I don't mind saying, I am good at this...
Your vagina is full of the same probiotic bacteria that is packed into every health-conscious product from yogurt to kombucha. If the vagina is full of good bacteria, and people are eating as much good bacteria as they can, why not eat pussy?
Apr 13 2016, 7:00am
Photo via Flickr user Adamknits
By now you should know that the vagina is home to billions of bacteria. The official term for this genital ecosystem is the vaginal microbiome, but I like to think of it as my personal Pussy Posse. Only instead of massaging the ego of Leonardo DiCaprio, the vaginal microbiome prevents bad bacteria from blossoming and taking over your cooch. Seventy percent of vaginas are dominated by one species of Lactobacillus, which produce lactic acid and keep things at a pH level of 4.5 down there.
You know where else Lactobacillus exists? Your gut. Your gut bacteria are often referred to as probiotics. These flora may affect everything—from digestion to allergies to eczema to Alzheimer's—and as the research piles up on the importance of gut bacteria, the marketplace is being flooded with items that will allegedly help regulate your personal intestinal rainforest. Probiotics are being added to foods like yogurt, but also to things like shampoo and shaving cream.
But I can't help but feel like we're missing an easy lifehack here. If the vagina is full of good bacteria, and people are eating as much good bacteria as they can, why not just eat a bunch of vagina?
"I think it would be possible, but probably unlikely," says Dr. Helena Mendes-Soares of the Mayo Clinic. "I don't know of any study that [has] addressed it." I can't imagine why.
If the vagina is full of good bacteria, and people are eating as much good bacteria as they can, why not just eat a bunch of vagina?
To be a useful probiotic, vaginal fluid would have to contain enough good bacteria to make an effect, defined in Canada and Italy as one billion colony-forming units (CFUs) per serving. On top of that, the bacteria would have to travel safely to the lower intestine (where good bacteria dwells) without getting obliterated by stomach acid.
How much bacteria is in a serving of pussy? Furthermore, what would constitute a serving? According to Dr. Mendes-Soares, there are about 100,000 to 100 million Lactobacillus cells per gram of vaginal fluid. So for one face-humping session to have probiotic properties, the humpee would have to swallow between ten and 10,000 grams (10 kg) of vaginal fluid. One of those seems doable. The other, less so.
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Let's assume you have one of the more verdant microbial rainforests, and your partner only needs to slurp down ten grams. How can we be sure those ten grams make it to the lower intestine intact? A 2005 study showed that the presence of glucose in the gastric juices helps protect Lactobacilli as they travel down the GI tract. Pussy fluid is not known for its glucose content. But eating food shortly before eating other stuff could provide the needed sugars in the gastric juices. Lactobacilli is naturally acid resistant, and could potentially make it from the mouth to the gut even without a glucose buffer.
However, another problem that arises with getting one's probiotics in the wild is the issue of contamination. Going down on someone, "there would also be a transmission of the other current members of the community," says Mendes-Soares, "both the beneficial and harmful ones." Meaning, one could be getting Lactobacilli as well as other harmful bacteria. There is also the normal threat of STIs to consider.
For some people, the problematic part of the phrase "probiotic pussy" is the probiotic part. In a 2009 blog post, infectious disease doctor and podcaster Mark Crislip was highly skeptical of the entire probiotic industry. One of his main complaints was that the species of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium found in probiotics are not necessarily the same species that exist in the human body. On that count, vaginal fluid has Activia beat. We know it's the same kind of bacteria found in the human body, because it was found on a human body. We're going straight to the source.
The jury is still out on whether probiotics are as useful as Jamie Lee Curtis would have you believe. There is plenty of scientific evidence that probiotics can have an effect on Irritable Bowel Syndrome, diarrhea caused by antibiotics, and other gastrointestinal problems. But we don't have the same amount of evidence that taking probiotics offers long-term health benefits that could extend your life. Preliminary studies have been done on whether Lactobacillus can help with cholesterol. This could be huge, as heart disease is the number-one killer in America. The results are promising, but studies concluded that more research was needed.
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