It sounds fabulous, doesn't it? I have spoken to another friend who is a holistic-based person...and she was hesitant, due to her own special circumstances. Be sure to do your research, too... I hope that this can help even one single person!

I have heard of it, and it sounded sketch at best, but mostly harmless. The only way I'd try it is if I was having a lot of cramping and that for pain relief instead of a hot pad. It's probably just another fad thing because I've seen claims that the steam 'gets up into the uterus' and I'm like 'and how does it get beyond the cervix?"

...Well I actually know how people in Ireland, Scotland and England manage; they go to the NHS which is presumably better literally everywhere but Wales, and mass travel is actually easier than driving but there's less territory for them to have to go, too. France and Republic of Ireland have their own systems. China also doesn't pooh-pooh traditional remedies as often as Western doctors despite the fact that like half of our common medications is traditionally derived like aspirin (willow bark) or penicillin or Valium (valerian root).

But you would be surprised at how different the food/diet of another English speaking country is, much less how different it is in the Middle East or Africa. Few people eat as much sugar and sugar-related foods as we (from North America) do and have vastly different activity levels, and in the last thirty years HFCS has been added into practically *every* processed food from ketchup to soda pop in the US. I'm fairly certain grains and sugar are what is behind PCOS and several other medical issues when you get right down to it; the archaeological record of the Hopewell Civ is littered with how just introducing maize from Mesoamerica changed the overall health of the population within a few generations, and then you have entire families of Navajo who are diabetic right now because of modern diets. I doubt very much PCOS and the like is as much of an issue in other places but I haven't done study into it because it's exhausting just trying to manage my own condition.

I'm very much questioning the idea that vagina steaming has anything to do with "balancing female hormones" as Gwyneth Paltrow says. I just mentioned cramping specifically because heat tends to relieve the pain for me. This sounds far too much of a quack fad to have anything remotely related to actual traditional medicine after I dug into it a bit. I tend to research pre-Christian era remedies and herbology as part of my anthropology degree. You're more likely to balance hormones drinking raspberry leaf tea (an actual traditional remedy that has been proven to work, btw) or fenugreek/blessed thistle. Fenugreek in particular has been shown to be good for balancing diabetic blood sugar levels so I've been looking into getting some tea. My mother used to swear by raspberry leaf tea for her cramps.