Debunking Vagina Woo - with Dr. Jennifer Gunter

[Music] what's up skeptics Thomas Westbrook whew my guest today is a medical doctor who writes for the New York Times she is a licensed and practicing gynecologist a sexpert and women's health advocate she's written articles for Vox The Guardian and other publications and has been featured on CNN the New York Post today think-tank HuffPost Canada the New York Times and the new Netflix series a user's guide to cheating death along with many other media appearances she's a soldier for science in the trenches taking on misinformation about women's health exposing alternative medicine and debunking pseudo scientific whoo even if it means going toe-to-toe against media giants like Gwyneth Paltrow and her aptly named company goop which encouraged women to shove giant Jade eggs up their vaginas without any further ado I give you dr. Jennifer Gunter [Music] what do you say are the biggest proponents of Wu when it comes to the world of reproductive health its perpetuated on many different levels we see a lot of misinformation coming even just in mainstream media a lot of people use terms like toxins incorrectly they don't sort of correct old mythology we see standard magazines and newspapers talking about seasonal vaginas like you have to get your summer vagina ready and your winter vagina ready which you know you don't and you know and then there are celebrity websites that also have that impact celebrities are really very much getting in on the action and you know Gweneth Paltrow is website goop is well known for some of the misinformation with regards to the Jade eggs and vaginal steaming and other things that are you know not based in evidence-based medicine low Bosworth I don't actually really know who she is but apparently she was some kind of actress she's got a line of vaginal health products so there's it's coming from a lot of different sources it'll stop you with the winter vaginas Teen Vogue had a piece on summer vaginas which is not a thing but this idea that vaginas involve azar basically one wet pair of underwear away from catastrophe is a very common thing and I think that is part of this mythology that women have been shamed about their genital tracts since the beginning of time and it's really just sort of a riff on that mythology one of the newspapers in England has something on winter vagina so I wrote a parody on that it's not a thing your vagina's inside your body and it's not going to change with the seasons so don't worry about that I do a lot of videos talking about religion and stuff because that's sort of my background was kind of fundamentalist religious young earth creationist but one of the things one of the themes that you see recurring throughout across a wide variety of religions is this distaste for particularly the female anatomy yeah and there's you know this veneration of people who were conceived celestial II you know spontaneous conception from you know divine origins and it's as if they want the vagina to be a one-way canal well it is concerning because you know in many religions and and it's not just a religious thing in many cultures many societies women are considered unclean when they're menstruating many these are all just ways to keep women repressed and so if you look at the way a large group of people are different and you say well that difference is shameful or incorrect or dirty you can keep those people oppressed and so I think that vaginal shame you know sort of as a term to encompass all of reproductive tract shame has been wielded as an effective weapon for a long time now nowadays you have this idea that if something is wrong with your vagina that you should be able to just kind of fix it yourself this you refer to it and your talk is do-it-yourself gynecology how do you do it yourself when it comes to gynecology I can't you know I mean I know some people were able to stick their head up their own ass but I won't comment on that I'm not a gastroenterologist but I think that there's this idea with the proliferation of information online that you should be able to sort of take care of all of your health needs and what you should be able to do is to get accurately informed and there are some things you can't take care of yourself but most of these sort of health hacks and I hate that term or these do-it-yourself things are riffs on the old wives tales that have been around for centuries and so they're really not anything new they're just repackaging ancient or old ideas as something empowering one exactly the opposite you know telling women that they should stuff garlic in their vagina for a yeast infection as opposed to using a pharmaceutical grade product is not empowering that's right yeah I mean these but these have been around I mean the whole yogurt in the vagina and garlic in the vagina have been around since before the internet existed so the Internet is just getting that bad information out there faster and you know we all know that misinformation travels faster than information so I heard that if you have a yeast infection that eating yogurt is like eating yogurt can help is that not true nope yogurt has absolutely nothing to do with yeast infections or UTIs or no it's it's all incorrect and this is coming from a doctor coming from a doctor if you like yogurt that's great but you know the misinformation comes from you know that we know that there's healthy bacteria and the vagina called the lactobacilli and there's many different kinds of lactobacilli yogurt has lactobacilli but it has acidophilus which is not important for the vagina so you know it's not something that is of any value the yogurt does not contain the strains that would be useful for the vagina yogurt also has other bacteria because it's got live cultures and it's