Vaginal Dryness In Menopause | Causes & Solutions
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Vaginal dryness is mostly* caused by declining estrogen during menopause, leading to thinner tissues, less lubrication, more pain during penetrative sex, and increased susceptibility to UTIs and infections due to pH changes and reduced “friendly” bacteria.
*There are also other causes and contributing factors; we’ll discuss those too!
Dr. Jennifer Roelands recommends 6 things that we can do about it:
Let’s get down to it
Aside from declining estrogen levels, other contributing factors include smoking, medications like many antihistamines and many antidepressants, as well as using scented soaps or douches which disrupt vaginal pH, the microbiome down there, and tissue health. So it’s good to avoid those where possible, and really, the only ones that may be unavoidable are the medications; everything else, it is best to absolutely skip entirely.
Aside from those things to avoid, here are 6 things to consider doing:
- Lubricants: offer temporary relief during penetrative sex but don’t restore moisture; avoid scented or chemical-laden products (counterintuitively, silicon-based is much better than water-based in this regard).
- Moisturizers: daily use products like Vag of Honor (with hyaluronic acid) help retain moisture and improve tissue health.
- Estrogen therapy: includes vaginal creams (e.g. Estrace), tablets (e.g. Vagifem), rings (e.g. Estring), or compounded formulas tailored to individual needs.
- Vaginal DHEA: improves tissue thickness and may enhance libido by converting to local estrogen and acting on androgen receptors.
- Probiotics: especially strains that support vaginal flora and pH; options with D-mannose and cranberry also support urinary health.
- Vulvar balms: for external dryness or conditions like lichen sclerosus; use simple, scent-free products like Vaseline or even coconut oil.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
“Why Does It Hurt When I Have Sex?” (And What To Do About It)
Take care!
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The Five Pillars Of Longevity
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The Five Pillars Of Longevity
This is Dr. Mark Hyman. He’s a medical doctor, and he’s the board president of clinical affairs of the Institute for Functional Medicine. He’s also the founder and medical director of the UltraWellness Center!
What he’d like you to know about is what he calls the “Five Pillars of Longevity”.
Now, here at 10almonds, we often talk about certain things that science finds to be good for almost any health condition, and have made a habit of referencing what we call “The Usual Five Things™” (not really a trademark, by the way—just a figure of speech), which are:
- Have a good diet
- Get good exercise
- Get good sleep
- Reduce (or eliminate) alcohol consumption
- Don’t smoke
…and when we’re talking about a specific health consideration, we usually provide sources as to why each of them are particularly relevant, and pointers as to the what/how associated with them (ie what diet is good, how to get good sleep, etc).
Dr. Hyman’s “Five Pillars of Longevity” are based on observations from the world’s “Blue Zones”, the popular name for areas with an unusually high concentration of supercentenarians—Sardinia and Okinawa being famous examples, with a particular village in each being especially exemplary.
These Five Pillars of Longevity partially overlap with ours for three out of five, and they are:
- Good nutrition
- Optimized workouts
- Reduce stress
- Get quality sleep
- Find (and live) your purpose
We won’t argue against those! But what does he have to say, for each of them?
Good nutrition
Dr. Hyman advocates for a diet he calls “pegan”, which he considers to combine the paleo and vegan diets. Here at 10almonds, we generally advocate for the Mediterranean Diet because of the mountains of evidence for it, but his approach may be similar in some ways, since it looks to consume a majority plant diet, with some unprocessed meats/fish, limited dairy, and no grains.
By the science, honestly, we stand by the Mediterranean (which includes whole grains), but if for example your body may have issues of some kind with grains, his approach may be a worthy consideration.
Optimized workouts
For Dr. Hyman, this means getting in three kinds of exercise regularly:
- Aerobic/cardio, to look after your heart health
- Resistance training (e.g. weights or bodyweight strength-training) to look after your skeletal and muscular health
- Yoga or similar suppleness training, to look after your joint health
Can’t argue with that, and it can be all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking “I’m healthy because I do x” while forgetting y and/or z! Thus, a three-pronged approach definitely has its merits.
Reduce stress
Acute stress (say, a cold shower) is can confer some health benefits, but chronic stress is ruinous to our health and it ages us. So, reducing this is critical. Dr. Hyman advocates for the practice of mindfulness and meditation, as well as journaling.
Get quality sleep
Quality here, not just quantity. As well as the usual “sleep hygiene” advices, he has some more unorthodox methods, such as the use of binaural beats to increase theta-wave activity in the brain (and thus induce more restful sleep), and the practice of turning off Wi-Fi, on the grounds that Wi-Fi signals interfere with our sleep.
We were curious about these recommendations, so we checked out what the science had to say! Here’s what we found:
- Minimal Effects of Binaural Auditory Beats for Subclinical Insomnia: A Randomized Double-Blind Controlled Study
- Spending the night next to a router – Results from the first human experimental study investigating the impact of Wi-Fi exposure on sleep
In short: probably not too much to worry about in those regards. On the other hand, worrying less, unlike those two things, is a well-established way improve sleep!
