D.VICE Sex Q & A. I have some hard plastic anal beads on a string, are they safe to use?

Question; I’ve always wanted to try anal beads so my boyfriend got some from a sex shop, not D.VICE, and they are hard plastic on a white string and have knots to keep the beads in place and there are sharp ridges on the beads too. Are these safe to use? They’re not inspiring me to try them out and can you suggest anything else?

D.VICE Sexpert Replies;
 Anal beads are a lot of fun to use, I wouldn’t recommend using the type of anal beads that you have, they are the common type that is available, they’re hard plastic and they are moulded so that they have a ridge along each bead which is potentially quite abrasive and it is quite sharp. And they also are on like a nylon string which is knotted and is really hard to clean, so they’re not particularly hygienic.
Any sex toy that you are going to use anally needs to be totally smooth and also able to be cleaned really easily to prevent the spread of bacteria. What I would recommend is silicone anal beads they are really easy to keep clean, smooth, also quite soft so they give really nice firm sensation but they’re soft enough to actually feed in and be safe.

There are few different styles and brands available including Flexi Felix made by Fun Factory in Germany. It’s really cool, it’s got a great little kind of face on it, and it’s a little character, and these are really gorgeous beads. They graduate up into larger sizes at the end, and they’re really great to start with. The other Fun Factory anal beads are the Bendy Beads which are slightly firmer and definitely has a much larger bead at the top there. The other one that I would recommend would be a D.VICE made product which is perfectly smooth, it’s all a one part mould so it has absolutely no ridges at all and this is the Joy Plug. Now the great thing about this is that it’s a butt plug cross joy plug, so it has a handle to pull them out, you can actually wear it, you can actually insert them and wear them and then you can use the handle to pull them out. And the thing that anal beads are designed for, because they have the graduating bead size, when you insert them you’re stretching the anal muscles and then they relax and then you’re stretching them and then they relax which gives you really pleasant sensation and then when you pull them out, particularly at the point of orgasm.
This movement encourages the pelvic floor muscles to continue to contract and it means that you have a stronger orgasm, women you’re much more likely to have multiple orgasms as well.

 Always use lubricant with any kind of anal play. I would definitely recommend either using Probe – a great water-based lube or Lubexxx which is silicone and water-based; a really nice, substantial lubricant that’s not going to dry out and it’s going to give you nice lubrication because the anal area isn’t at all self-lubricating.
If you’re going to work with something that’s a little bit larger, so if you’re going to start out with something like anal beads and then go onto something a little bit larger like a dildo or a larger vibrator I recommend Apronal – a natural anal muscle relaxant So that’s not designed to replace lube, you actually apply a little bit to the external anal area a few minutes before penetration and it conditions the muscles and mean it’s much easier to relax them.