Many women in the US grapple with the problem of vaginal dryness at some point in their life. However, because they often find the problem too intimate or embarrassing to discuss, they are not aware of the options available for treating the symptoms of vaginal dryness.
Causes of vaginal dryness
There are several factors that can trigger vaginal dryness, but the vast majority are linked through the common denominator of less estrogen effect at the level of the vagina. Estrogen plays an important role in vaginal health. It’s like the fertilizer to the cells that supply the nutrients to the vagina. When estrogen levels dip, there is a decrease in the natural lubricating fluid that the vagina produces, causing the vaginal tissues to become dry, less elastic and sensitive. Menopause (and the few years just proceeding menopause) is the most obvious time in a women’s life when estrogen levels to drop, but there are other causes even for women in the 20‘s, 30‘s and 40‘s. There is a small percentage of women who develop relative estrogen deprivation at the level of the vagina when they use hormonal contraception consisting of the “pill” or it’s equivalents. All of the pills use the same estrogen and the problem is that it is a synthetic estrogen that may not stimulate the estrogen receptors in the vagina which are best stimulated by natural estrogen. Other women may get vaginal dryness because their estrogen receptors in the vagina stop functioning optimally and yet others get less estrogen production from their ovaries because of aggressive exercise, being underweight or due to significant emotional stress. All of these scenarios can cause vaginal dryness in women before menopause.
Common symptoms of vaginal dryness include:
- Pain during sexual intercourse: When estrogen levels decline, there is also a reduction in the amount of lubricating fluid in the vagina. This in turn causes the vagina to become dry and inflexible, making sex very painful.
- Itching and irritation: The change in estrogen levels also causes the vaginal tissues to lose their protective cover, and so they can get irritated easily.
- Recurrent vaginal and urinary tract infections: The fall in estrogen alters the vaginal environment, making it more susceptible to infection.
Treatment for vaginal dryness and associated symptoms:
There are a number of non-prescription products on the market but none of them are consistently effective in the majority of women. Most women give up on the pursuit of self-help after spending hundreds of dollars when they find the products are more hyper for someone to make money than have any therapeutic effect. Dozens of these products are advertised on the internet. Unfortunately, the pharmaceutic industry only provides a limited number of choices. All of these work to some degree for most women with vaginal dryness but there are many women who find the results less than satisfactory and some do not respond much at all. This is because the type, dose, and combination of bio-identical hormones are not manufactured in the variety of necessary doses.
If you are among the women who have tried conventional vaginal estrogen creams, rings and suppositories and still have persistent symptoms, a more accurate identification of the vaginal condition is necessary, so that the type, dose and combination of bio-identical estrogens can be prescribed for you.
That’s where Fowler GYN International can help. Dr. R. Stuart Fowler uses advanced diagnostic tools to precisely identify the causes of vaginal dryness. Once this has been done, they are then able to utilize the relevant treatment protocols to restore the natural elasticity to the vagina. You can call 480-420-4001 to find out more, or visit www.fowlergyninternational.com/.