If you were born without one or haven’t discovered you actually have two, your vagina is a pretty amazing thing.
It’s a canal for giving life, a self-cleaning machine and a control room for absolute pleasure, arguably making it the coolest body part there is.
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But these important duties aside, your lady parts can be complex. Do you know all there is to know about them?
From decoding smells to diagnosing a depressed vagina (yep, that’s a thing), check out these bizarre facts about this mysterious lady cave to become better acquainted with all she has to offer you. She’s probably been trying to tell you more than you realize!
The pleasure center:
The clitoris has more nerve endings than any human body part — including the penis. Experts say the clitoris has 8,000 nerve endings, which is double the nerve endings a penis holds.
Most clitorises are less than a centimeter in length, but those nerve endings’ only job is to feel pleasure. And though you may think of a clitoris as an exposed circle, this orgasm-induced spot is more wishbone-shaped. Two branches extend along the sides of the vulva underneath the skin, so you can be stimulated there for a unique sensation.
Tilt-a-whirl:
If you sometimes struggle putting a tampon in with ease, it’s because the vagina is tilted at about a 130-degree angle!
Don’t get comfortable with this geometric fact, though; the angle can change over time. “The vaginal angle flattens a bit, which may make vaginal intercourse feel different to women as they age and go through menopause,” Dr. Debby Herbenick, Ph.D., associate professor at Indiana University, wrote in Read My Lips: A Complete Guide to the Vagina and Vulva.
Changing scents:
Depending on the day and how you spend it, your vagina’s scent can change completely, says Lissa Rankin, M.D. and author in her book What’s Up Down There?: Questions You’d Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend.
When you step out of the shower, it may not have a smell, but after you exercise, it may have a musky tint from the sweat glands’ production. When you’re on your period, you may smell an iron-like scent. After sex, your vagina may smell similar to bleach from being in contact with semen. If you have an overgrowth of yeast, prepare to smell like bread. And if there is excess bacteria growth, it may smell like fish.
If you’re experiencing one of these distinct odors, decode it here.
Stabilizing the smell:
As you just learned, there are many factors that affect your smell down there. Still, you can control it by eating certain foods.
You may have heard of women who’ve committed to a ‘pineapple diet’ before a wedding or other big event, but is there any validity to this? Dr. Mehmet Oz says yes! “Everything you eat changes the smell and the taste down there—everything,” Dr. Oz said on The Real. He notes that pineapple, per say, isn’t better than other healthy fruits and veggies, but it certainly will make a difference in your personal aroma.
Check out how other experts weigh in on this smelly debate.
Depressed vaginas:
Sex and the City‘s Charlotte York wasn’t lying when she said vaginas can require anti-depressants.
Though the other girls scoffed at her ‘depressed vagina’, what Charlotte actually had was a painful condition called vulvodynia, a chronic pain disorder that may cause burning, itching, swelling or soreness down there. It’s a condition as many as six million women may deal with, though many go undiagnosed.
This is just one scary vaginal illness you can experience, but ironically, sex is the best cure and preventative measure for these issues down there.
Having sex with a partner or masturbating for regular orgasms can help strengthen your vaginal wall, increase blood flow to the area when you climax and keep those painful symptoms away.
Fertility alert:
You may not need one of those fancy ovulation trackers after all. Your vagina probably comes standard with one!
One of the neatest things about the vagina is that it will let you know when you’re primed and ready to conceive. Your cervical mucus will become clear and stretchy during ovulation, and you’ll probably notice more of it, Westchester-based OB-GYN Dr. Alyssa Dweck, M.S., M.D., FACOG, told Buzzfeed Life.
This is relative, though, as your ‘normal’ vaginal discharge is unique to your body.
Hide and seek:
Maybe you’ve heard stories of (or experienced for yourself) what it’s like to forget a tampon or condom inside a vagina. Whatever it happens to be, try to fish it out yourself (with some lube and a couples fingers) or go to the doc for help.
“I can’t even tell you some of the things I’ve fished out,” Dr. Dweck says. “But what’s most important is that in the gynecology world, we don’t pass judgment.”
The good news is that while things can certainly get stuck up there, the cervical wall will block anything sizable from making its way into your body. “It’s not going anywhere,” Dr. Dweck told Buzzfeed. “It’ll remain at the top of your vagina at the cervix, and it’ll be retrieved.”
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