Remember when the internet was having a field day making fun of vaginal steaming – the latest fad popularised by Gwyneth Paltrow, our modern queen of pseudoscientific health nonsense ? Health professionals everywhere immediately started warning people about the risk of burns if you tried this dubious remedy – and now they have an actual medical case to point to. The patient, a 62-year-old woman, had tried vaginal steaming at home on the advice of a traditional Chinese doctor. After two sessions of sitting atop a pan of boiling water mixed with unknown herbs, the results – which included an alarming discharge – sent her looking for help at the emergency department. Sadly, the reason this woman steamed her lower parts wasn’t for "freshening" or "detoxifying" effects, but rather to try and treat a serious medical condition she’d been struggling with for the past 9 months – stage IV […]