Blue Waffle Disease: The STD You Absolutely Don’t Have To Worry About

Blue Waffle Disease has been on America’s lips, so to speak, since at least the year 2010. It got a shot in the arm when New Jersey city councilwoman Kathy McBride addressed a city council meeting and asked what was being done about the issue. For several years now, we've been hearing rumors about an STD which is called "blue waffle disease." However, unsurprisingly, not everything you see on the internet is correct. Yes, it's true that STDs can be dangerous and that it's very important to take steps to be safe. You won't, however, have to worry about so-called blue waffle disease.

So, what exactly is the real story behind Blue Waffle Disease, and why don't you have to worry about it? Well, let's take a look.

Let’s Look Into A Little Background

STDs are on the rampage among young people — especially recently. Sure, we all probably expect the young, and often irresponable and impuslive, teenagers to be more likely to have more sex with more partners than people who are aged 32-year olds like me, but after decades of sexual health teaching, we expect them to at least know how to protect themselves from the dangers of casual sex. We’d be wrong: It’s hard to attribute the rise to any specific cause, much as true believers on the right or left might wish, but the fact is that 68 percent of Chlamydia cases in the USA in 2014 were in people aged 15-24. The more serious Gonnorrhea and Syphilis are also much more prevalent among this age group, reaching their peak in 20-24-year-olds. 

Real STDs aren’t actually on the increase. They rose, then fell, rose again and have now been declining since about 2011 — but they are far more common among the young than they should be. It’s hard to think that the cause is a lack of knowledge about sexual health. Despite decades of instruction, potentially lethal myths about sexual health and disease persist.

In Australia, a wealthy country with plenty of sex advice including classroom sex education, a 2013 survey found that 13 percent of high school students "never" used a condom when they had sex. Never. Only 43 percent — less than half — said they always used a condom. If the 67 percent of Australian young people who thought that using condoms was something to be casual about were a little better informed, the HIV infection rate among Australian 15 to 19-year-old males might not have more than doubled in the last five years.

One Thing They Do Know About, Though, Is Blue Waffle Disease

Never heard of it? Until about six months ago, neither had I. But after I saw it mentioned once, I found it so improbable that I did some searching. And it was everywhere!

Opinion is divided between those who regard blue waffle disease as a single ailment and those who think of it as a combination of the symptoms of several interacting sexual diseases. For instance, "Chris Attakk" says:

See Also: Sexually Transmitted Diseases: Testing And Prevention

"So, you are correct that it isn’t its own disease. On the contrary, its actually the make up of several sexually transmitted diseases. Gonorrhea is what causes some of the coloring and smell, yeast infection makes the smell worse, herpes causes the lumps and swelling(since there is already infection from other STDs, the herpies [sic] are prominent all the time and Dont [sic] go away like they normally would if infection wasn’t present.) Also, blue waffle also consists of syphilis as well. Causing more sores and unsightly rashes. So no, blue waffle isn’t a disease, but is made up of multiple others and blue waffle is the result of all them mixing together."

How Is Blue Waffle Disease Spread?

How is blue waffle disease spread? Over the internet, basically.

The source I quoted earlier, Chris Attakk, is a pseudonymous commenter on a poorly-written and unresearched spin article I found online. There were at least a hundred commenters, many warning of the dangers of the "disease" — but actual medical opinion is pretty clear that it doesn’t really exist.

Here, for contrast, is Dr Amy Whittaker. She didn’t get that "Dr" over the internet, and it’s not a Phd; Dr Whittaker is Assistant Professor of Obstetrics/Gynecology at the University of Chicago Hospital. Obviously, that doesn’t mean we should unquestioningly believe everything she says, but when she talk about her area of expertise we should listen.

So What Do Real Doctors Say?

"There is no disease known as 'blue waffle disease', in the medical world." That’s pretty unequivocal.

What about Chris Attakk’s idea that several venereal diseases might together be responsible for the appearance of "blue waffle disease"? "There is no disease that causes a blue appearance on the external genitalia." Again, not really an "open to interpretation" kind of a response. According to Dr Whittaker:

In fact, blue waffle disease has taken on an afterlife of its own: not only is it now widely believed-in among young people despite the overwhelming medical consensus that the only piece of evidence that it exists is an unconvincing fake, but it also plays the part of a prank whose aim is simply to get people to look at the original photo. It’s not hard to find on Google, but it is extremely unpleasant to look at, the more so when we consider that, according to Dr Whittaker, "a bluish appearance to external genitalia could be from bruising, which could result from force, most likely from a sexual assault." On balance, then, we should be glad that it’s probably totally fake.

To summarize: real STDs are bad enough. Access to condoms and an understanding that an unwanted pregnancy isn’t the only unintended consequence of sex is important, not because you might catch blue waffle disease, but because you might catch one of the dozen or so real STDs that can lead to chronic pain, infertility, death or the horrifying symptoms of tertiary syphilis, for instance. Ms McBride was right to be concerned, in that sense, even if a little fact-checking could have saved her a red face.

See Also: Afraid Of Getting Your Girlfriend Pregnant? Here's What Teens Need To Know

If you have something to add, please get hold of me in the comments section below!