, Gunter has had to take a stand against using garlic in your vagina to cure yeast infections. She adds, “I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO TWEET THAT IN 2019, BUT HERE WE ARE” (all-caps rightfully hers).
Garlic-clove proponents tout allicin’s antifungal properties, which Gunter acknowledges. But the allicin is only released if the clove is chopped or crushed. Which you definitely don’t want to use, then, for fear that you would now have an errant piece of garlic lost in your vagina. Also, Gunter points out, “Garlic could have bacteria from the soil,” also a bad thing to have up there, especially if you’re fighting a yeast infection.
As Gunter pointed out in her 2018 article for The New York Times, “Here Are Things Not to Put in Your Vagina,” “it’s possible that remedies like yogurt, garlic and so on were tried centuries ago as medicine, spermicide or sexual custom… [But] all these so-called ‘ancient’ sexual remedies were retired for a reason.”
We here at The Takeout are far from medical professionals, which is why we defer to the opinions of actual doctors like Gunter. So listen to her (and also, follow her on Twitter, she’s great): Keep garlic out of your vagina. Words to live by. Where’s my bumper sticker?