Dr Cuterus: I don’t think my book would have happened without my Instagram

In this exclusive interview, the University of Oxford alumna talks about her experience of writing the book, the role that Instagram has played in cementing her celebrity, sexual health tips, how to manage PCOS without medication, the prevalent shaming around pill consumption, and more.

I’m so glad to hear this. Thank you so much. I study like this. I don’t want to use this phrase but I sort of dumb it down for myself and then I retain it better. So I just tried to use the concepts that are very fundamental for me and put them in the book.

There is no space for discussing in-depth topics on Instagram, which is my primary platform of communication with people. You have to be very quick and black and white with your answers. This book has given me the space to talk about the marvel of the human body; it’s fascinating.

So often I’m stuck with answering ‘eating this will not have any adverse effect on your period’ or ‘eating that will improve your sexual health’ as opposed to actually discussing what the organs that control all of this are. Even after all the content that I have created around these topics, so many people who have been following me for a while still don’t know the difference between the vulva and the vagina.

I feel like you have to break it down to very simple basics and make people understand the structure before you start explaining to them the poetry. So it was more about that. I’m really interested in science communication; I find it fascinating. So it was kind of a love child of all of these things.

Does my body look OK? Are my boobs OK? Is my penis OK? Why are my genitals so dark? So very body-image-centric questions. The second set of most common questions is about masturbation. Is it bad for you? Is it good for you? The third is how can I tighten my vagina? How can I please my partner better?

I don’t think this book would have happened without my Instagram. It has made me a better doctor in so many ways. I get instant feedback. People don’t give doctors so much feedback as much as they beat us up. The instant feedback has been very helpful in understanding how to phrase certain things, and what people really are interested in. Otherwise, I could have just sat there and written about what I believe is interesting from a medical perspective but everybody may not find that interesting.

That if you start using sex toys, you’ll stop enjoying sex with your partner.

Oh, absolutely. Hot-water bags, yoga (certain asanas are very helpful), and dark chocolate (it contains magnesium which helps reduce cramps). So if you have cramps for any other reasons as well, dark chocolate is wonderful. But it needs to have at least 70 percent dark chocolate, not the Dairy Milk kind. And it’s OK to take painkillers for your period pain.

I don’t like the term reverse PCOS. Once you have PCOS, you’ll always have it. What you can do is control the symptoms and the condition. Reversing sort of misleads people into thinking that they will go back to a non-PCOS state, which will never happen, unfortunately.

Your lifestyle can play a crucial role in controlling your PCOS symptoms and condition without taking medication. Sleep, exercise, stress, and food. But then even after making the best efforts, some people still struggle with managing their PCOS and that’s OK. Medicines can be really helpful; they are not bad. There is a lot of shaming around pill consumption for all things women’s healthcare, be it painkillers, PCOS pills, or contraceptive pills. But pills are fine and they have been developed and tested thoroughly to make sure that they work for you.

Always use condoms for whatever sexual act you’re having — oral sex, anal sex, vaginal sex, everything.

Get vaccinated against HPV. It is a family of viruses, out of which some are very strongly linked with causing cancer of the cervix (the bottom part of the uterus), cancer of the anus, cancer of the penis, and cancer of the vulva. It is the only cancer in the world that is preventable with a vaccine. So get vaccinated and protect yourself from HPV.

Don’t worry about how your genitals look compared to porn or how your performance is supposed to be according to porn. It’s fantasy; it’s not real. Nobody looks like that, nobody has sex like that.

Stop smoking. It’s the single best decision you can take for better sexual and reproductive health as well as overall health.