閉経後の性生活とCBD

以下原文

CBD & Intimacy After Menopause

 Written by: Genevieve R. Moore PhD

• How does menopause affect your sexual health? 
• Keeping your vagina healthy after menopause.
• Ways that CBD can help improve intimacy after menopause.

People often avoid talking about menopause, but it’s time for that to change. The more we know, the better prepared we are to face life’s challenges. And thankfully, there are steps we can take to help our bodies thrive through menopause… we just have to talk and learn about them.

 The technical definition of menopause is the time in our lives when we stop menstruating. But unfortunately, menopause isn’t just about the end of your monthly cycle: This hormonal shift also can also change your body chemistry in many ways, one of which is that sex can become less appealing or even painful.

However, once you hit menopause, taking a vow of celibacy is not the best solution to a loss of desire. An active sex life – with or without a partner – comes with many important health benefits that shouldn’t be passed up, including:

• Stress reduction
• Heart health
• Bladder control
• Immune health
• Pelvic floor strength
• Improved sleep

 This article was written to help you better understand the sexual changes that happen during menopause, and how you can use CBD and other natural methods to help maintain sexual intimacy after “the change.”

How menopause changes your body

When your body stops having regular periods, it also comes with some hormonal changes including a loss of monthly estrogen boosts. Without regular doses of estrogen, these are some of the changes that you might start experiencing in your pelvic region:

• Decreased libido. Pre-menopause, your monthly estrogen boosts often helped increase your interest in sex when you were most fertile. Now, without a monthly cycle, you might need to spend a little extra time to get in the mood.
• Less blood flow to the vagina. Healthy circulation and oxygenated blood flow to your pelvic area keeps your vagina lubricated and healthy. Estrogen helps increase blood flow to your vagina – but without monthly estrogen boosts, you might need to get your blood pumping in different ways.
• Increased pain. Unfortunately, without estrogen, some women’s vaginas can start to develop a high density of pain-perceiving nerves. This can turn sexual activities that used to feel great into something uncomfortable or even painful.

• Genitourinary syndrome of menopause.This syndrome, which affects more than half of women who’ve gone through menopause, is when the vaginal lining becomes thinner, less lubricated, and more inflamed. This contributes to sex becoming less enjoyable and can also affect the urinary tract.

• Urinary incontinence. It’s not just for your vagina – estrogen is also important for keeping your entire pelvic region healthy, including your urinary tract. Many women who develop incontinence or other urinary issues develop them after menopause, in connection to genitourinary syndrome. 

Keeping your vagina healthy

Although you might use estrogen therapy to help your body adjust to menopause, it’s not recommended as a permanent solution – which means that at some point or another, we all need to learn how to care for our vaginas.

 Without estrogen, a healthy vagina will benefit from moisture and a steady supply of oxygen. For moisture, make sure to use a pH-balanced moisturizer that’s made specifically for internal application, and ask your doctor how often you should be using it.

 For keeping up your blood flow, here are some great options:

Regular sexual activity – When you’re sexually stimulated, your vulva and vaginal tissues swell with oxygenated blood. This is part of the reason why sexual activity helps prevent vaginal atrophy. However, make sure it feels good in order to get the maximum benefits. A good sexual lubricant can be the difference between painful and pleasurable – so buy a few different options and experiment with them.

Sensual arousal – You don’t need to have a partner, a sex toy, or an orgasm to stay sexually healthy. You could read a romance novel, watch something that turns you on, or just take a warm bath and gently touch yourself. Remind yourself that you are a loving, sensual being, and you will be rewarded.

 CBD – Cannabidiol and other cannabis ingredients are popular among women for awakening sexual desire and increasing intimacy. There’s some evidence that they can encourage relaxation and blood flow when they’re applied directly to your vulva – so try using a topical or soaking in a warm bath with CBD-infused bath salts. You can use CBD on its own as part of a relaxing ritual, or you can follow it up with some sexual stimulation to reap the full benefits.

Using CBD to enhance sexual enjoyment

Although CBD might benefit your vagina on its own, many women find its best benefit is to make sexual intimacy more enjoyable. And anything that increases your pleasure will also help you enjoy the health benefits of regular sexual activity.

These are some of the ways that CBD can help increase your sexual pleasure after menopause:

• Pain reduction: For some of us, sexual penetration can be a painful experience. Even when the sex is gentle, our nerves can signal that we are being harmed. CBD could help reduce the pain by desensitizing TRPV1 pain receptors.
• Reduce inflammation: Vaginal inflammation is a common symptom in women with genitourinary syndrome, and it can get in the way of your sexual enjoyment. One of CBD’s most widely celebrated benefits is its ability to help fight inflammation.
• Muscle relaxation: When your pelvic muscles are tight, they can cause sex to become painful. In experiments, CBD reduces how much muscles can contract.

If you want to use CBD to help maintain your vaginal health after menopause, consider trying our bath salts. This way you can give the CBD some time to soak in exactly where it’s needed, while giving yourself the space to relax and focus on what’s important - YOU.

For your body and mind, we wish you the best on your journey through life’s transitions.

In the next article in this series, we’ll focus on how CBD is used for depression.