How long is a vagina? And how do I know if mine is ‘short’?
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We often use the word vagina to describe everything “down there”, but that’s not actually anatomically correct.
The vagina is the stretchy, muscular tube that connects the external genitalia, or vulva, to the cervix, which is the entrance to the uterus (womb).
Because it’s barely visible from the outside, many vagina owners wonder how long theirs is, or should be.
Worried teenagers going through puberty regularly asked “Dolly Doctor” – the medical advice column Melissa wrote for over 20 years in Dolly magazine – whether their vaginas were too small or short.
Often they were asking because inserting a tampon was difficult or painful.
The vagina is an incredibly adaptable part of the body and its length can change – across your lifetime, within the month, and with hormonal changes and sexual arousal.
Length at different life stages
Before puberty, the vagina usually measures between 5.5 and 8cm in length.
During puberty (usually between 8–13 years old), not only does the length of the vagina increase, but hormones also change the vaginal lining.
In the time of life between puberty and menopause, oestrogen levels rise and cause the lining of the vagina to thicken and soften. This is what makes the vagina moist and responsive to stimuli, such as when aroused.
By adulthood, the vagina is typically between 6.5cm and 12.5cm. This varies greatly from person to person and continues to change at different times during our lives.
What else can change the vagina’s length?
When someone has their period, generally the cervix sits in a lower position, meaning the vaginal canal is shorter. Then, after menstruation, the cervix lifts upwards again and reaches its highest point during ovulation.
The length of the vagina also changes during different reproductive stages. For example, in pregnancy the cervix sits higher up, meaning the vagina is longer.
On the other hand, menopause, along with many other impacts such as vaginal dryness, can shorten the vaginal canal.
A pelvic organ prolapse can also make the vagina shorter. This is when the pelvic floor becomes weakened and organs such as the womb or bladder bulge into the vagina.
There are also some very rare conditions that can affect the development of the vagina before birth, such as vaginal atresia, which can cause the vagina to not fully form.
What about sex?
Sex also has a large impact on vaginal length.
When someone with a vagina becomes aroused the vagina gets longer and moves the cervix further from the vaginal opening, which allows for sexual penetration.
Despite this lengthening of the vagina, contact with the cervix can still occur during sex, for example with a sex toy, finger or penis. Some people will find cervical stimulation painful or sensitive, while for others it may be pleasurable.
How sex feels can also change depending on your menstrual cycle.
Remember, when you have your period, the cervix is likely to be sitting lower, so this can increase the chance of contact with the cervix during sex, especially during certain sexual positions.
Touching the cervix during sex is very unlikely to cause any damage, although sometimes with vigorous sexual intercourse it can cause bruising. This is not usually dangerous and heals on its own.
Ongoing communication with your partner is crucial to check in and see what feels good for both of you.
So, how long is my vagina?
It can be useful to feel the length of your vagina and the position of your cervix.
For example, if you want to use a menstrual cup during your period, some brands will have different sizes. If you have a shorter vaginal canal, then a shorter or smaller cup may achieve a better fit.
However, other factors – such as your age and how heavy your periods are – can also impact what size is right for you.
To feel the position of your cervix, first wash your hands with soap and water. This is best done around the time of your period, when the vaginal canal will be shorter.
Find a comfortable position, such as sitting, squatting or having one leg bent up on a chair. Then insert your finger into the vagina aiming up and back.
The vagina feels soft and squishy, whereas the cervix is smooth and firm, with a tiny divot in the centre – imagine a mini doughnut.
If you have to really stretch to feel the cervix, you may opt for a longer cup, whereas if you don’t need to insert your whole finger, it is probably sitting a bit lower and you may be more comfortable with a smaller size.
Keep in mind, this will just give you a rough idea of your vagina’s length and where your cervix is sitting (although it may change tomorrow).
Does the length of your vagina matter?
All of our bodies are unique and there is a wide range of “normal”. Generally, having a “short” or “long” vagina doesn’t make any real difference.
For example, a 2009 study of women over the age of 40 found vaginal length doesn’t affect sexual activity or function.
The vagina is extremely elastic and can stretch and mould to accommodate a variety of needs, before returning back to its baseline.
There are some symptoms that would be worth discussing with your GP though, such as pain during sex, difficulty inserting tampons or menstrual cups, or if you are concerned about a prolapse.
Keersten Fitzgerald, Lecturer in General Practice, University of Sydney and Melissa Kang, Professor of Adolescent Health, Co-Head of the General Practice Clinical School, University of Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Blueberries vs Grapes – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing blueberries to grapes, we picked the blueberries.
