“In my care of postmenopausal patients, there are those for whom estrogens are contraindicated by reason of a history of breast or uterine cancer and who are at risk of a history of recurrent urinary tract and vaginal infections. I have been surprised to observe that those who opted for natural progesterone therapy have been remarkably free of these problems. Further, in many, their previous vaginal dryness and reduced mucous production returns to normal after three to four months of Natural Progesterone use. This suggests that natural progesterone also provides a direct benefit to vaginal and urethral tissues or may sensitize tissue receptors to the lowered levels of estrogens still present in post menopausal women."
John Lee, MD
Vaginal Dryness is usually found in women after menopause but can happen at any time. Vaginal Dryness usually occurs with vaginal atrophy. Vaginal atrophy is thinning and inflammation of vaginal skin. You may have itching and tingling around the vaginal opening. 40% of all women after menopause have vaginal dryness. Daily activities are no fun, and sex is even less fun. You may think you have low sexual desire because sex is painful.
Husbands tend to be very grouchy about this as well.
Usually, vaginal lubrication is made of clear fluid that seeps through the walls of the blood vessels in the vagina. When you get sexually excited more blood flows to the pelvic region that creates more vaginal lubrication. If you don’t have enough vaginal lubrication, then sex is no fun. Your sex drive might be high, but sex is painful.
In my opinion, xenoestrogens in concert with your own hormonal changes cause vaginal dryness. Mainstream care providers have not considered environmental estrogens.
Mainstreamers believe that the decrease in estradiol after menopause causes vaginal dryness.
However, I believe there are two reasons for the most common menopausal vaginal dryness.
• Environmental Estrogens
• Decreased Sensitivity to your own Estradiol
The overload of xenoestrogens causes a down regulation of your estrogen receptors. In other words, because of the huge load of environmental estrogens, your body becomes less sensitive to your own estradiol.
After menopause, you still make your own estradiol. The fat cells make estradiol. So a heavy set woman after menopause makes more estradiol than a skinny woman before menopause.
Environmental Estrogens are “fake estrogens”. They chemicals may only vaguely resemble estradiol, but they happily go into the estrogen receptor and activate it. Xenoestrogens may activate the estrogen receptor in a strange way that may be sort of estrogen, but not. In other words, their estrogen effects are weird and may actually increase vaginal dryness and vaginal atrophy.
So with this overload of estrogen, the body tries to become less sensitive to estrogen overall, and your own estradiol has less of an effect. You get vaginal dryness.
During pregnancy during the second and third trimester, for most women, sex drive is boosted and vaginal lubrication increases. Progesterone goes up from the usual 20 mg/day to 400 mg/day during one day of third trimester. In my opinion, the increased progesterone increases sex drive and vaginal lubrication.
In women, that do not experience a heightened sex drive and increased vaginal lubrication during the second and third trimesters, I believe that they have a large load of xenoestrogens. The increased progesterone of pregnancy wakes up the estrogen receptors making the weird xenoestrogen effect worse than ever.
Other medical conditions or drugs that may increase vaginal dryness include:
Diabetes
Lactation (breast feeding)
Antihistamines
Psychiatric drugs
Birth Control Pills (increased or decreased)
Any drug that dries out your nose will dry up your vagina as well.
Reduced mucous production in the vagina also leads to increased vaginal, urethral, and urinary bladder infections. Treating a bladder infection with antibiotics only works temporarily or not at all. The real underlying cause of the urinary tract infection is that the body cannot resist the infection. Vaginal dryness predisposes you to a bladder infection. The mucous is not flowing. The bacteria are not getting washed out.
A vaginal application of Natural Estriol in post menopausal women in a controlled trial reduced infections in women with recurrent bladder infections from 5.9 infections/year to 0.5 infections/year.
Estriol treatment resulted in Lactobacilli “friendly” bacteria living in the vagina. Restoration of the normal vaginal mucosa emerged. Low vaginal pH was restored. Colon bacteria was eliminated.
Natural Estriol goes up 100 times during pregnancy being produced by the placenta. Estriol thickens up the skin of the birth canal to prepare the woman for birth of the baby.
The Solution:
Take Natural Progesterone Cream
Eliminate Xenoestrogens
The solution to boost libido and stop vaginal dryness and painful sex is to take topical Natural Progesterone Cream 3 weeks out of 4 if you do not have a period and eliminate xenoestrogens. Treat vaginal dryness with topical natural progesterone. This is safe cheap and works great.
