For two years, a 52-year-old woman noticed a strange and oddly specific pattern. Every time she ate spicy food, she felt burning in her vagina. On a bland diet, it did not happen. She described the sensation as feeling "like chili water."
She was initially diagnosed with vaginitis, a common inflammation of the vagina. But the real cause was anatomical. Surgeons eventually found an abnormal tunnel connecting her rectum and vagina, plugged with hardened stool deposits called coproliths. According to the authors, capsaicin, the compound that makes chili peppers hot, was reaching her vaginal tissue through that tunnel.
