Early Menopause and Sexuality

Female sexuality is a combination of sexual identity, sexual intercourse and sexual functions of women. Social cultural elements, sexual beliefs, women's general health status, fertility, the relationship with the partner are the main factors affecting the sexual life of women.



Female sexual life does not look the same throughout life. Aging and menopause are the most important factors affecting the sexual life of women. The sooner the woman enters menopause, the more complicated and serious the sexual dysfunctions are.

If a woman who has had early menopause has not had a child although she has requested it in the future, the concerns about fertility make her complaints more complicated.
 

Early menopause often negatively affects the sexual life of the couple

In addition to sexual desire, arousal, orgasm and pain problems, infertility problems are the main challenges facing women in early menopause.
Before the age of 40, the female is cut from menstruation is early menopause. It develops due to early ovarian failure or chemotherapy, surgical removal of the ovaries, and radiotherapy. The frequency of early menopause due to ovarian failure is 1 percent. Unfortunately, the number of women with early menopause due to increased cancer cases is increasing every day.
 

Which health problems can early menopause cause?

The risk of cardiovascular disease, bone resorption, depression, brain aging and stroke in women with early menopause increases compared to their non-menopausal peers.
 

Who should be treated with hormonal therapy in early menopause?

The International Association of Menopause and the European Association of Menopause and Andrology recommend that women who develop it due to ovarian failure and who do not have medical obstacles to receive hormone replacement therapy should receive hormone therapy until the age of 51, a natural menopausal age.

Gynecological cancers, breast cancers and treatment of menopause due to early menopause patients do not have a place for hormone therapy.
 

How is the treatment of sexual dysfunctions seen in early menopause?

• In sexual desire and arousal disorders, if there are no contraindications, estrogen and testosterone treatments increase sexual desire, the frequency of satisfactory sexual intercourse and reduce sexual anxiety.
• Bupropion therapy is used to increase sexual desire in women who are incapable of receiving hormone therapy.
• Genital arousal disorders, painful sexual intercourse associated with dryness of the vagina, urinary incontinence, after the urine burning is seen as. In these complaints caused by urinary and genital tract atrophy, vaginal estrogen treatments are very effective. Studies on the use of testosterone creams have been continuing in recent years.
• Long-term moisturizers in patients with cancer and lubricants used prior to intercourse provide relief by reducing vaginal irritation.
• In orgasmic disorders, hormone replacement therapy and testosterone treatments are therapeutic.
• Pelvic floor rehabilitation treats both orgasmic disorders and urinary complaints in patients with pelvic floor weakness.
• Sexual pain disorders develop due to a variety of causes; causes treatment. Vaginal estrogens are preferred for the treatment of painful intercourse associated with vaginal atrophy. If diabetes causes neuropathic pain in the genital area, it requires treatment with sugar control and pregabalin-derived drugs. Pelvic floor relaxation exercises and physiotherapy are useful in pain caused by excessive thickening of the pelvic muscles.
• Early menopause is a condition that causes many different sexual problems and requires different solutions. There is no single treatment type. Because complaints are often intertwined. Assuming that sexual problems do not exist only cause problems to become more complex.
• As a result, sexual dysfunction is very common in women with early menopause. They experience sexual problems more frequently than their peers and women who have entered menopause at normal age. They can get help from a sexual medical doctor to address these problems.