Is vaginal yoghurt the future?

If you haven’t already, I implore you all to read The Diet Myth by Tim Spector, the acclaimed work by professor of genetic epidemiology and consultant physician (sadly at a rival university here in London). It finely elucidates all the factors which play gargantuan roles in the way we react to and absorb all the nutrients in the food we eat. One chapter on the nutritional benefits of mushrooms particularly intrigued me, for reasons more than merely spore-related. Namely, the way we can develop yoghurt specific to our vaginal microbial population, to ward off fungal infection. Yum.

Let’s start at the beginning. Fungi such as mushrooms are basically large collections of microbes that feed off dead or decaying matter in the soil, in order to grow and reproduce. They also happen to adore living off humans as well. No use fretting over mushrooms sprouting all over you, though something of the sort can happen on a minor scale if you don’t, say, dry your feet and in between your toes properly, since these critters thrive on moisture and humidity. All that aside, fungi also live in our gut as yeasts. Nothing to worry about here either, since they live happily in a symbiotic relationship with the microbes that reside there. However, with improper antibiotic treatment usually administered in an effort to correct the yeast population (very typical in Chinese medicine), it’s easy to throw off the delicate balance of our natural microbe flora. These microbes help defend against fungal infection, and minute populations of yeast are invaluable to our body’s immune system. This leads to dangerous and severe fungal infections such as candida, usually seen on the mouth and tongue. Candida of the vagina (also known as thrush) is actually quite a normal part of being female, for it develops at some point in a female’s life, though it’s nicely warded off by our friendly gut inhabitants lactobacillus bacteria. Could you perhaps recall the food type teeming with lactobacillus?

Yoghurt is probably the first thing that comes to mind. The popular probiotic was tested as a treatment for candida in randomized trials, however, most cases have not been particularly successful, purely because each individual’s microbe population is incredibly diverse and differs between individuals. Thus, immunologists have started developing vaginal yoghurt – yoghurt containing specific lactobacillus strains resembling the rather specialised vaginal microbe. We can ingest this tangy concoction to ward off candida infections, and this could also potentially help fight infections like HIV and AIDS. Dessert, anyone?