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One of those products is the "yoni pearl," a small bag of herbs or medicinal plants meant to be inserted in the vagina for hours or days at a time. Name-brand products include Goddess Vaginal Detox Pearls and Yummy Yoni Pearls. Shockingly, you can even find homemade versions on Etsy.
Although vaginal detox pearl ingredients differ from manufacturer to manufacturer, they are often marketed with similar-sounding, dubious claims. Yummy Yoni Pearls' website asserts that the pearls -- stuffed with herbs including motherwort and angelica -- aid with "detoxing and breaking down blockage inside the vagina... [They] can eliminate endometriosis, fibroids, vaginal [odor], tubal blockages, infertility and more."
Yummy Yoni Pearls' website also directs users to leave the pearls in the vagina for three days at a time. Now, consider the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends tampon users "limit wear-time per tampon to no more than eight hours" to prevent toxic shock syndrome. Wincing yet?
Not surprisingly, neither Minkin nor DePree sign off on yoni pearls. "I would like to know the complete composition of any herbal suppository before placing it in the vagina," Minkin says, "and certainly before leaving it in place for any amount of time."
"The vagina has the ability to self-clean -- really, it does," DePree insists. "Resist the urge to add, insert, scrub and detox!"
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SEE NEXT PAGE: No. 3: Putting Rocks in Your Vagina? Also Bad
