The Vagina Bible. Jen Gunter
be required for a food to change the scent of a vagina.
What About Garlic and Asparagus?
There are a few volatile metabolites from food that are known to impact body odors. They have pungent or musty smells, so not sweet or desirable. The best-known example is the smell of urine after eating asparagus. While the actual mechanism is still not known, most researchers think some people metabolize asparagusic acid from asparagus into a sulfur smelling compound that is excreted in the urine. Approximately 40 percent or so of people can smell these unpleasant metabolites. The reason some people can detect the smell as nasty and others cannot may be genetic. Garlic also has volatile metabolites, described as having a garlic-and /or cabbage-like odor, that have been detected in urine and in breast milk. Kidneys and breast tissue actively concentrate certain metabolites, so it makes sense that if you eat enough garlic, a malodorous metabolite could be concentrated in urine or breast milk and impact smell.
The vagina does not concentrate metabolites.
The Sugar-Yeast Connection
There is a relationship between blood sugar and infections, but eating foods high in sugar does not directly impact the vagina.
As we discussed in chapter 2—but it’s worth another mention—up to 3 percent of the vaginal fluid is glycogen, a storage sugar. There is also glucose as well. The amount of glycogen and sugar varies depending on the phase of the menstrual cycle, but at times it can be found in a higher percentage than blood.
It is not possible to change the sugar level in your vagina through diet, as the sugar comes from the mucosal (skin) cells. Researchers actually attempted to increase the storage sugar in the mucosal cells by having women eat more carbohydrates, and it was ineffective. In another study, women ingested a load of sugar, equivalent to guzzling two cans of cola, and researchers found sugar levels did not increase in the blood or in the vagina, not even for women with a history of yeast infections.
Your vagina needs sugar, and the levels in your vagina have nothing to do with food.
Yeast infections are a major issue in the intensive care unit. We all have yeast in our bowel, vagina, and on our skin, so when we have invasive procedures that break the skin barrier, the normal, minding-its-own-business yeast can now enter the bloodstream. This is a systemic yeast infection, and it is very serious. Without intravenous therapy, it is fatal. Researchers have looked at diets and nutritional supplements for people in the intensive care unit to try to reduce yeast colonization in an attempt to reduce these serious yeast infections, and to date they have all failed. If diet could reduce yeast colonization, we would already know. A doctor selling a special diet and supplements who has never published research in the area does not have the secret answer to the question of how to reduce yeast colonization. The idea of an anti-candida diet is simply not supported by basic biology or the available research.
There are studies that indicate women with diabetes (a condition associated with higher blood sugars) are more likely to have yeast in the vagina, and that yeast is more likely to overgrow and cause infections. It is also true that this is complex, and the reasons are not fully understood. Recently, data has emerged that points to increased glucose in the urine as the cause. When blood sugar levels are high, excess sugar literally spills into the urine. When women empty their bladders, there is a microscopic mist of urine that gets on the skin. While the vagina evolved to tolerate sugar, the skin of the vulva has not, and glucose exposure here can favor the growth of yeast, leading to vulvar yeast infections. Some of that yeast may make it into the vagina, leading to a vaginal infection.
This theory is supported by a safety alert from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding a serious infection of the genitals (necrotizing fasciitis, also known as the flesh-eating bacteria) associated with a class of medications called sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors. This includes canagliflozin, dapagliflozin, and empagliflozin. The medication is used to lower blood sugar for people who have type 2 diabetes, and it works by helping the kidneys remove more sugar. This could lead to increased glucose on the skin that could favor the growth of pathogenic (harmful) bacteria.
Elevated blood sugars may also impact the way the immune system responds to infections or even the healthy bacteria that helps to keep infections at bay.
So you have read all this, and you are not convinced about the lack of dietary connection between sugar and yeast in the vagina (for women who do not have diabetes) because you feel that you get vaginal symptoms every time you eat sugar.
The answer is what is called a “nocebo effect,” which is a negative effect on health due to negative expectations (basically an unpleasant placebo response). It is the result of conditioning, specifically the belief that something negative will happen. This doesn’t mean someone with symptoms of irritation after eating sugar is faking or that their symptoms are not real. There are real chemical changes in the brain producing the itch or irritation, but the cause of those changes is a negative expectation, not sugar. Nocebo effects are well studied. Every drug trial that has one group take a placebo, an inert sugar pill, has at least 2–5 percent of people who discontinue the placebo due to serious side effects that are perceived to be drug related. As these people didn’t receive an actual medication, their symptoms can only be explained by negative expectations, or nocebo.
Can bread or beer or wine cause yeast infections?
Yeast is used to make wine, beer, and bread, so it is easy to see how the myth of alcohol or bread causing yeast was started. Common sense tells us this can’t be so, as the French have been enjoying fine breads and wine for hundreds of years, and French women are not plagued with yeast infections.
Science backs up the common sense. The yeast most commonly used for bread and alcohol is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and this is only rarely a cause of vaginal yeast infections (about 1 percent of the time). Sourdough starters scavenge wild yeasts like Saccharomyces exiguus, Candida milleri, and Candida humilis from the environment, which do not cause vaginal yeast infections (they also scavenge S. cerevisiae). If that isn’t enough reassurance, then consider that yeast in bread, wine, and pasteurized or filtered beer is dead. An unfiltered, unpasteurized beer may have some yeast that is dormant—but again, this isn’t the right type.
I understand that a woman claimed to have made bread with a sourdough starter she nourished with her vaginal yeast, and this seems as good a place as any to address this story. First of all, we have no idea if what she grew from her vagina was Candida albicans (the most common cause of yeast infections) or even any type of yeast, for that matter. Belief that you cultured something doesn’t cut it scientifically. The vagina is filled with bacteria, and any swab not cultured appropriately in a lab may grow all kinds of microorganisms, most of which will not be yeast. Second, her sourdough starter, like all sourdough starters, would have scavenged the wild yeast from the air and surface of the flour, etc., and so even if she did manage to grow yeast from her vagina, it would have added nothing to the baking except temporary internet fame—and, of course, more confusion about yeast. The next time you see this story make the rounds on the Internet, please don’t pass it along. Just ignore it.
If you want to prove that vaginal yeast can bake bread, you are going to need to add cultured C. albicans directly to the flour as you would any store-bought yeast, but that seems like a thoroughly unnecessary exercise. So let’s not.
The Best Foods for Vaginas
There are no bad or good foods, as far as the vagina is concerned. I know this upsets a lot of people, but there are really no good or bad foods in general, with the exception of trans fats, which are modified fats linked with inflammation and heart disease. Avoid these for all kinds of health reasons (this means saying goodbye to icing from a can). There are healthy diets and less healthy diets, and eating well is good preventative medicine, but eating a specific food as treatment doesn’t apply to the vagina.
What about cranberry juice for preventing urinary tract or bladder infections? In the early 1900s, before we had modern methods to diagnose bladder infections and before antibiotics, doctors recommended cranberry juice because the hippuric acid that is released as the body metabolizes cranberries makes the urine very acidic. The theory was the acidity would make it harder for bacteria to grow. Cranberries also