Low Estrogen Is the Reason for a Common Menopause Symptom

Estrogen maintains these, what they call stratified squamous epithelium. That's this thick, heavy tissue that lines the vagina, right? Makes it protected. When our estrogen drops, it gets super thin, like paper thin. So here's the way I think about it. Remember, okay, I'm going to talk about my hands for a minute. Remember when you were young and the, the skin on your hands was super soft and it was kind of spongy, like it had a fatty layer underneath? There was no wrinkles. It was just always like really pretty and pristine. And then think to maybe an older woman in her 80s, and you look at their hand and their skin is paper thin. Like if you bump them, they bruise, right? That's happening inside your vagina, right? Without estrogen, that plump, healthy tissue gets really, really thin and it atrophies and it becomes easy to rip and tear and loses all of its, all of its lubrication, so it's also dry. So any activity there causes tearing and fragile skin or fragile epithelium, and it loses even glycogen, which makes the bacteria, the lactobacilli, that are supposed to hang out there, and the pH of the vagina change. So all of a sudden, you're more prone to yeast infections and bladder infections, right? And the bacteria take over, and so it becomes more common. The blood flow to the vulva, which is the area outside, right, the parts that you can see, and the vagina, which is the part inside, the which you can't really see unless you're like using a mirror. All of that, the blood flow goes down, right? Those are all sexual desire areas, right? The clitoris is part of that too. But, but all the entire area, erogenous zones, are all part of sexual desire and sexual experience. And when it loses blood flow, we don't get as much experience, right? And we'd get less of the swelling of the genital tissues, which is what sort of helps lubrication and helps the intensity of activity, and the vaginal opening becomes less elastic.