MENOPAUSE & SEXUAL HEALTH Vaginal Estrogen Is First-Line, and It's Safe What's really behind vaginal dryness after menopause, and how estrogen, moisturizers, laser and red light all fit together. Dryness, burning, pain with sex, needing to pee all the time, UTIs that keep coming back, itching or irritation or other vaginitis symptoms? If any of that started around menopause, it has a name: genitourinary syndrome of menopause, or GSM. It affects roughly half or more of postmen

When women ask about hormone options in menopause, they’re often told not to take oral estradiol. I feel that blanket statement is unfair, because it leads women to believe it isn’t an option when the discussion is much more nuanced. If you’ve been told that estrogen pills cause blood clots, heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer, and dementia, you’re not alone. Most of us, patients and clinicians alike, learned about hormone therapy through the headlines of the 2002 WHI study