Some health friendly tips for the female reproductive organs.
Visit any medical website, and you’ll learn that vaginal dryness is a common health complaint that women have regarding sexual intimacy. It can lead to itching, burning and painful sex, and is caused by a number of things such as menopausal or hormonal changes, childbirth, surgeries, medicine, douching and lack of adequate foreplay. If you do experience dryness, they recommend the use of personal lubrications.
Makes common sense, right?
What most sites rarely explain is that they type of lubrication you use can either make the dryness disappear…or end up forcing you to put a Do Not Enter sign over your nether bits.
Ansel Muir Hall, the CEO of Blossom Organics, a company that makes natural and organic aloe-based lubrication explains that the reason may be in the ingredients. Personal lubricants are popular and the market is “dominated by brands that are starting to offer better products, but most [sold today] include a host of ingredients that are truly questionable,” he explains.
As one of 3 co-founders for Blossom Organics, Hall (who is named after Ansel Adams and John Muir) told me that the company was founded on the principle that people want clean and healthy alternatives.
“Women are becoming concerned with living cleaner, healthier lifestyle. This means making good, smart choices about the products they use, but an area equally or more important that has been largely forgotten is intimacy products.”
There’s also been a general apathy among some environmentalists to examine sexuality and sexual health concerns. It’s a trend that is slowly changing as more advocates find what some advocates call their e-Spot. “If a woman is concerned with what she put on her skin, she should be even more concerned with what she’s putting in the most absorbent skin her body – her vagina,” says Hall.
What ingredients should you avoid?
Though this list isn’t by any means complete, some questionable ingredients include: parabens, petrochemicals, benzene derivatives such as sodium benzoate, methyl, ethyl and propylparaben, and benzoate of soda. Boric acid, salicylates and cinnamic aldehyde (an ingredient used in ‘hot’ lubricants) are also questionable.
Hall’s question to women who want to have safer, healthier, better sex is this: why take the risk? Companies like Blossom Organics offer great alternatives. Go with natural, organic and proven safe ingredients, he says.
Whose Fault is It?
Many women have a reaction to the product they are using, and might think the problem is their body, not the lubrication. One reason these ingredients need to be avoided during sex is because your skin can absorb things more readily than if it’s something taken orally.
Take just one potentially toxic ingredient: Parabens.
According to Lisa S. Lawless, Ph.D. C.E.O. and founder of Holistic Wisdom, an organization which provides empowering education, products and resources to promote sexual wellness, it’s best to avoid them all together. In an article for NaturalNews.com, she writes:
“Parabens are controversial toxins that have been shown to alter estrogen in females, increase allergies, decrease sperm count in men, contribute to skin cancer and disrupt normal fetal development in pregnant women.”
Regulations are poor and inadequate, she explains. The consequence is that many products contain toxins, and “there are many unanswered questions about what consumers are using on and inside their body.”
What’s more, most consumers in the middle east and beyond are unaware of what is in their personal lubricant or the effect on their health.
“If a woman is concerned with what she put on her skin, she should be even more concerned with what she’s putting in the most absorbent skin her body – her vagina.” Ansel Muir Hall
11 Possible Brutal Consequences
When it comes to safe sex and using the right lube, it’s consumer beware. Unless you know exactly what’s in that jar of jelly, you could be exposing yourself to some potentially unpleasant side effects and health concerns, suggests NaturalNews.com and other sites. Loopholes in the regulation of the sex product industry, limited testing or inadaquate reporting (depending on where a consumer lives) of reactions mean that you could experience any number of ailments and not know what ingredient, or combination of exposures, contributed to the following conditions.
- Rashes and/or skin lesions
- Fatigue
- Nerve degeneration
- Yeast (candida) infections
- Inflammation
- Myalgia
- Cancer
- Reduced sperm count
- Birth defects
- Liver damage
- Insulin resistance
Safer sex tips
Our advice is simple.
1. Only use a product that clearly reveals all the ingredients to you.
2. Avoid using anything with the ingredients listed above.
3. If you can’t find or order a product like Blossom Organics, and are in a pinch, consider using something like coconut oil, vitamin E or even olive oil (though oils are not advised for use with latex condoms).
4. Never use something like motor oil, petrolatum or mineral oil.
The biggest challenge is getting the word out there,” says Hall of Blossom Organics when it comes to using good, healthy ingredients in intimate care. “We need to have an a more open dialogue about the importance of sexual health in our society. We are moving in that regard, and people are making that happen.”
In other words, it is up to you to be smart and practice safe sex when it comes to your intimate wellbeing.
Read More Sexual Health News:
3 Ways Eco-Consciousness Can Improve Your Love Life
Why are Environmentalists Avoiding the e-Spot?
Image of Artistic shot by Shutterstock
Tinamarie Bernard is a natural intimacy coach, author and educator and blogs at www.tinamariebernard.com
Author: Tinamarie Bernard
Tinamarie combines her interests in two of her favorite topics – relationships and the environment – for Greenprophet.com. As our eco-sexpert, she explores ways to make our personal lives more sustainable, whether it’s between a couple, the sheets or our ears. While eco-sexuality is a new term and still unfamiliar to many, being conscious about what we use in moments of intimacy is connected to better stewardship of the planet. The idea that green is sexy and sex can be green is one she is thoroughly enjoying discovering. This married mom of two also believes we owe it to our children to teach them to love themselves, each other, and the environment for futures to come. Intimacy isn’t something we are born knowing. Neither is good stewardship of the earth. In her spare time, she muses about sacred sexuality, conscious love, intimacy, feminism and parenting as the top-rated Modern Love column for Examiner.com and several other media outlets. She composes poetry (mostly in her heart), mediates (when time allows), rides horses in the Galilee, and searches for delicious parve dessert recipes. She considers chocolate a righteous sin, and won’t give up a single pair of red shoes. You can find...
Great piece. One thing- when you say that “oils are not advised for use with latex condoms,” you make it sound like it simply not be a good idea. But oils will make condoms break within 60 seconds, so it’s not that they’re not advised. They’re totally contraindicated.
Charlie – indeed. Thanks for pointing that out.
YES! GreenProphet is the truth. Not many sites will tell you about all the nasty junk chemicals, binders and fillers in your lubricant. Like one of my favorite other sites puts it “do you really want to rub that on your intimate parts?”.
Could you please review Intivar vagina cream? It looks really good especially based on the ingredients I’m eager to hear what you think.
A special thanks for your long time reader,
-Jessica Baily