What Is an Irregular Period?
In an ideal world, your periods arrive on time each month, don’t pose any issues in terms of flow, and quietly go away until the next round. But for up to one-quarter of women, periods fall far short of this ideal.
Pain can affect many areas of your life, but the one are where it has no business is in your sex life. Unfortunately, sex can become painful for women for many different reasons, and the condition is called dyspareunia. Thankfully, we can remedy many of these issues.
The team here at Tahoe Women’s Care, led by Dr. Gary Willen, understands the large impact that painful sex can have on your life, and we’re here to help.
In the following blog post, we explore some of the many possible causes of painful sex and how we go about treating them.
The passage through menopause is caused by a drop in your reproductive hormones, which promoted lubrication and vaginal tissue health, among other things.
Among older women, one of the leading causes of painful or uncomfortable sexual intercourse is vaginal dryness. In fact, more than half of women between the ages of 51 and 60 in the United States report problems with vaginal dryness.
Other hormone-related issues that can lead to uncomfortable sexual intercourse after menopause are thinning vaginal walls or a shortening of your vaginal canal.
To address vaginal health issues, we offer vaginal rejuvenation services that include hormone replacement therapies, as well as state-of-the-art laser therapies that improve tissue health.
Another common driver of painful sex is endometriosis, a condition in which endometrial tissue grows outside of your uterus. When this happens, the tissue can form adhesions that stretch painfully during sexual intercourse.
Treatments for endometriosis can include hormone therapies as well as surgical removal of the adhesions.
If you have pelvic inflammatory disease, which is typically caused by a sexually transmittted disease, it can lead to painful sex due to swollen tissues. In most cases, we can clear up the underlying infection, which should reduce the swelling and your sexual discomfort.
If you have uterine fibroids that are large enough or located in certain areas, sexual intercourse can become painful. Like with endometriosis, we can try hormone therapies to shrink the fibroids or turn to surgical removal or the growths.
The list we present above includes some of the more common problems that can lead to painful sex, but there are others, which include:
Due to the wide range of possibilities, it’s important that you come see us for a full evaluation so we can identify the source of your discomfort. Once we determine what’s behind your sexual discomfort, we can work quickly toward resolving the problem.
To get on the road to better sexual health, please contact our office in Carson City, Nevada, to set up an appointment.
