What's Growing in Your Menstrual Cup?

本站添加: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Did you know that May 28th is menstrual hygiene day? Well, now you do. And menstrual hygiene season really starts earlier and earlier every year. So, today we're going to talk about vaginas and stuff that comes out of them, which means that YouTube probably will demonetize this video before it even finishes uploading. So, shout out to my patrons over at patreon.com/rebecca for supporting me even when I'm talking about things that shall not be named, like, you know, body parts half the population of the planet has. The last time I talked about menstruation was all the way back in 2023 when people on the internet lost their damn minds because Thinx settled a lawsuit about Forever Chemicals. In case you missed it, Thinx is one of the largest manufacturers of those underpants that keep your blood and pee and any other fluids from leaking out of your nether regions and ruining your favorite pants. I personally think they're awesome. They work really well. This is not a paid ad.

[00:01:04]I'm just a happy customer. But for 3 years, the company faced down a class action lawsuit alleging that they misled consumers into believing that they didn't use harmful chemicals. But lab testing revealed the existence of PAF or so-called forever chemicals. Thinks settled without admitting fault. Uh but this led a lot of people online to rush home and tear their undies off and throw them into a bottomless pit. There's no evidence that the chemicals found on the underwear actually harm your nether regions. And a recent study showed that commonly used laboratory gloves are throwing a ton of false positives when testing for PAS. But whatever, you know, that's just how the US legal system and public outrage work. And it's understandable that people had this reaction because for many years now, we've seen so little research done on products that women in particular use.

[00:02:04]There have been cases of dangerous things being found in our products. And so, yeah, it's understandable that people freaked out. I imagine that many of the people who threw away their period panties without watching my level-headed analysis were forced to do something else to keep their various fluids in check. There are menstrual pads, of course, which are awkward and prone to leaks and hey, may contain endocrine disrupting chemicals. And there are tampons which have a rich history of turning out to be absolutely terrible for us with the most recent reveal being a 2024 study that found concerning levels of lead and arsenic in more than a dozen popular tampon brands.

[00:02:46]And then there's free bleeding of course, but my shame hut is still awaiting permitting from the city of Oakland and I can't afford to throw away my sofa every month. Finally, that leaves us with the humble little menstrual cup, a product I discovered around the same time that period underwear hit the scene. These are reusable cups made of medical grade silicone or rubber, which you fold up and shove up your vaginal canal, allowing it to pop open and collect your periodicals.

[00:03:17]That's what I call the blood and tissue that comes out during menstruation, periodicals. I got a 40-year subscription and I'd love to cancel early, but the fee is exorbitant periodical. Anyway, once I got the hang of the menstrual cup, I loved it. I thought it was going to be a bloody nightmare, literally. But with some practice and some kegle exercises, it became second nature. I saved money and felt a lot less wasteful for not needing to buy products that just end up becoming trash. There was no downside.

[00:03:53]That is until a microbiologist friend pointed out one slight problem. No one really knows if menstrual cups are actually safe to use. Now, I've been in this game a long time, and I know that the funding is dire for any research on any topic that is almost exclusively relevant to women. But I figured things must have gotten better in the past decade or two, right? Like surely companies wouldn't be selling tiny silicone cups for $40 [ __ ] dollars without first making sure it's safe.

[00:04:27]Right. Right. If I can't trust a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation with 25% of the market share, who can I trust? Oh, right. I can trust my local microbiologist friend.

[00:04:44]Now, if you are a longtime viewer of this channel, you already know who I'm talking about. It's Dr. Susie Wilds, who I interviewed last year about her experience stopping the spread of COVID in New Zealand while battling a university that didn't care about the relentless attacks she was experiencing from psychotic COVID deniers. In that interview, she mentioned that CO disrupted her life in another relatively minor way. It stopped her from investigating the safety of menstrual cups, filling a gap, haha, in the literature that could help millions of people who use these products. Back in 2018, French researchers published a study on the potential for menstrual cups to carry the bacteria that causes toxic shock syndrome, a rare but very dangerous disease that is a risk when using tampons. I'm sure I'm not alone.

[00:05:37]When I was a teenage girl, toxic shock syndrome was like all we worried about, me and my friends. Uh we were extraordinarily paranoid about it because, you know, in our recent history, there has been uh there have been a lot of serious cases of toxic shock syndrome. So, these researchers actually found that menstrual cups were even more dangerous than tampons, except uh here's how they determined that. They put either menstrual cups or tampons into plastic bags, filled the bags with the bacteria that causes toxic shock syndrome along with some growth medium, shook them up, and tested them 8 hours later, finding that the cups had more of the bacteria on them than the tampons. Now, I'm not an expert in vaginas, but I do own one. And I can say with some amount of certainty that it bears little to no resemblance to a Ziploc bag full of bacteria. Maybe I'm just lucky. Susie had that same thought, though. And so when she saw that paper, she went looking for other studies on this topic and found that there weren't any. That was it. Just the plastic vag plastic vagina.

[00:06:54]The I'll work on it. So Susie got up and running to do her own tests, but then the whole pandemic thing happened and she got a bit distracted. Now she's back on her feet and wants to run these studies, but she hasn't been able to find any funding because who gives a [ __ ] about, you know, millions of people possibly growing dangerous bacteria in their bodies just so that they can move around in the world in peace for about 12 weeks out of the year. Susie promises that if she can secure funding, she will run tests that actually mimic the human body, including the use of blood because even the few follow-up studies that followed the one in 2018 haven't actually bothered to use blood. She's also going to look at more than just the bacteria that causes toxic shock syndrome since there's just as much of a chance that these products might be increasing the risk of urinary tract infections, thrush, and vaginosis.

[00:07:55]In the end, she hopes that not only can she establish a baseline idea of the safety for these products, but also figure out the optimum way for consumers to use and clean them. So, if you have a few bucks to spare and you want to support good science that will benefit women worldwide, toss some Suzie's way.

[00:08:16]And if you use any of these products, please don't freak out and throw them all away like in the aftermath of the Thanks settlement. Pay attention to your body. Practice good hygiene. Go to your vag doctor. And don't feel bad if you ruin the occasional pair of white pants.

[00:08:34]Seriously, like I still get nightmares where the other kids are laughing at me behind my back in middle school and I have practically no shame about anything anymore. It's a normal bodily function, people. We need to all be way less uptight about it. That includes you, YouTube.

[00:09:00]Hey everybody, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a like. If you loved the video, please subscribe. And if you think the world could use more videos like this and you happen to have a few bucks laying around, head to patreon.com/rebecca and join an awesome community of nerds like the people whose names you see on the screen right now. Thanks.