fine to eat ie yogurt I like it but I don't eat it for any medicinal reason except to not feel hungry and you don't smear it up in your vagina no rapid-fire questions should you eat placentas no is what Andy accurate well I think it depends I think that it's not a curated source in the way that I would say so it's not a place that I would recommend patients go to for their first piece of information anywhere that's got a lot of advertising on the side to me is something that I'd be concerned about so that wasn't really rapid-fire but that's the answer the other day I had a really bad headache and I went and I put my symptoms in WebMD and I realized that I am either pregnant or I have rabies how would I be able to tell well that's the problem is that you know I get those emails from WebMD too and I feel like every time I open them I'm dying of a blood clot or something it's a hard thing to do to provide really curated information in that way and so I usually recommend people go to job sites which are known to be you know better sources and they don't have advertising on the side right well and even still though if you're not able to actually have any kind of tests run you might have the same symptoms for two different things and that's where experts like you come into it actually right so that's the problem is a symptom can be many different things and your headache can easily be that you were up too late last night and you didn't get enough sleep or it could be something more sinister and it could be anything in between it could be that you you know you had a fight with somebody so I think that you know or it could be that you've got a blood clot I mean there are many different things that could be and it's it's less likely to be the most serious thing but it's always a possibility and so that's why it's important to have a trusted health care professional that you can work with should women put eggs Jade eggs in their vagina no but it's okay if the eggs come out just not in not Jade eggs not regular eggs Matt from no no no eggs go in the vagina in all seriousness though I've been one of the biggest proponents of vaginal health when it comes to people like Gwyneth Paltrow and she has been selling this product line of Jade eggs saying that you stick this up inside you what does she claim that it does that it's somehow detox is you that it gets your energy right aligns your chakras what is the what does she think that is is gonna magically happen to make you better by sticking these Jade eggs inside of you I'm not sure I have the answer because I I don't know what she wrote on her website is that it somehow is going to cultivate female energy I'm not sure what that is and I'm an expert in female health and make your pelvic floor stronger which it wouldn't the way it was described to use certainly pelvic floor exercises can help your pelvic floor get better but not not in the way that was recommended so I don't really know what it was recommended for because I think that's sort of part of the point is when you don't have like some form of Kegel exercises or well you you you don't need public weights to do Kegel exercises they don't really actually improve the outcome and you would want something that could be cleaned appropriately but the tools are okay yeah they're absolutely okay but the way that the Jade eggs were recommended to be used were not in a way that we tell people to do pelvic floor exercises so that was incorrect but apparently they've removed that information from their website that's how much they stand behind it gotcha back to rapid-fire should one in douche no no why not because vaginas the self-cleaning oven should you steam your vagina No is there any harm that can come from senior you get burnt and you know the herbs that are recommended are closely related to ragweed so I'm not sure if squatting over a pot of steaming halogens would be useful but the other thing is as the vagina is a no oxygen environment and so his you know steam obviously carries water vapor and it's gonna carry air that's going to go up and you know you don't want to introduce air into your vagina that's actually not something you want to do the idea behind vaginal steaming is that is going to cleanse your uterus which is offensive because your uterus doesn't need cleansing and perpetuates this old trope that somehow women are unclean around menstruation which they're not so it's got a you know a dangerous medical message but even a more dangerous message about female health in general this is something that it kind of reminds me of the rectal cleansing that people have where they'll like shoot some type of fluid up inside and try to clear out your your gut and colonics yes but you have all this healthy bacteria inside of you that's supposed to be there yes you do not need to do a colonic ever there are all kinds of reports of people perforating their bowel having problems it's not needed at all one and in some cases if you don't have healthy gut bacteria they even recommend fecal transplants medically yeah I mean that's when people have a condition called Clostridium difficile enter colitis and it's a production of a toxin to overgrowth of a very specific bacteria and that's kind of a you know a treatment for it but colonics are definitely not recommended they're actually quite harmful so we can't put eggs in our vagina we can't put yogurt in we're not supposed to do Sh we're not supposed to steam or they allowed to put anything sure you can put a penis in and you can put fingers in and you can put a tongue in and you can put a tampon in if you want if that's up to you know if the risk benefit ratio for toxic shock syndrome is worth it for you the risk is incredibly low it could put a menstrual cup in and any medications pharmaceutical