(Surprised we disagreed with our featured expert on a piece of advice? Please know: you can always rely on us to stand by what the science says; we pride ourselves on being as reliable as possible!)
Find (and live!) your purpose
This one’s an ikigai thing, to borrow a word from Japanese, or finding one’s raison d’être, as we say in English using French, because English is like that. It’s about having purpose.
Dr. Hyman’s advice here is consistent with what many write on the subject, and it’d be an interesting to have more science on, but meanwhile, it definitely seems consistent with commonalities in the Blue Zone longevity hotspots, where people foster community, have a sense of belonging, know what they are doing for others and keep doing it because they want to, and trying to make the world—or even just their little part of it—better for those who will follow.
Being bitter, resentful, and self-absorbed is not, it seems a path to longevity. But a life of purpose, or even just random acts of kindness, may well be.
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Arugula vs Spinach – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing arugula to spinach, we picked the spinach.
Why?
Both are great, but there’s a clear winner here:
In terms of macros, spinach has more fiber and protein for the same carbs, scoring an easy first-round win.
In the category of vitamins, arugula has more vitamin B5 (that is, the vitamin that’s in nearly all foods and in which it’s almost impossible to be deficient unless literally starving to death), while spinach has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, B7, B9, C, E, and K, winning its second round convincingly.
Looking at minerals, arugula’s a little higher in calcium, while spinach has more copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, selenium, and zinc, for another clear win.
In other considerations, spinach is much higher in oxalates, which is a non-issue for most people, but if you have certain kidney disorders, you might want to avoid those, so it’s worth knowing.
In any case, adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for spinach, but by all means enjoy either or both, unless you need to avoid oxalates, in which case, arugula is on the menu for you!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Make Your Vegetables Work Better Nutritionally ← there are a lot of tips here for many kinds of foods and kinds of cooking/preparation, including that cooking (any kind) reduces oxalates by breaking them down; not so useful if you want a leafy salad, but good for other purposes!
Enjoy!
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What’s The Difference Between Minoxidil For Men vs For Women?
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small 😎
❝I’m confused, does minoxidil work the same for women and for men? The label on the minoxidil I was looking at says it is only for men❞
Great question!
Simple answer: yes, it works (or not, as the case may be for some people, more on that later) exactly the same for men and women.
You may be wondering: what, then, is the difference between minoxidil for men and minoxidil for women?
And the answer is: the packaging/marketing. That’s literally it.
It’s like with razors, there are razors marketed to men and razors marketed to women, and both come with advertising/marketing promising to be enhance your masculine/feminine appearance (as applicable), but at the end of the day, in both cases it’s just sharp steel blades that cut through hairs as closely as possible to the skin. The sharp steel neither knows nor cares about your gender.
When it comes to minoxidil, in both cases the active ingredient is indeed minoxidil, usually at 2% or 5% strength (though other options exist, and all these get marketed to men and women), and in both cases it works in the same ways, by:
- dilating the blood vessels that feed the hair follicles and thus allowing them to perform better
- kicking the follicles into anagen (growth phase) and keeping them there for longer
Note: this is why we mentioned that it won’t work for all people, and it’s because (regardless of sex/gender), it cannot do those things for your hair follicles if you do not have hair follicles to treat. In the case of someone who has had hair loss for a long time, sometimes there will not be enough living follicles remaining to do anything useful with. As a general rule of thumb, provided you have some hairs there (even if they are little downy baby hairs), they can usually be coaxed back to full life.
In both cases, it’s for treating “pattern hair loss”, the pattern being “male pattern” or “female pattern”, respectively, but in both cases it’s androgenetic alopecia, and in both cases it’s caused by the corresponding genetic factors and hormone-mediated gene expression (the physical pattern therefore is usually a little different for men and women; that’s because of the “hormone-mediated gene expression”, or to put it into lay terms “the hormones tell the body which genes to turn on and off”.
Fun fact: it’s the same resultant phenotype as for PCOS, though usually occurring at different stages in life; PCOS earlier and AGA later—sometimes people (including people with both ovaries and hair) can get one without the other, though, as there may be other considerations going on besides the genetic and hormonal.
Limitation: if the hair loss is for reasons other than androgenetic alopecia, it’s unlikely to work. In fact, it is usually flat-out stated that it won’t work, but since one of the common listed side effects of minoxidil is “hair growth in other places”, it seems fair to say that the scalp is not really the only place it can cause hair to grow.
Want to know more?
You can read about the science of various pharmaceutical options (including minoxidil) here:
Hair-Loss Remedies, By Science ← this also goes more into the pros and cons of minoxidil than we have today, so if you’re considering minoxidil, you might want to read this first, to make the most informed decision.
And if you want to be a bit less pharmaceutical about it:
Take care!
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Apples vs Carrots – Which is Healthier?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Our Verdict
When comparing apples to carrots, we picked the carrots.
Why?
Both are sweet crunchy snacks, both rightly considered very healthy options, but one comes out clearly on top…
Both contain lots of antioxidants, albeit mostly different ones. They’re both good for this.
Looking at their macros, however, apples have more carbs while carrots have more fiber. The carb:fiber ratio in apples is already sufficient to make them very healthy, but carrots do win.
