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Injecting Blood Into Your Clit Is a Bad Idea, but People Are Doing It Anyway

For around $1,500, you can get blood into your clit to enhance your sex life. A plastic surgeon says, "Don't do it."
Photo by Yuko Hirao via Stocksy

Sometimes, you don't really need experts—with their expensive educations and white lab coats and complicated medical knowledge—to tell you something is a really bad idea. The pantheon of stupid and potentially dangerous self-improvement procedures is as extensive as it is inglorious.

In the list of "things you shouldn't do to your own body, let alone pay someone else to do for you," we already have backstreet butt injections (potentially fatal), boob slapping (painful), and scrotal lifts (let it hang, guys). This week, we have a new contender.

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The Mirror reports that women are paying an average of around $1,500 to have blood injected into their clitorises, in what's been termed the "O-shot," or the "orgasm shot." According to official marketing materials for the procedure, it is a "very specific method of using blood-derived growth factors to rejuvenate the vagina to help relieve women with urinary incontinence and sex problems."

In practice, the procedure involves a doctor or nurse drawing blood from another part of the body (usually the arm); the blood is separated to isolate platelet-rich plasma, which is then inserted into the clitoris and the upper vagina using a needle. Practitioners claim that the actual injecting of blood into your clit is virtually painless because of anaesthetic cream.

While the FDA-approved procedure is offered by a range of clinics across the US, Real Housewives fans might opt for New York's V-Spot Medi Spa, set up by former New York housewife Cindy Barshop. It's claimed that, post-procedure, patients can enjoy a rejuvenated "female orgasm system." Touted benefits include greater arousal from clitoral stimulation, stronger and more frequent orgasm, increased sexual desire and a super-smooth, supple clit from all the snake oil you've been injecting into it (I made that last part up).

Read more: Why Teenage Girls Hate Their Vaginas So Much

While testimonials for the O-Spot procedure at Barshop's clinic aren't available online, we did find glowing reviews on the website of another Texas clinic providing the service. "The outcomes from this shot were many Intense Ultimate Multiple Organisms [sic] during and after sex," one happy customer writes. "The vagina became consistently well lubricated with no pain during sex with increased clitoral sensations. In addition, the O-Shot® rejuvenated the tissues, which enabled the vagina to fit the contour of the penis like a glove."

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Women are paying over $1,000 to get the procedure done. Photo by Robert Zaleski via Stocksy

Medical association the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists were unable to advise Broadly whether this is a medically safe procedure, despite repeated requests for comment. However, consultant plastic surgeon Paul Banwell advised caution.

"Injecting platelet rich plasma around the clitoris or into the vagina to improve orgasm is a controversial procedure," he explains. "The current scientific evidence in the literature supporting beneficial outcomes is scant and further research is undoubtedly required."

Read more: How Your Vagina Is Supposed to Smell

I ask about some of the potential dangers if the procedure goes wrong. "As with all injectable procedures," he replies, "there is a risk of bleeding and infection as well as specific complications such as alteration in sensation, libido, and potential damage to the clitoris."

In Banwell's view, more research is needed. "I would welcome carefully designed controlled studies to assess the efficacy of these treatments." And those vagina spas promising a grade-A sex life for a few thousand bucks? You might want to consider whether it's all just marketing spiel.

"Mainstream medical specialists believe this is a marketing-driven procedure rather than an evidence-based procedure." For now, it's probably best to stick to your Kegel exercises—the vaginal procedure doctors can really get behind. Or, just buy a better vibrator.