女性面臨新的保健深坑!大綱

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?

還記得網上有個機會大肆嘲笑陰道蒸汽嗎？陰道蒸汽是由我們的僞科學健康胡說八道摩登女王格溫妮絲·帕特洛帶起來的風尚。

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.

各處的健康專家立刻開始警告人們，試驗這種不可信的療法會有燒傷風險。現在他們有了一個真正的醫療案例。

The patient, a 62-year-old woman, had tried vaginal steaming at home on the advice of a traditional Chinese doctor.

患者是一名62歲的女性，她採納了一名中醫的建議，在家嘗試陰道蒸汽。

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.

她坐在一盆混合了未知草藥的沸水上，進行了兩個療程。結果她的身體開始流膿，這把她送進了急診室。

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 vaginal prolapse.

讓人悲傷的是，這位女士對下體進行蒸汽療法的原因不是爲了達到“清潔”或者“去毒”的效果，而是想治療她過去九個月都在努力應付的嚴重疾病--4期陰道脫垂。

As the name implies, the prolapse of a woman's pelvic organs means that the surrounding tissue and muscle are failing to hold everything in place, a condition that can be quite common after childbirth.

顧名思義，女性骨盆區器官的脫垂意味着周圍的組織和肌肉無法支撐任何東西，讓它們各司其位。這種症狀在分娩後很常見。

It's not always problematic, but this woman's case was severe, with her entire cervix completely outside the vulva.

這也不總是會造成問題，但是這位女士的狀況很嚴重，她整個宮頸都膨出於外陰外。

The usual treatment for this is surgery, which the patient had been reluctant to have at first. As gynecologist Magali Robert from the University of Calgary, Canada reports in the case study, the woman eventually consented to the procedure.

治療手段通常是手術。這位患者一開始不願意進行手術。加拿大卡爾加里大學的婦科醫生瑪格麗·羅伯特在案例研究中報告，這位女士最終同意手術。