Why?
Both have the merits, but there was a clear winner:
In terms of macros, blueberries have more than 2x the fiber, while grapes have slightly more carbs; an easy first-round win for blueberries.
In the category of vitamins, blueberries have more of vitamins B3, B5, B7, B9, C, E, and K, while grapes have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, and B6, yielding a 7:4 win to blueberries.
Looking at minerals next, blueberries have more copper, magnesium, phosphorus, and zinc, while grapes have more calcium, manganese, and potassium, giving blueberries a marginal 4:3 win in this round.
In other considerations, both are great for polyphenols, but blueberries have considerably more, so that’s another point in their favor.
Adding up the sections makes for a very clear overall win for blueberries, but by all means do enjoy either or both, as diversity is best!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Can We Drink To Good Health? ← while there are polyphenols such as resveratrol in red wine that per se would boost heart health, there’s so little per glass that you may need 100–1000 glasses per day to get the dosage that provides benefits in mouse studies.
If you’re not a mouse, you might even need more than that!
To this end, many people prefer resveratrol supplementation ← link is to an example product on Amazon, but there are plenty more so feel free to shop around 😎
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Why bad arguments sound convincing: 10 tricks of logic that underpin vaccine myths
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The biggest lie those who create and spread misinformation perpetrate is that they want you to think for yourself. They warn their target audience not to be “sheep” and not to let themselves be told what to believe by “mainstream” voices, the “deep state” or other bogey men.
But in a classic case of misdirection, at the same time they warn you about this, they deploy a range of manipulative tricks to ensure you don’t actually think clearly or independently.
One of these tactics is to seduce you into subscribing to “logical fallacies”. These are flawed patterns of reasoning that sound convincing but lead to false or misleading conclusions.
Logical fallacies are like optical illusions of thought: convincing on the surface, but ultimately an apparition. Like a magician who tries to convince you he really has pulled a rabbit from a hat, getting you to fall for logical fallacies is a sleight of hand that aims to trick you into believing something is true that isn’t.
But when you know how a magic trick works, it no longer fools you. If you recognise the most common logical fallacies and understand how they work, they very quickly lose their power. Once you can see behind the curtain, the illusion fades, and you begin to understand things as they really are.
Here are ten of the most common ones you need to be on the lookout for when it comes to vaccine misinformation.
1. Appeal to nature fallacy
Typical claim:
Vaccines are unnatural, so they must be bad.
Fallacy: Assumes that natural is always better or safer, which is not logically or scientifically valid. Plenty of natural substances are very harmful or deadly, and plenty of man-made products, including many medicines, are life-saving.
2. Slippery slope fallacy
Typical claim:
If we allow vaccine mandates, next we’ll lose all medical freedom.
Fallacy: Assumes a minor or reasonable action will inevitably spiral into something more extreme and implausible. This is one of the easiest logical fallacies to spot and relies on stretching logic to its breaking point in order to provoke fear. Politicians particularly like this tactic.
3. Ad hominem fallacy
Typical claim:
You can’t trust that doctor, he’s obese and doesn’t know how to look after himself.
Fallacy: Attacks the person instead of engaging with their argument or evidence. This is usually the go-to strategy when one either has no evidence to back up what they are saying or doesn’t have any capacity to engage with the evidence.
4. False dichotomy fallacy
Typical claim:
You either trust vaccines blindly or you’re a free thinker.
Fallacy: Ignores the nuanced middle ground and oversimplifies the choices. Often this is a version of the “you’re either with us or against us” ploy. It frames the debate so that one option is clearly unreasonable, creating the false impression that the right choice is obvious.
5. Straw man fallacy
Typical claim:
Pro-vaccine people think vaccines are perfect and have no risks.
Fallacy: This may be the most relied upon tactic by those spreading vaccine misinformation. It relies on misrepresenting the evidence to make it easier to attack. It often involves a number of different tactics such as distorting, cherry picking or oversimplifying the evidence. RFK Jr is a big fan of this tactic.
6. Post hoc fallacy (false cause)
Typical claim:
My child got sick after a vaccine, so the vaccine caused it.
Fallacy: Confuses correlation with causation without considering other explanations. Just because two events occur at about the same time doesn’t mean one caused the other. The false belief that the MMR vaccine causes autism stems from a single fraudulent study that wrongly inferred causation from a mere correlation.
7. Bandwagon fallacy (appeal to popularity)
Typical claim:
Millions of people are questioning vaccines so there must be something wrong.
