The effects of menopause on intimate comfort

First of all, it is worth remembering that menopause is a particularly complex stage to go through in a person's life. The hormonal changes that accompany it have a considerable impact on the entire body, but it is often at the intimate level that the shoe pinches.

While many women resign themselves to living with these alterations to their intimate comfort with inevitability, it is worth remembering that most of the symptoms that accompany this transition can be cured, relieved or even anticipated.

Furthermore, let us recall that menopause has become in everyday language a metonymy that designates the whole by a part. Indeed, menopause corresponds to a drop in estrogen production, it can be natural and due to the exhaustion of oocyte resources, but it can also be induced, temporary or definitive.

Hormonal changes during menopause

Let us also remember that estrogens play a key role in several physiological processes:

• Maintaining a typical vaginal environment by reducing the pH, ideally acidic in order to promote the proliferation of lactobacilli and prevent the colonization of enterobacteria, responsible for bacterial vaginosis.
• The production of epithelial cells which strengthen the vulvovaginal mucosa.

Menopause can therefore have an adverse effect on these aspects by reducing the level of estrogen.

Vulvovaginal atrophy is not irreversible

One of the most disabling manifestations of this hormonal collapse is what is called vulvovaginal atrophy. This is manifested by a progressive thinning of the vulvovaginal mucosa following hormonal changes.

This term nevertheless has connotations of irreversible old age and does not include the urinary dimension of these conditions.

This is why the more inclusive term genitourinary syndrome of menopause (GMS) is used. This term has a more comprehensive scientific basis for the genital and urinary aspects of menopause.

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