Vaginal dryness can mean loads of irritation, discomfort, and sometimes even pain for so many people, and it’s actually a more common problem than you might think. While not everyone is going to experience vaginal dryness at some point during their lives, you are most certainly not alone in your experiences.
While that’s all well and good, that doesn’t mean that it’s suddenly less of a problem or an inconvenience because there’s still the actual discomfort you need to worry about. A lot of the time, you just want a little bit of relief, and it might be nice to have a few home remedies for dryness on hand if you want to take care of discomfort whenever you need to.
Avoid Douching
As many people know, the vagina is actually self-cleaning. In other words, it cleans and takes care of itself pretty well, at least most of the time. That means you don’t need to work too hard to actually keep it clean and in proper working order.
While it’s important to wash the outside with warm water, you don’t want to use any soap. Using soaps, especially if they’re scented, is going to be much more likely to upset the pH balance of your vagina, which just spells discomfort.
That also means it’s important that you avoid douching. While vaginal douching might temporarily give you the illusion that you feel cleaner in the short term, it’s actually doing much more harm than good. Water is actually a different pH generally speaking than the vagina. Your vagina is actually a little bit more acidic than water.
While douching with water alone is going to be harmful to the pH of your vagina, there are some companies that also sell prefilled douches with other solutions, some of them scented. This means that you’re less likely to know what’s going into your body and harm your body in the process.
Regardless of what kind of douching you would normally do, if you normally do it, it’s strongly recommended that you stop. While not a conventional way to deal with it, this is theoretically one of a few good home remedies for dryness down there.
Get Enough Sleep
Another one of the great home remedies for dryness is making sure that you’re getting the proper amount of sleep. While this isn’t generally something you would consider when you’re thinking about home remedies for dryness, sleep is actually something that would be well utilized if it were added into your daily routine over a long period of time.
This is because sleep can support health and wellness across your body, and is generally considered your body’s set aside time for healing. As you rest, your body is more likely to be able to complete essential and minor repairs across your body’s numerous systems. This includes the reproductive system and the vagina, which is what we’re mainly concerned with here.
Not sleeping the recommended eight hours each day can limit your body’s ability to take care of repairs, as it trims down the amount of time your body has to work while you’re resting.
Some psychologists consider sleep to be a state of homeostasis for your body, though this hypothesis is still yet to be proven. However, the tie in with health and repairs associated with your body getting enough sleep could certainly support this idea..
Over-the-Counter Lubricants
If you’re struggling with vaginal dryness during sex, a good solution could be to get a good quality lubricant made especially for the vagina. This is mainly because sometimes the vagina will not produce enough of its own lubricant in order to facilitate desired levels of comfort during sexual intercourse.
However, it’s important to make sure that the lubricant you buy is compatible with the activities that you wish to participate in. For example, oil-based lubricants are more likely to have natural variations than silicone-based lubes. However, oil-based lube is much more likely to degrade any physical barriers you wish to use to prevent pregnancy or STIs.
Additionally, silicone-based lubricants are likely to have a bad reaction with any toys made out of silicone, potentially harming the toys and your body.
Try Aloe Vera
One of the more natural home remedies for dryness on this list, aloe vera is an excellent option to look into. Some even recommend it as a good alternative to lubricant if you’d like a natural alternative, though this has not necessarily been confirmed on as wide of a scale as something like coconut oil.
Aloe vera is plant-based and natural on its own, and it frequently acts similarly to a water-based lubricant if that is something you’re interested in.
However, if you’re planning on using something that doesn’t come directly from the aloe plant, be sure that there are no dangerous additives to the solution. Especially if there is something like alcohol in the mixture, this could add to the dryness problem you’re already dealing with.