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2024-11-11

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Hyperosmolal vaginal lubricants markedly reduce epithelial barrier properties in a three-dimensional vaginal epithelium model (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Looking at any interesting effects of propylene glycol in vaginal lubricants I stumbled upon this study. Then I found it isn't the only one pointing to hyperosmolal lubes causing damage to the epithelium either.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Interesting. As women tend to combat vaginal dryness later in life, guidelines like these are especially needed there. Pretty sure you very easily fall into a vicious circle of lubing, ruining cells which produce any remaining lube -> lubing even more. I guess the bottom line is to buy water-based lubes with some sort of an organic "gel" source and avoid propylene glycol/tons of glycerine/detergets (though those are harder to detect by name).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Totally. I'm not even sure it's the glycol or whether it's the ratio of soluble in the solution. Perhaps it would be too watery if they change it. In any case, they list a few options that don't have this problem. We'll go with them till we find the next problem! 🥹