AS ALLOY POET LAUREATE AMY BETH Schumer once said, “It’s work having a vagina. Guys don’t think that it’s work, but it is.” Amen, Ms. Schumer. To wit: If you click over to Reddit (not that you should—allow us to take this internet spelunking trip for the team) you’ll find scores of menopausal women who have cloaked themselves in the anonymity of the World Wide Web to kvech and trade answers about decreased sex drive, dry sex (in more ways than one… ba dum tss!), painful sex, and more vagina-related indignities. Should I take one of my husband’s Viagra? Y’all got lube recs? I think I might have vaginal atrophy??? SOS: Hot flash during sex! Anybody else’s boobs hurt? I feel so sorry for my husband who may not have sex for a decade (at least not with me)!
WHILE WE HEAR MOST OFTEN—ALBEIT in hushed tones—about the menopausal sex-drive crash dive, the ever-outspoken Whoopi Goldberg has had it both ways. Literally. “My sex drive has totally changed,” she’s said of her menopausal journey. “One minute I’m like, ‘Yeah! I can’t wait for it.’ The next I’m saying, ‘Oh God, go away.
THE BOTTOM LINE IS, WHETHER YOU'RE hot and cold when it comes to sex a la Whoopi or have found yourself to be more of a Menopausilla: Queen of the Sex Desert type, it’s totally natural to experience wild changes between the (hopefully cool to the touch, we recommend percale) sheets. Again, that’s if you even have the get-up-and-go to find yourself there at all. Additional menopause symptoms like fatigue, hot flashes, and weight gain don’t exactly help on the horniness front. ALLOY'S MEDICAL DIRECTOR, SHARON MALONE, M.D., FACOG, NCMP, chalks these swings in the sex department (no, not that kind of sex swing—though you do you, we’re not here to kink-shame) up to hormone fluctuation. Vaginal dryness, for example, happens when the skin that lines the vaginal walls starts to thin; meanwhile your body’s natural lubrication starts to decrease—both are due to a decline in estrogen. When these newly fragile, less elastic walls bruise and tear during intercourse, we have a high-tech medical term to whip out for the situation: painful sex . And if just the thought of these symptoms doesn’t harsh the mood, add declining testosterone levels to that low- estrogen formula et voila: low libido.
SO WHAT'S A FORMERLY FRISKY- ENOUGH woman in a hormonally- induced sex drought to do? The answer, sisters, could be right there in the question. For many women, getting help balancing those hormones can restore feng shui in the bedroom, if you will, as well as in many other aspects of life during menopause. And Alloy is here for you with treatments that may just put that pep in your sexual step again. As a wise sexual tigress once said over brunch, “I am leading the way through the menopause maze with my biodentical estrogen…and progesterone.” (You guessed it—we’re quoting the one and only Samantha Jones.) If the idea of letting Alloy be your sherpa on such a quest at all revs your engine, we suggest taking our online assessment right here. It’ll take less than three minutes, so what do you have to lose? Wishing you love and light and good sex, Alloy
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