Farah was fed. with her vagina.

For the past two years, the 29-year-old dancer from Ohio had been dealing with severe pelvic pain and vaginal odor. “It was like an 8/10, horrible core pain,” she says. “I couldn’t lie down. I couldn’t even do office work. It was bad.”

When she went to the doctors, she told them what she thought was the culprit: an allergic reaction to soy oil in a pot of water in which she would swim during a dinner theater performance based on pirate theater. But they didn’t believe it. “They tried to cure it with antibiotics,” she says. “And they just didn’t do anything.”

So Farah (who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely about health issues) started Googling her symptoms. That’s how she stumbled upon Nuevo, a vaginal health company that provides supplements, suppositories and at-home vaginal microbiome testing kits.

He ordered a test from the company for $150, and it came back with a diagnosis: aerobic vaginitis (AV), a bacterial infection caused by an overgrowth of E. coli or streptococcus. She ordered supplements recommended by the company, and she says the pain went away almost immediately. “I was so glad to find out what was wrong,” she says.

Farah is one of a growing number of women who have used home tests to self-diagnose problems with the vaginal microbiome. Presence of “good” bacteria belongs to According to several studies, with a lower risk of STIs and other types of infections. There was an uproar in the industry recently when Silicon Valley entrepreneur Brian Johnson Posted X that he had just given oral sex to his girlfriend, Kate Tullo, then followed up with a screen grab of his TinyHealth vaginal microbiome report. She announced that she scored “100/100” and was in the “top 1% of all vaginas” due to her dominance. Lactobacillus crispusa type of “good” bacteria found in the vagina.

Johnson’s thread was widely mocked, with many questioning why Johnson would publicly reveal his partner’s vaginal health in such a manner. But she’s also received responses online from women who are tracking their vaginal microbiome to treat their bacterial infections, boost fertility, or just out of curiosity. Some have even published their findings.

The market for at-home vaginal microbiome tests is booming — TinyHealth, which uses the startup tool, claims sales of vaginal health tests increased 2,000 percent within the first 48 hours of Johnson’s post — and similar companies include JunoBio, which partners with Nuevo. UK-based Daye, and Evvy. But some experts believe there isn’t enough research yet to support the long-term validity of such tests. None of the home kits on the market are FDA approved. There are also questions about whether they empower women to take their health care into their own hands or create more problems for them.

Twenty-eight-year-old Samantha (she also requested a pseudonym due to the sensitive nature of the subject) became interested in vaginal microbiome testing after experiencing bacterial vaginosis, or BV. She ordered a testing kit from Evie on the recommendation of the Facebook group Beyond BV, which provides support for women with recurrent vaginal infections, and where she often posts her results.

Samantha found her test results useful, but she also noticed a distinct strain of paranoia within the group. For example, when many women get their results, they focus on whether they have had enough. Lactobacillus crispusor “good” bacteria, in the vagina. “I’ll read posts where women are freaking out if they have 97 percent crispies and then they’ll test again and they’re like 60 percent and they’ll be really disappointed and scared,” she says. The opposite is also true. “Women will post about being 100 percent crisps and other women in the comments will just be like, ‘Oh, I’m so jealous, I have so many problems, I hope to be you one day.’