Fallacy: Assumes that a widespread belief is equivalent to truth. This is also called the “illusory truth effect” and it’s one of the main reasons misinformation has such an influence on social media. When people find themselves in echo chambers where they are led to believe a view is commonly held, even when it is obviously untrue, they are more likely to believe it. Humans are wired up to follow the herd.
8. Anecdotal fallacy
Typical claim:
I know someone who got vaccinated and still got sick so vaccines can’t work.
Fallacy: Uses personal stories instead of statistical or scientific evidence. This is equivalent to the reference to the grandmother who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and lived to be 100 years old. It’s often the go-to strategy when there is no evidence to support a claim. Apart from the fact these anecdotes are usually not verifiable, anecdotes are no substitute for rigorous scientific evidence.
9. Perfectionist fallacy
Typical claim:
Vaccines aren’t 100% safe and effective, so they are useless.
Fallacy: Rejects a good solution (vaccines) because it is not perfect. No medical intervention is 100% risk-free. Even something universally used like aspirin can have side effects, and so an extension of this logic is that every single therapeutic intervention is useless because it is not perfect, which is absurd.
10. Base rate fallacy
Typical claim:
More vaccinated people are getting sick, so vaccines don’t work.
Fallacy: In a highly vaccinated population, most people will be vaccinated and inevitably some vaccinated people will still get sick. While the absolute numbers of vaccinated people who get sick will outnumber those who did not get vaccinated and got sick, this is misleading as the proportion will be much smaller due to the sheer numbers of vaccinated individuals in the population.
In a nutshell
We live in a time where bad-faith actors are easily able to spread deliberate misinformation. Therefore, we all need to educate ourselves in the tactics and tricks used by these con artists, so we’re not fooled.
Being able to recognise how logical fallacies are used to make misleading arguments seem persuasive is one of the things we can do to protect ourselves. The good news is, once you understand the most commonly used logical fallacies, it’s harder be to fooled.
Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Spicy Foods & Your Gut
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Capsaicin, the compound in hot peppers that makes them spicy, is a chemical irritant and a neurotoxin. However, humans being humans, we decided to eat them for fun.
In contrast to many other things that humans recreationally enjoy despite them being objectively poisonous (for example alcohol, tobacco, many other drugs), consuming capsaicin (in moderation) is considered to have health benefits, such as aiding weight loss (by boosting metabolism) and reducing inflammation.
We’ve written before about those well-studied benefits: Capsaicin For Weight Loss And Against Inflammation
…and also about some of the risks: How Internal Organs Can Be Affected By Spicy Foods
The risks are usually only if one takes very spicy food without building up tolerance first by regularly enjoying less spicy foods and working one’s way up the hotness scale, but still, it’s important to know that if you do inadvisably and/or accidentally eat something well above your normal tolerance level, then the fact that you just ate a poison for which your body was unprepared will have consequences (specifically: bad ones).
Most people who do not regularly enjoy spices will be able to vividly imagine the connection between spice consumption and how happy one’s gut is about it, and that imagination may nor conjure a very pleasant image. But, assuming we do indeed have and/or build up a comfortable tolerance to the point that we do indeed regularly enjoy spicy food, what does the science have to say about what that’s doing to our gut?
The Spice Must Flow
Or rather, with apologies to Frank Herbert:
- the spice must proceed regularly through the gastrointestinal tract (i.e. habituation)
- the spice must then be further metabolized by the liver (i.e. hepatic metabolism)
Researchers (Dr. Angela Elena Martínez-Medina et al.) investigated this thoroughly, and found…
Capsaicin improves gut microbiota composition! Specifically, it promotes beneficial bacteria (especially short-chain-fatty-acid-producers such as butyrate-forming microbes) and reduces pro-inflammatory bacteria.
Dose matters, though:
- low doses support gut mucin secretion, increase microbial diversity, and prevent dysbiosis (these are all good things for it to do)
- high doses (>80 mg/kg) may cause intestinal damage and reduce helpful bacteria like Akkermansia muciniphila.
To illustrate that high dose, 80mg/kg means, if you weigh the same as this writer, you’d need to consume 6g of capsaicin to hit that danger zone. Not 6g of chilli mass or chilli powder, but 6g of capsaicin. If you’re getting this from peppers, then for example cayenne pepper (a good source of capsaicin) contains around 2.5mg of capsaicin per 1 gram of cayenne. Which means you’d need to consume 2.4kg of cayenne pepper to hit that danger zone. That’s a little over 5 lbs. Now, this writer here likes spicy food, but even she goes lighter on the seasoning than 2.4kg of cayenne per meal. Hopefully you do too.
