Smegma is the thick, white, cheesy substance that collects under the foreskin of the penis. But in this video, you will be surprised ...

how-to-keep-your-vulva-and-clitoris-healthy-women-get-smegma-too

How To Keep Your Vulva And Clitoris Healthy | Women Get Smegma Too!

can women get smegma I'm Dr Reena Malik urologist and pelvic surgeon and today I'm going to explain all about how women get smegma why they get it and what to do about it so smegma is a buildup of oil dead skin cells and debris that occurs because of the normal oils that our skin releases and our skin naturally releases oils each and every day and the reason for this is that it wants to keep that area lubricated and prevent dry skin and itching now where do you find smegma in women so one you can see it in the folds of the labia as well as underneath the clitoral hood now this is because this oils build up they're not washed away correctly and then these things build up and so they look sort of like a cottage cheese consistency so how can you prevent this buildup from occurring well basically this comes down to basic hygiene so basically you want to get in between the folds of your labia and use water and a very mild soap in fact you can even use face wash so the sensitive washes that you use for your face as long as they're not fragranced and they are very for sensitive skin can be very good to use down there you don't want to use strong soaps or scented soaps because those can irritate and dry out the skin and again even water and just manual removal is fine the important thing to realize is that this is not a sexually transmitted disease this is not infectious in any way but if it's not cleaned regularly it can lead to some problems and what it can lead to is essentially ongoing inflammation in the areas and particularly underneath the clitoral hood this ongoing inflammation can lead to what's called clitoral adhesions or essentially the clitoral glands or the CL part of the clitus that you actually see underneath the hood can get stuck to the hood or the tissue on top of the clitoris now this is the problem because the clitoral hood is there for a reason season it's there to protect the clitoris from things that might irritate it and it is supposed to essentially be well lubricated and moves freely forward and back along the clitoris so typically if you notice these adhesions early on you can try to take care of them yourself so gently retract the clitoral hood and you can use baby oil and gentle or Vaseline and try to sort of separate the glands from the hood of the clitoris and use water and again mild soap to clean that area and you don't again no special soap is needed no aggressive Maneuvers just very very gentle now what are clitoral adhesions I bet you've never heard of them so I mentioned cliteral adhesions but what why do these happen well as I mentioned they can happen from inflammation but they can also be a cause of trauma or other inflammatory or infectious conditions so people who have recurrent infections that can be urinary tract infections or BV can sometimes develop this people with chronic skin conditions like like lyan sclerosis or lyan plainis chronicus which are two skin diseases that occur in the genital region these people can get cital adhesions and we've seen that people who have low levels of sex hormones as well as other sexual dysfunctions are more likely to have clitoral adhesions in fact in a small study they found that clitoral adhesions were so common in fact up to 22% now all of these people were not necessarily symptomatic because of them but clearly it is something that occurs pretty often what sort of symptoms occur when you have cliteral adhesions that are maybe bothersome so one you can obviously have pain of the clitoris or even kind of generalized pain that maybe refers to the clitoris you could also have sensitivity of the clitoris now that can be hyper sensitive or hyposensitive meaning that it might be difficult for you to get an orgasm and ultimately some people can also have just general pain with sex pain with activities or pain with just walking around now what can can you do about these adhesions so if you already have cliteral adhesions there are a few things that have been looked at in the literature however I can't tell you how effective they are because as I've mentioned before in my prior videos there's just not a lot of research in this area and unfortunately the clitoris just doesn't get enough attention but that's probably in a lot of different ways um so some things that have been tried to help with this are using steroid creams like cortical steroids using estrogen cream using petroleum jelly like Vaseline or using antifungals or antibacterial treatment now these things because depending on the cause of it can help loosen some of those adhesions if that those don't work then you could move on to non-surgical Lis something that I do in my office is essentially we take that area and we numb it very well and then we actually take a small surgical instrument and actually break up those adhesions and so that works it's really easy done in the office and people generally don't feel much pain because of the numbing medication now you can be sore for a few days afterwards but overall it can help you know kind of clear out any scar tissue that has already formed because all of the topical creams will help with inflammation and prevention of more adhesions forming but they won't essentially get to the scar tissue itself now if these don't work there are surgical treatments available that are more invasive that are done under anesthesia as well now what can you do to prevent smma or clitoral adhesions so one as I mentioned make sure you're cleaning in those areas you're checking in the labial folds you're checking at the clitoral hood making sure there's no buildup and just clean it with a gentle soap do not use douches because those can affect the microbiome of the vagina and put you at higher risk of you know getting infections and so we don't want that and consider if things are irritating you you may want to change the type of materials you're wearing so cotton is usually very uh very breathable but if you're using sort of nylons or other sort of non-breathable fabric that can put you at higher risk of building up smegma particularly if you live in a very warm climate and generally speaking just avoid anything that tries to change the scent of your vagina those are completely unnecessary the scent you produce is totally biologically completely normal and actually using these products that try to change your scent actually can cause more harm than good so I hope you guys learned something today if you enjoy this video you're sure to enjoy the surprising facts about the female body so make sure you check that one out and if you want to see me as a doctor please make sure to check out ramik md.com back/ appointments to make your appointment today one more thing did you guys know that I started a podcast well if you didn't please check it out at for the first 10 episodes or so it's going to be repeats of some of the content on YouTube but after that I'm doing all brand new content that's dedicated to the podcast that we'll be posting here instead of my regular Friday videos with experts from all around the world I'm so excited and I hope you are too and can't wait for you to listen to it and as always we're going to take care of yourself because you're worth it

Dr.

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