grade medications I'm all on board with all that that's it sounds fun and it sounds healthy and you're not having a smear yogurt or burn your vagina so yeah I think that one would yeah I think that you know most of the hacks are the exact opposite you come along as a medical doctor and I'm sure that you get attacked as being you know an insider you know big pharma spokesman or something and you probably have people coming after you saying well you know she doesn't really know what's good for my kids but you've come from a background where you have kids and your your kids were born prematurely right you've gone through some feelings of desperation if you want to talk a little bit about that and there's your heart sure I mean I know what it's like to have a sucky medical condition and you know as bad as things are for yourself having your kids have sucky medical conditions is really worse and so my children were born very prematurely and my son Oliver also has a serious heart condition that's required several procedures and he's got significant lung disease left over from prematurity and he's had malt hospitalizations for pneumonias so I you know I know what it's like to be at 3:00 in the morning and googling health information and being scared and being worried I know what it's like to want a quick fix and I almost fell down that rabbit hole and so that's really why I'm out there trying to give people good quality information because it's very hard if you just use a search engine to find good quality information and I really believe the only way you can be an empowered patient is if you have high quality health information and so I'm really just doing my part to try to give women good quality health information so your goal is not to make fun of someone for falling for some of this whoo or to make them feel like they're losers but you're on their side you're you're against people who are snake oil salesmen I would absolutely not want anybody to think that I was making fun of them for making a choice that especially a choice they might have made in desperation my ire is very squarely directed at the people who are profiting off of that people who are selling unnecessary products people who are perpetuating vaginal shame making women feel bad about themselves that's what angers me greatly and whether that misinformation comes from a smart pharmaceutical industry whether it comes from a feminine hygiene product that tells women that you know they're gonna have outer when they uncross their legs so maybe they want to use a special wash you know or a celebrity who's selling products that are unnecessary all of those things bother me because they're not good for women and I just want women to have good quality information and what do you say to someone that says that these alternative medicine people they're just filling in the gaps left by modern medicine well I would say that I don't believe in the concept of alternative medicine I believe in evidence-based medicine and I don't care if it's a tree bark or you know something that's taken you know thirty years in a lab to make as long as it works and it's safe or the risk benefit ratio is appropriate I'm happy to recommend it so I don't believe in the concept of alternative medicine people shouldn't be experimenting with their bodies we're far enough advanced as a society that we should be able to test things and tell people if they're safe cribs are recalled when there's like eight injuries you know which they should be right and so why would we then say a different degree of risk is okay for something that you're gonna put inside in your body I want people to have quality information and I think that if anybody has a product that they would like to quote quote call alternative I would say show you know put your money where your mouth is and prove that it works that's the great thing about science if you prove to me that what you have is effective I'm gonna be sure I'm gonna jump on board I'm not just gonna say no I don't want to see it if you've got high quality data I'm all over it fantastic where can people find your work you can find me at dr. Jenn Gunther comm you can find me in the New York Times I have a column called the cycle which appears about once a month in the Style section fantastic thank you so much for coming on thank you for having me hey guys if you really like what I'm doing with my videos my channel is sponsored entirely by viewers like you please go to patreon.com/scishow Lea kool-aid to support my work there are different perks depending on how much you pledge per video thanks [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Holy Koolaid

Views: 43,610

Rating: 4.8878961 out of 5

Keywords: don't drink the koolaid, holy koolaid, science, skepticism, reproductive system, reproductive health, female reproductive system, dr. jennifer gunter, jade eggs, goop, gwyneth paltrow goop, gwyneth paltrow, crazy pseudoscience, women's health, women's health crash course, female reproductive system crash course, sexpertise, sexpert, women's health advocate, gynecologist, gynecologist vs. gwynneth paltrow, debunking goop, debunking pseudoscience, jennifer gunter vs goop, scientist

Id: u7b1tsKLA4c

Length: 15min 41sec (941 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 19 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/BlueRaspberry]

"The Cycle comes out once a month." ayyy lmao

[u/JJMcA]

This is a pubic service announcement.

[u/cheese_wizard]

Gunter.

[u/istara]

Now where can we buy a nice warm woolly hand-knitted tampon for the Winter Vagina?!

[u/Squirrel_In_A_Tuque]

It's nice to hear about a topic that is so rarely discussed. I'm not sure I buy her statements that these woo and old myths are deliberately to oppress women, but I like what she's doing.