Step Away from the Douching Products!

I know that the topic of douching comes up every once in a while, usually after watching commercials during day time television. I bring it up today, because I just read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins. The center of one storyline is an epic battle between feminist cowgirls, who believe that douching is wrong, and their ranch owner, who also happens to be the multi-millionaire owner of a douching company. Their fighting comes to a head when the cowgirls decide to attack the ranch owner after they have refused to shower for weeks, so he can get a true understanding of how powerful vaginal odor can be. Even though the book is totally fiction, it does bring up a really good point. Douching is bad for our vaginal health!

Yes, one could argue that we need to take back our vaginal scent and celebrate its musky odor. That’s all well and good. Celebrate your funk! Looking beyond that, we must keep in mind that our body is a very precariously balanced ecosystem, including our vaginas. According to Dr. KateClancy with Scientific American, a healthy premenopausal vagina will have a pH level of 3.8-4.5, which is slightly acidic. This is incredibly important to protect our vaginal environment from bacterial vaginosis (which can lead to preterm labor), to keep our mucus membrane intact, and to protect us from other potentially harmful infections. Douching, even with supposedly pH balanced formulas or natural products, disrupts all of that, which according to a meta-analysis done by the National Institute of Health can be incredibly harmful. They go so far as to suggest that douches should come with a warning label so women will be fully aware of how bad douching is for their body.

So, you are welcome to call people douche bags. (I do!) You can even use douche sprays as alternative deodorizers in your home (maybe), BUT please keep them away from your vagina. Instead, revel in the scent of your slightly-acidic-but-perfectly-normal vagina and know that it is doing good work on its own.

-          Lauren, natural vagina avenger!