In the category of vitamins, carrots have many times more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, C, E, K, and choline. Apples are not higher in any vitamins.
In terms of minerals, carrots have a lot more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Apples are not higher in any minerals.
If “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”, what might a carrot a day do?
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Sugar: From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose C’s
Take care!
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Winter Nights, Lights, & Stroke Risk
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For Europeans, the clocks went back this week. For N. Americans, it’s next week.
Specifically: on Sunday the 2nd of November, when the clocks hit 2am, they’ll move back to 1am.
- Pros: bonus hour of sleep that night, and one hour earlier sunrise time thereafter
- Cons: one hour earlier sunset time thereafter, compounding the fact that the nights are also getting longer each night because of normal seasonal variation
Whether you love it, hate it, or are indifferent, it’s what’s happening. So, what does it mean for our health?
Well, the bonus hour of sleep can only be a good thing!
The longer (darker) nights, however, not generally a great thing, famously:
‘Tis To Season To Be SAD-Savvy: Seasonal Affective Disorder & SAD Lamps
But watch out, because…
Researchers (Dr. Jacqueline Lane et al.) examined data from 88,905 people aged 40+, and found that exposure to bright light at night raises cardiovascular disease risk (including stroke) by up to 50% in adults over 40, while brighter daylight appears protective through healthier circadian rhythms.
How this was measured: those 88,905 participants (of which 57% female, average age 62) wore wrist sensors for a week to track day and night light exposure, then were followed for about eight years for new cases of heart disease (in its many forms).
What they found: those exposed to the brightest nights had higher risks of coronary artery disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, myocardial infarction, and stroke, even after adjusting for lifestyle, socioeconomic, and demographic factors.
In terms of sex, it’s noteworthy that women showed stronger associations for heart failure and coronary artery disease than men did.
Why this happens: the evidence suggests that disrupted circadian rhythms from light at night alter 24-hour blood pressure, hormone balance, and inflammation, while reduced melatonin secretion and poor sleep heighten vascular stress.
What they recommend:
❝Maintaining dark nights and spending time in bright natural daylight may be simple but effective ways to support heart health in middle-aged and older adults.❞
Read the paper in full: Light Exposure at Night and Cardiovascular Disease Incidence
Catch-22?
So, how are we supposed to manage our mood in the long winter nights without making use of night-time lighting?
Bearing in mind: How light can shift your mood and mental health
Well, one way is simply decide a cut-off time for bright/unfiltered lights. Say for example, at 9pm you might switch to low/filtered evening mood lighting, ready for a 10pm bedtime, say. Adjust according to your preferred bedtime, of course, but it is known that morning larks are, on the whole, healthier than night owls:
Early Bird Or Night Owl? Genes vs Environment
..and for how to actually shift that if your genes predispose you to being a night owl but you’d rather be a morning lark, then see:
Why Not To Be A Night Owl After 40 ← night owls face a higher risk of cognitive decline compared to morning people, as well as higher cardiovascular disease risk, including heart attack and stroke.
And, for that matter: 10 Tips for Better Sleep: Starting In The Morning
There are more things to managing mood than just sunlight, too: Managing Seasonal Affective Disorder (Beyond Sunlight!)
…which means that not everything depends on maximizing well-illuminated hours.
Want to learn more?
You might like this book that we reviewed a little while ago:
Enjoy!
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Hot And Sour Shiitake Soup
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This is a popular, easy, and delicious soup that nonetheless is not found in many western kitchens, despite being enjoyed in restaurants/take-out. Best of all, making it at home means that you know all the ingredients, can account for quality, and also can customize it per your preferences (i.e. how much heat/sourness you like).
You will need
- 3 cups shiitake mushrooms, sliced
- 3 cups bok choy, chopped
- 2 cups cherry tomatoes, quartered
- 1 cup carrot, grated
- 3 spring onions, chopped
- 2 shallots, sliced lengthways
- 2 serrano chilis (or similar), sliced thinly
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tbsp fresh ginger, sliced into 1″ strips
- 1 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
- ½ bulb garlic, crushed
- 6 cups low-sodium vegetable stock. Ideally you will have made it yourself from vegetable cuttings that you saved in the freezer until you had enough to make stock from, but if that’s not an option, then low-sodium vegetable stock cubes can be purchased and used.
- Garnish: ¼ cup (or 4 tbsp) cilantro, chopped, or if you have the soap gene, then this time we recommend chopped basil as the subsitution
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Put the ginger in a big pot with the stock; cover and simmer for about 20 minutes (otherwise the ginger flavor will remain mostly concentrated in the ginger strips).
2) Bring it to a boil and add the bok choy, mushrooms, shallots, chili peppers, and the carrot; simmer for another 5 minutes
3) Add the remaining ingredients except for the garnish, and simmer for another 5 minutes
4) Serve, adding the garnish
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- The (Longevity) Magic of Mushrooms
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
- An Apple (Cider Vinegar) A Day…
- Enjoy Bitter/Hot/Sour/Pungent Foods For Your Heart & Brain
- Brain Food? The Eyes Have It!
- Some Surprising Truths About Hunger And Satiety
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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