Use of sirih leaves

Among the herbal "tricks" used by Indonesian women to assure that their husbands have an optimal sexual experience, sirih leaves are the most common. Sirih leaves are used both topically (to bathe the female genitals) and orally, as a tea.

When used to bathe the female genitals, a number of leaves are boiled in hot water. This boiled extract of sirih leaves is added to some 5 liters of water in a flat basin. Women, especially after having given birth, sit in this weak sirih solution for about half an hour, letting the sirih water enter and wash their vaginal canals.

There are several effects of this bathing. One is that the skin of their vaginal canals wrinkles for several hours. This effect is only present on mucous membrane skin, such as it exists in the vaginal canal of women. The effect can be compared to drinking unsweetened lemon juice, and keeping this unsweetened lemon juice in the mouth for some time. The mucous membranes of the mouth with contract and wrinkle, and even cause a contraction of the muscle tissue below the skin, thus effectively shrinking the size of the oral cavity.

However, the effect of sirih on the mucous membranes of the vaginal cavity is not as crude as the effect of lemon juice in one's mouth. The crude wrinkling caused in one's mouth would actually injure a vaginal canal, or make it prone to injuries once penetrated by a male organ.

Furthermore, the vaginal mucous membrane and muscular tissue contraction caused by sirih leaves lasts for many hours. Just like a local anesthesia with lidocaine persists for quite some time after it has penetrated tissue, so doos the shrinkage effected by the active ingredients of sirih leaves.

However, sirih leaves are special not just because of the vaginal contraction they effect for hours, but also because of the delicate smell they attach to the female genitals. This is not a chemical smell like the one from cologne sprays for female genitals, or strawberry-flavored condoms. Rather, the smell brought about by sirih leave baths can best be compared to the genital smell and flavor of a woman who has never had sexual intercourse. It is a soft, tender smell and taste that actually cannot be attributed by a man to any perfume. The smell and taste are just entirely natural.

In the Indonesian countryside, almost all women take sirih leave baths after childbirth, to avoid both, vaginal looseness and the sour and rancid smell that a vagina may exhibit after exposure to all kind of environments that destroy the vaginal flora: uterine discharges, menstrual blood, placental fluid, and, last not least, semen.

Indonesian wives consider the use of sirih leaves an essential part of their long-term strategies to bind a man in a lifelong relationship. Through the use of sirih leaves, they want to avoid that a husband looks for another, younger woman, because he finds fault with his wife's genital apparatus.