About Vaginal Dryness

Most women will have vaginal dryness sometime in their lives or have frequent vaginosis.

Lactobacilli, the protective bacteria that is a key part of your body’s defenses, needs moisture to proliferate and balance the harmful bacteria that reside everywhere. This moisture should be ours naturally, except it is not.

Dryness causes a decline in Lactobacilli and an overrun of harmful bacteria.

Some dryness is temporary: caused by breastfeeding, stress, diet, antibiotics (which also affect good bacteria). “Dry mouth, dry vagina.”

Other dryness is long term: chemotherapy, radiation, hundreds of prescriptive medications, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Of course, all women know menopause signals the lessening of estrogen and the beginning of dryness and change in skin texture. The choices are to be prone to vaginal infections, abandon now painful sexual intercourse, get Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), use a lubricant.

Some women cannot take HRT or choose not to. The shelves of drugstores and food stores are filled with lubricant choices. Women and Men are no longer embarrassed to put them into their carts. That’s the good news. Read the ingredients; choose paraben free, phthalate free, chlorhexidine free, sodium hydroxide free, glycerin free, and appropriate osmolarity. Studies show most lubricants on the market are too high in osmolarity and might cause vaginal and epithelium damage.