A puff of air escaping your vagina might feel a little like a fart, and it could very well sound like one—but it actually has nothing to do with gas. In fact, this normal (if sometimes awkward) bodily function, called queefing, is more like your vulva’s version of inhaling a gulp of air and blowing a raspberry. Sometimes air finds its way from your environment into your vagina, and a queef is just what happens when it inevitably comes back out.
Want more evidence that a queef ≠ a frontal fart? It won’t have any smell. Whereas farts contain stinky gas produced by the bacteria in your GI tract during digestion, queefs are literally just air that got stuck in your vagina. “The vaginal canal is what we call a potential space,” Alyssa Dweck, MD, FACOG, a New York–based gynecologist, tells SELF. “It stays mostly closed—until something goes into it to open it up, and air is one of those things.”
That tends to be more likely if you turn upside down, insert something into your vagina (like a finger or tampon), or have penetrative sex, Liz Miracle, MSPT, WCS, a pelvic floor physical therapist and head of clinical quality at physical therapy platform Origin, tells SELF. But any kind of exercise or even just everyday movements that involve shifting your pelvis could cause some air to get sucked up there…and then get squeezed back out (maybe noisily so). And to be clear, none of the above queefing scenarios is dangerous, health-wise.
Nor is queefing out of the ordinary: Up to 69% of people with a vagina do it, and that number is probably an underestimate (given that people don’t love divulging this stuff). No doubt, we’d all be better off if we could just accept it and move on. But the reality is, we live in a society, so it’s totally valid if your tendency to queef is annoying or embarrassing to you for any reason. Read on to learn how to stop queefing, or at least make it less likely that you squeak one out the next time you’re having sex or hitting a child’s pose.
First, some intel on what causes queefing and why some people are more prone to it than others
In the vast majority of cases, queefing is just the normal result of air shifting in and out of your vagina because of body movements that naturally widen and narrow that space. But the functioning of your pelvic floor—that sling of muscles running from your pubic bone to your tailbone—likely plays a role in making queefing more or less likely to happen.
Though research isn’t conclusive on the topic, having a loose, weak, or just somewhat lax pelvic floor could theoretically make it easier for your vaginal canal to stay open and trap more air inside it, Dr. Dweck says. Then when you go to contract your core during exercise or sex, for instance, the extra pressure in your abdomen will force that air out as a queef, Miracle explains, particularly if your pelvic floor is too weak to brace against it. (This kind of pelvic laxity can happen naturally with age or as the result of pregnancy and childbirth.) It makes sense then that research links queefing with urinary incontinence (leaking some pee when you don’t mean to) and prolapse (when pelvic organs sag from their usual positions and bulge into the vagina) as both are often the result of a weak pelvic floor.
But at the same time, the reverse scenario of an overly tight pelvic floor may also put you at higher risk of queefing, Charles Ascher-Walsh, MD, a gynecologic surgeon and director of the division of urogynecology at Mount Sinai in New York, tells SELF. (Those muscles can become tense from years of involuntary clenching, which you may do for multiple reasons, including to compensate for a muscle weakness or injury or because of a health condition that affects your pelvis, like irritable bowel syndrome or endometriosis.) A very tight pelvic floor is essentially in spasm, he explains, which means it may move a lot more than normal—not unlike someone with a weak pelvic floor. “It’s the opposite end of the spectrum,” he says, but it can lead to queefing all the same. Research also suggests that having a higher “resting tone” of your pelvic floor (meaning, it holds more baseline tension) can add resistance to air exiting your vagina, making a noticeable queef more likely.
In extremely rare cases, it’s also possible to experience what feels and sounds like queefing as the result of a medical condition wherein your rectum forms a tiny connection to your vagina, called a rectovaginal fistula, Dr. Dweck says. This connection then allows gas that you’d normally fart out to come through your vagina, she explains. (You’d likely need surgery to close off the link and keep these openings separate.) In this scenario, though, the air you’d pass would smell like a fart (since it’s transferring over from your GI system), she says. Plus, fistulas don’t typically form spontaneously, Dr. Ascher-Walsh says. They generally occur in folks who had a vaginal tear during childbirth that then doesn’t heal completely or in those with severe inflammatory bowel disease (for instance, ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease) who are also generally in a lot of abdominal pain, he says. So if neither applies to you, there’s a high chance your queefing is NBD.
How to stop queefing at the most inopportune moments
To be extra clear: There’s no rule saying you have to stop queefing—better yet if you feel at peace with it when it occasionally happens. But if it’s becoming a nuisance or is in any way uncomfortable to you (say, it’s making you self-conscious in a workout class you love or distracting you during sex), you might want to tamp down the frequency.
While there are no proven solutions for queefing (again, it isn’t a medical issue on its own), there are a few things that may make it less anatomically likely to happen. One option is to avoid body positions where air can easily seep into your vagina, which include anything that opens up that space—such as deep-penetration sex positions or doggy-style-esque moves, or exercise positions that elevate your hips, like downward dog.
Any kind of penetrative sex can force air into your vagina and make a queef more likely, Dr. Ascher-Walsh says, but you may be able to lower that chance by not fully removing the penis or toy each time you switch positions. (That’s when air might otherwise rush out.)
If cutting out all of the above feels like a high price to pay, you could try changing up the way you’re engaging your pelvic floor in these kinds of movements, Miracle suggests. For instance, you might purposefully contract your pelvic floor or do a Kegel (squeeze the muscle you’d use to stop peeing) before moving into an exercise or sex position that especially spreads wide your vaginal opening. Or, alternatively, if you suspect your pelvic floor is typically clenched, you could actively relax or release it in these movements (try a deep, diaphragmatic exhale) to avoid trapping air inside your vagina and creating the resistance that’ll cause it to burst out with an audible toot.
According to Miracle, there’s little harm in trying both of these approaches. But ultimately, the one that works best for you will depend on whether your pelvic floor skews toward the looser or tighter side of things—which is something that a pelvic floor physical therapist can evaluate. (You can ask your ob-gyn for a referral, check with nearby hospitals to see if they have a department, or use this credible PT locator to find one near you.) You may especially want to seek out the care of one of these pros if you’re also dealing with pain during or after sex, urinary incontinence, or symptoms of prolapse (which will feel like something is stuck in your vagina or bulging out from it, Miracle says)—all of which point to a potential pelvic floor issue.
In the meantime, we could all benefit from destigmatizing queefing, perhaps starting by dropping the name, Miracle suggests. It has a strangely negative connotation for a word that some suspect originated with the Northern English “quiff,” meaning, simply, “puff of air.” In keeping with that OG definition, the medical community more aptly calls it “vaginal air” or “vaginal wind”—something to let whoosh right by like a breeze.
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