Think Painful Sex Is Normal With Age? Think Again.

Transcript:

Jamie Forward: Jessica, painful sex is often dismissed as just part of aging. So, what’s actually happening in the body, and why shouldn’t women accept this as normal?

Jessica Bell: So, I would say it is common, because we all experience these hormonal changes at the tissue level. But it doesn’t need to be tolerated, for sure. And not only does a person experience pain with intimacy or intercourse, but a lot of the times, people experience just pain or discomfort at rest.

They will describe, “When I wipe, it’s tender,” or just sitting in a chair or wearing certain clothes or fabrics can also be uncomfortable as well. So, I always like to speak truth to that, because sometimes people think that, “Well, gosh, if I’m not intimate with myself or others, maybe I don’t need to worry about this. Maybe I don’t need to treat this.”

But I want to remind them that this is for you and not just from an intimate lens. But when it comes to intimacy or intercourse, it does not need to be painful. It should be pleasurable, and that’s also what can lead to some of that decreased desire very naturally. Again, our brain and body is very smart, and so if we were experiencing pleasure and arousal and climax, but then these tissue changes are occurring, and now, gosh, it’s a little bit tender.

Goodness, it takes longer to experience arousal, or climax doesn’t happen for them, this also is the beginning of those tissue changes occurring. And what we can do is, we can really be knowledgeable in this. So, the education around this is so important. Speaking truth to this experience, I would say, as also occurring in perimenopause and not just post-menopausal is very important.

Currently, I think that there are some people that have the misnomer or misunderstanding that this only happens at a late post-menopausal stage, and that is definitely not true. That might be when it’s at its worst, when people are maybe finally talking about it, because they just can’t keep it to themselves any longer. And that’s what happens as well in the clinic visits. As a clinician, you have to ask, “Are you experiencing pain with intimacy or intercourse?

Are you getting infections? Are you having these symptoms?” And a lot of clinicians don’t ask that question. They kind of wait for the person to bring it up. And so, I think as clinicians, we need to be asking these questions. We need to be educating people as well that it happens much sooner than we think. And so, looking out for symptoms, honestly starting as early as age 35 is my recommendation.

We can start going through perimenopause at age 35, and so therefore, we can start to experience those tissue changes at that early age as well, or in our late 30s or early 40s. And we should not be counseling people that they should not expect it until maybe after five or 10 years post-menopausal.

Jamie Forward: Sure. Education is key here.

Jessica Bell:  Education is key here, absolutely, yeah.