Fighting disease with citrus power

Why would UC Berkeley students wear lime juice-soaked tampons for two weeks? Are people that eccentric on the left coast, or is DIY douching in vogue? Neither, or both--but really--those Cal coeds were part of a test trying to find whether citrus power might safely fight HIV. Women account for 60 percent of the world's new HIV cases. If you grew up far from Berkeley, in a place where your father sold you for cows, chances are that you lack the security or health knowledge to make a man wear a condom. Could a dash of lime-based microbicide become a low-tech secret weapon for such women? That's what Berkeley public health researcher Anke Hemmerling hopes. For two decades, health educators and advertisers pushed lubricants containing HIV-killer nonoxynol-9 until realizing that the chemical instead made it easier for women to get the virus. As the East Bay Express explains:

Natural microbicides extracted from fruit or other plants could be a particularly elegant way around the pharmaceutical industry. It's not such a weird idea -- for centuries, women have whipped up homemade contraceptives and microbicides from things like lime or lemon juice, vinegar, honey, and olive oil. With a pH of 2.2, lime juice is sufficiently acidic to kill most microbes, and can neutralize HIV in a test tube in less than a minute...There may be other natural options -- the second-best HIV killer is pomegranate juice -- and the active substance in Carraguard, one of the lead pharmaceutical microbicides being tested, is carrageenan, which is derived from seaweed.

Acidic citrus fruits and seaweed make some strong cleaning products, too. Although limes may eat away at condoms, early tests with willing human guinea pigs show that the tart fruit isn't too harsh for women's bodies. Maybe green microbicides will be a mainstream sexual safeguard for when condoms aren't an option, but more tests are needed. Unfortunately, makers of phony HIV-slayers such as Green Sun (and even spray on condoms), are scamming people into believing they can already get natural protection in a bottle.

Comments

[Cathy]

I know this is an old post but I felt I had to throw my two cents in.
I'm not an expert on this subject, but from what I've gathered, messing with the pH of the vagina is a really really bad idea, making it even more susceptible to disease.
In the ideal world, people would be monogamous and be able to trust that their partner doesn't have HIV in the first place.

[e]

Andy, what's gross about that? Did you mean to comment on the maggots post instead?
;)

[Andy]

So THIS is what the East Bay Express publishes... I've always kind of wondered.

eeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!