Fashion for big buttocks: no, you shouldn't put bouillon cubes in your anus
THE ESSENTIALThis is a surprising and worrying trend. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, doctors have repeatedly had to take care of patients who had injected bouillon cubes normally used in cooking... into the anus. In this African country, the trend is so widespread that it is even mentioned at the beginning of the song "Ntaba ya Bandundu" by Shiko Mawatu, released in 2007.
At the end of March, Dr. Silas Agbesi Joy warned on his Twitter account: "Stop injecting seasoning cubes into your anus to enlarge your buttocks. It's not safe". But why stock cubes? There is a popular belief (although it has no real scientific basis) that the salt in these products causes tissue to expand, making the buttocks look larger and rounder.
Health risks
If this trend is widespread in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but also in other countries in Africa like Nigeria, it is mainly because women with plump buttocks are considered more desirable. However, as Dr. Agbesi Joy reminds us, these injections involve health risks, starting with hypertension.
"If you crush the seasoning cubes which contain a large amount of salt and inject them into your anus, the lining of the anus will absorb a huge part of this salt into your blood. The excess salt in blood circulation is an important factor in hypertension, especially in Africans. A person, in theory, can develop hypertension from this practice", explains the doctor on the social network.
