Seventeen Years of Bad Sex

Medical science is just catching up to what so many women experience.

  What Happens to Relationships When Sex Hurts

Women who suffer from the chronic-pain condition vulvodynia often feel isolated from their partners. But a better medical understanding is helping.

 Painful Sex Is Often The First Sign Of A Serious Condition For Women. But Most Doctors Dismiss It.

For women like Mary who experience chronic, debilitating pain during sex, there can be few places to turn for help. If doctors learn about female sexual symptoms at all during medical school or residency, they are advised to prescribe ways to “relax” patients, like drinking alcohol.

 Sex Hurts. Help!

Pain with sex is up there in prevalence with migraine and low back pain, and yet it is woefully understudied and rarely discussed.

A New Look at the Older Vagina

At a time when men's concerns around their aging penises get constant print and media attention, women are woefully ignorant about the changes that are taking place with their genitals.

Five Things Worth Knowing About the Vagina

Ever wish certain body parts came with an instruction manual? Particularly the parts that are less visible and tend to multi-task? Today we pull back the curtain on some interesting facts on a complex apparatus about half of us own: a vagina.

My Quest For Pain-Free Sex, Part II

Recently, I wrote about my experience suffering from pain during sex, and how I found relief from pelvic floor physical therapy, a little-known treatment that is often overlooked by doctors. I got scores of comments from other women with similar problems — some who have lived with their pain for years. Like me, they’d never heard of pelvic floor PT, and they were thrilled to learn that there is an effective alternative to quietly enduring their extreme, often secret, discomfort.

Pain During Sex? There’s Hope In A Little-Known Treatment Option

Now, I thought I was a savvy health care consumer, having written on the topic as a journalist for the past 10 years. Plus, I’ve had two babies, so I thought I was fairly familiar with the pelvis. Wrong. I had never, ever heard of pelvic floor physical therapy. And I never realized how many complex systems — reproductive, urinary, gastrointestinal, neurological, psychological, and musculoskeletal — can be involved in pelvic pain.

Persistence Is Key to Treating Sexual Pain

Dr. Coady urges women with sexual pain not to give up, no matter how old they are or how many doctors may have told them that nothing can be done to relieve their discomfort. It is important not to delay treatment: The longer sexual pain persists, the more likely it is to result in nerve pain and dysfunction of the pelvic floor, making the problem still harder to treat.

Sex Talk Realness: How to Deal With Painful Sex

Three anonymous women talk about living with vulvodynia, vaginismus, and other vaginal pain disorders.

The REJOICE trial

TX-004HR at doses of 4, 10, and 25 μg was safe and effective for treating postmenopausal women with VVA and moderate-to-severe dyspareunia, and also vaginal dryness and vaginal itching or irritation. Onset of effect was seen as early as 2 weeks and was maintained throughout the study.

Vaginal lubricants: 6 products to Overcome Dryness that Causes Intercourse Pain

While there are many medical solutions to consider for vaginal dryness, this special report addresses the easiest short-term fix...

What I've Learned about Vaginal Dryness

Vaginal dryness is also known as vaginal vascular insufficiency syndrome, vaginal atrophy, and atrophic vaginitis. Other related conditions to consider include dyspareunia & dysethetic vulvodynia.

What It’s Like to Have Severe Vaginismus

This embarrassing and little-discussed condition — which Jezebel recently described as the female version of erectile dysfunction (it’s common to hear men say they couldn’t get it “up,” but how often do you hear a woman bemoan that she couldn’t get it “in”?) — is generally thought to affect about 2 in every 1,000 women. However, these statistics are fuzzy because sufferers are often too scared to seek treatment or are misdiagnosed when they do.

When Sex Hurts: The sisters’ top five tips for addressing vaginal pain

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, almost 3 out of 4 women experience pain during intercourse at some point in their lives. Historically there has been very little research or dialogue about dyspareunia (the clinical name for painful intercourse), but fortunately that’s changing.

Why Women May Experience Pain During Sex

Sex is usually thought of as a pleasurable experience culminating into a cascade of sensual and enjoyable feelings. But for some women this is far from their reality. Sex may hurt and when it does, it can have a profound effect on their relationship with their partner.

Why You Should NOT Ignore Painful Intercourse

There are many psychological problems which interfere with sexual functioning, but one of the most devastating and detrimental issues, which can also have damaging effects on dating and relationships, not to mention self esteem, confidence, body image and so much more, is having painful intercourse- a condition which is also known as vaginismus.

Women with chronic pain disorder struggle to be diagnosed

“It’s hard for me when I see ads all the time on TV for erectile dysfunction. There are so many drugs out there to fix these problems that aren’t painful problems, they’re just sexual dysfunction problems for men, and then we have a condition like vulvodynia, which affects every aspect of life for women and it’s almost like we aren’t allowed to talk about it.”

Yes, You Too Can Enjoy Pleasurable Post-Menopausal Sex

Vagifem is an estrogen replacement suppository consisting of estradiol. It treats the underlying cause of menopause-related vaginal changes by helping to replenish the vagina’s lost estrogen. It’s used primarily after menopause to treat changes in and around the vagina, including atrophic vaginitis (dryness and soreness in the vagina) and dyspareunia (pain during sexual intercourse.) It is also beneficial in preventing UTIs.