You may be wondering: why was that even tested, then? And the answer is: because while cayenne is a very good source of capsaicin from food, the sky’s the limit when it comes to capsaicin from supplements. So, check doses when using those!
The researchers had more to say about its effects, including:
❝It crosses the blood–brain barrier, alters neurotransmitter levels, and accumulates in brain regions involved in cognition.
In addition to its systemic effects, capsaicin appears to undergo microbial transformation and influences gut microbial composition, favoring short-chain fatty acid producers and suppressing pro-inflammatory taxa.
These changes contribute to anti-obesity, anti-inflammatory, and potentially anticancer effects.❞
You can read the paper in full, here: Capsaicin as a Microbiome Modulator: Metabolic Interactions and Implications for Host Health
Want to learn more?
You might like this book that we reviewed a little while back:
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16 Overlooked Autistic Traits In Women
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We hear a lot about “autism moms”, but Taylor Heaton is an autistic mom, diagnosed as an adult, and she has insights to share about overlooked autistic traits in women.
The Traits
- Difficulty navigating romantic relationships: often due to misreading signs
- Difficulty understanding things: including the above, but mostly: difficulty understanding subtext, when people leave things as “surely obvious”. Autistic women are likely to be aware of the possible meanings, but unsure which it might be, and may well guess wrongly.
- Masking: one of the reasons for the gender disparity in diagnosis is that autistic women are often better at “masking”, that is to say, making a conscious effort to blend in to allistic society—often as a result of being more societally pressured to do so.
- Honesty: often to a fault
- Copy and paste: related to masking, this is about consciously mirroring others in an effort to put them at ease and be accepted
- Being labelled sensitive and/or gifted: usually this comes at a young age, but the resultant different treatment can have a lifetime effect
- Secret stims: again related to masking, and again for the same reasons that displaying autistic symptoms is often treated worse in women, autistic women’s stims tend to be more subtle.
- Written communication: autistic women are often more comfortable with the written word than the spoken
- Leadership: autistic women will often gravitate to leadership roles, partly as a survival mechanism
- Gaslighting: oneself, e.g. “If this person did this without that, then I can to” (without taking into account that maybe the circumstances are different, or maybe they actually did lean on crutches that you didn’t know were there, etc).
- Inner dialogue: rich inner dialogue, but unable to express it outwardly—often because of the sheer volume of thoughts per second.
- Fewer female friends: often few friends overall, for that matter, but there’s often a gender imbalance towards male friends, or where there isn’t, towards more masculine friends at least.
- Feeling different: often a matter of feeling one does not meet standard expectations in some fashion
- School: autistic women are often academically successful
- Special interests: often more “socially accepted” interests than autistic men’s.
- Flirting: autistic women are often unsure how to flirt or what to do about it, which can result in simple directness instead
For more details on all of these, enjoy:
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Related reading:
You might like a main feature of ours from not long back:
Miss Diagnosis: Anxiety, ADHD, & Women
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Brain implants allow us to move and talk. But they could also be hacked
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The human brain is remarkably complex, with trillions of connections that control how you move, think and feel.
Yet it’s still vulnerable to debilitating conditions such as paralysis, stroke, epilepsy and various neurodegenerative diseases.
Scientists are investigating if a kind of technology, known as the brain-computer interface, could help patients move and communicate better.
So how does it work? And what are the potential risks?
EThamPhoto/Getty What is a brain-computer interface?
A brain-computer interface works by reading electrical signals produced by the brain, which it translates into digital signals that an external computer can understand. The computer then sends instructions – such as the command to move a cursor, steer a wheelchair or read a sentence aloud – back to the brain. This whole process happens in real time, allowing patients to do tasks more independently.
There are two types of brain-computer interfaces:
Non-invasive
Non-invasive brain-computer interfaces are worn externally, usually in the form of electroencephalogram headsets. An electroencephalogram, or an EEG, is a type of test that measures activity in the brain. This technology is already available on the consumer market, found in everything from meditation apps to video games.
Invasive
Invasive brain-computer interfaces are surgically implanted. This involves placing electrodes – devices that carry electrical signals from the body to medical instruments – directly onto the exposed surface of the brain. These interfaces aim to help restore key functions such as speech and mobility in people with a disability, caused by conditions such as stroke or spinal cord injury.
It is this second category that’s attracting attention from investors and scientists. Several companies – including early developer Blackrock Neurotech, Australian-owned Synchron, and Elon Musk’s Neuralink – are racing to get implantable brain-computer interfaces to patients.
Under current regulations, only a handful of clinical trial participants globally can access this technology. But this may change as interest grows. The international brain-computer interface market is expected to be worth roughly A$14 billion by 2033, up from its current value of just under $3 billion.
Their role in health care
Brain implants may sound dystopian, but they are a promising part of neuroscience research.
More than three billion people worldwide live with a neurological condition that affects their motor, communication or sensory functions. Examples include stroke, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy and traumatic brain injury.
Brain-computer interfaces are particularly helpful for communication. In one 2023 study, paralysed patients that used a brain-computer interface were able to communicate up to 78 words per minute. That’s a five-fold improvement from the 15 words per minute achieved by patients in 2021. And recent research shows this technology is still rapidly improving.
Beyond communication, surgeons are using brain-computer interfaces to map brain activity in real time. This is particularly useful during complex or high-risk procedures, where surgeons must protect key brain regions.
Sleep researchers are also using this technology to analyse brain signals in people who may have a sleep disorder, such as insomnia or sleep apnoea. Brain-computer interfaces may be a more accurate way to diagnose and treat such disorders, compared to other methods such as sleep diaries that rely on participant reports.
Scientists are also investigating how these interfaces could be used in rehabilitation, particularly for people with conditions such as depression, epilepsy, stroke and Parkinson’s disease.
What are the risks?
Here are three worth noting.
Physical harm
Any kind of brain implant can cause physical damage that may affect how neighbouring brain regions work.
For example, if there’s bleeding in a part of the brain that controls speech or movement, even a small blot clot could impair those functions. And while infections in the brain are rare, they can cause swelling and further complications if not immediately treated.
Research suggests there are long-term effects of having foreign material inside the skull. Over time, the brain treats the implant as an intruder, forming scar tissue around it in a bid to destroy nearby brain cells and stop the implant from working. Regular movements such as breathing may also create friction between the hard implant and soft brain tissue, causing some brain regions to become inflamed.
Cybersecurity threats
One recent study found a large-scale breach of brain-computer interface systems could theoretically allow hackers to access sensitive neural data, such as patients’ thoughts and memories. Hacking may also enable them to impair a patient’s cognitive functions such as the ability to concentrate, or even manipulate motor signals to affect how well they move. That’s a scary prospect, especially if these devices become more common in health care and other sectors. In the United States, some jurisdictions are already working to protect neural data rights in law, but there are still major regulatory gaps.
Unequal access
Currently, getting a brain implant will set you back between $50,000 to $140,000. That doesn’t include the cost of ongoing maintenance and follow-up care. So ordinary patients are unlikely to access this technology anytime soon, widening the gap between who can and can’t afford to improve their health.
Where to next
Brain-computer interfaces are a promising new technology, but they come with risks.
We urgently need more high-quality research into the long-term effects – both physical and psychological – of permanent brain implants. Importantly, this research should be funded publicly and not just by a handful of large, profit-driven companies.
David Tuffley, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Applied Ethics and CyberSecurity, Griffith University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Brain Maker – by Dr. David Perlmutter
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Regular 10almonds readers probably know about the gut-brain connection already, so what’s new here?
Dr. David Perlmutter takes us on a tour of gut and brain health, specifically, the neuroprotective effect of healthy gut microbiota.
This seems unlikely! After all, vagus nerve or no, the gut microbiota are confined to the gut, and the brain is kept behind the blood-brain barrier. So how does one thing protect the other?
Dr. Perlmutter presents the relevant science, and the honest answer is, we’re not 100% sure how this happens! We do know part of it: that bad gut microbiota can result in a “leaky gut”, and that may in turn lead to such a thing as a “leaky brain”, where the blood-brain barrier has been compromised and some bad things can get in with the blood.
When it comes to gut-brain health…
Not only is the correlation very strong, but also, in tests where someone’s gut microbiota underwent a radical change, e.g. due to…
- antibiotics (bad)
- fasting (good)
- or a change in diet (either way)
…their brain health changed accordingly—something we can’t easily check outside of a lab, but was pretty clear in those tests.
We’re also treated to an exposé on the links between gut health, brain health, inflammation, and dementia… Which links are extensive.
In closing, we’ll mention that throughout this book we’re also given many tips and advices to improve our gut/brain health, reverse damage done already, and set ourselves up well for the future.
Click here to check out “Brain Maker” on Amazon and take care of this important part of your health!
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