Vulvodynia
Natural Remedies

Vulvodynia - Editor's Choice

| Modified on Sep 20, 2024
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Vulvodynia is a painful and chronic condition that can be quite debilitating. Natural remedies for vulvodynia are effective. Home remedies include coconut oil, vitamin supplements and topical treatments. Dietary and lifestyle changes can make a difference as well.

Vulvodynia is a chronic and painful condition that can affect any part of the pelvic region. It is easily misdiagnosed at first as some type of infection. However, antibiotics and antifungal medications do not help vulvodynia, and in fact, antibiotics can make vulvodynia worse.

Natural remedies are helpful in reducing or eliminating the misery of vulvodynia.

Coconut Oil

Coconut oil is a nourishing and healing oil. It can be use daily in food and it can be used topically. 1-3 tablespoons are taken internally daily. For topical use, keep a small jar of coconut oil in the bathroom to use as needed, but especially before bed.

Wear Loose Fitting Clothing

Tight jeans (or any tight pants) will restrict the blood flow. Ladies have found that wearing loose fitting pants and also cotton underwear can reduce the pain cause by vulvodynia.

Use All Natural Care Products

Many products for women's health contain all sorts of difficult to pronounce ingredients. Stick to products that have a few known ingredients. Avoid sodium laureth sulphate in your soaps and shampoos.

Use organic cloth menstrual pads instead of tampons or sanitary napkins.

Baking soda or borax douches are single ingredient remedies that can be used to reduce the pain of vulvodynia.

Supplements for Vulvodynia

  • Caclium Citrate
  • Magnesium
  • Vitamin C
  • B Complex

These supplement are helpful healthy cells. The magnesium is also helpful in that it helps the body to relax.

Physical Therapy

Perineal massage can be done at home to gently stretch the perineal tissue. This is commonly done by women preparing for a birth, but can be done by women who are suffering with vulvodynia as well.

Herbs for Vulvodynia

Oats

Yes, good old fashioned oats are an herb, when the oat plant is used to treat a health problem. A bowl of oatmeal each day is nourishing. And oatmeal actually has a soothing effect on the body. An alternative to this delicious porridge is strong oatstraw tea. This mild tasting tea is nourishing and relaxing. Finally, oats can be used topically. Oats can be finely ground and added to a sitz bath, or mixed with water to make a paste for a topical application. Oatmeal baths have long been used to reduce surface pain and irritation.

St. John's Wort

St. John's Wort is an herb that may be helpful on two levels for vulvodynia. First of all, it is a good herb for anxiety and depression, which may accompany vulvodynia. Secondly, St. John's Wort is helpful for nerve pain. This herb can be taken in a tincture or as a tea.

Burdock Root

Burdock root is another herb that gently relieves nerve related pain. This herb can be taken in capsules at mealtime - 2-4 capsules with each meal. Burdock root can take time to bring healing. Give it at least a month to see if you notice results.

Damiana

Damiana is an herb that is used to increase the blood flow to the pelvic area. This herb is also good for mild anxiety. One capsule is taken once or twice a day.

Peppermint

Peppermint is an herb that increases circulation. Some women have found temporary relief with applying peppermint lip balm to relieve the pain of vulvodynia. If you use this remedy, use only natural lip balms.

You can make your own peppermint healing balm:

Recipe for Vulvodynia Healing Balm

  • 1/4 cup organic coconut oil
  • 6 drops peppermint essential oil
  •  2 teaspoons grated beeswax

Melt coconut oil in a double boiler. Add beeswax and continue to heat until it is melted. Remove from heat. Add peppermint essential oil. Stir. Pour into a clean glass jar. If you prefer this to be more solid, add a little more beeswax. If the peppermint is too strong for you, melt in some more coconut oil. If you don't want to bother with the beeswax, you can leave it out. Just mix together the coconut oil and peppermint essential oil. If this is kept in a warm room, the oil will be in its liquid form, but it will still be effective.

Cayenne Pepper

A fascinating study suggests that topical capsaicin (found in cayenne pepper) may reduce the pain and hypersensitivity associated with vuvlodynia.1

Cayenne pepper is use topically for pain relief from arthritis and nerve problems. This study refers to 8% capsaicin. If you wish to make your own topical capsaicin, you can mix cayenne pepper in coconut oil or castor oil, each of which have healing properties as well. 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper in 1 Tablespoon of olive oil, castor oil or coconut oil would make the solution to be about 8% cayenne pepper. If you decide to try this use a small amount on a small area to make sure it agrees with your skin.

Diet and Vulvodynia

Your diet can affect any part of your body. Try to eat nourishing whole foods for the majority of your diet. Reduce consumption of sugar, processed foods and fast foods. Avoid artificial sweeteners, food dyes and msg. Freshly made vegetable juices contain high amounts of nutrients and enzymes.

Other Considerations

If you have not done so, do check with a trusted health professional to make sure that your vulvodynia is not caused by an anatomical problem.

Certain medications can trigger vulvodynia. Antibiotics and birth control pills are two possible triggers for vulvodynia.

Have you treated vulvodynia with natural remedies? Please send us some feedback!

Sources:

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3169333/


The comments below reflect the personal experiences and opinions of readers and do not represent medical advice or the views of this website. The information shared has not been evaluated by the FDA and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or prevent any disease or health condition. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional for medical concerns.

Pelvic Floor Muscle Stretch

Posted by Anna (Las Vegas, Nv, Usa) on 05/20/2010
★★★★★

Editor's Choice

Vulvodynia Remedy: Pelvic Floor Muscles Stretch

Simple vulvodynia remedy/solution/cure (that worked for me) I'm so excited to have finally solved my problem that I need to share it with all of you, because I, like you, suffered SO VERY MUCH and I was so desperate for a solution! Unfortunately there are too many wrong, confusing, even dangerous suggestions online about crazy or expensive treatments, like surgeries, anti-depressants, oxalate diet, etc., when the solution is so simple, yet it eludes everybody. I am proof that vulvodynia can be treated very naturally, easily and FREE at home. If my story can help somebody, at least my pain has had a purpose. I had vulvodynia for almost a year, so bad I couldn't wear underwear/pants, sit down or go by bicycle. [As if it wasn't enough, months after it all began I ALSO started experiencing what I can only explain as urethral spasms (those are actually worse than the vulvodynia pain, because they always came unexpected). I thought there was something wrong w/ my urethra, I even went to a urologist who couldn't understand what I had and didn't find anything wrong w/ me but nonetheless gave me antibiotics which turned out to be totally useless & unnecessary because, as my gyno confirmed, I didn't have whatever strange invisible infection the urologist thought I had. Brilliant!] Anyway, after lots of research online, I realized it was possible that vulvodynia could simply be a muscle problem, so I finally went to a pelvic floor therapist, who confirmed lots of things to me. She did some manual trigger point therapy (which you can do yourself), but mostly what I got out of my experience with her was hope that it could be treated, which was the most important thing to me as the pain was driving me insane. Therapy helped a lot, but as I am unemployed I couldn't afford more sessions. Well, at least I knew for sure it was a muscle problem and nothing else, as I had already experienced a major improvement thanks to her. See, the reason that doctors can run millions of tests on all of you and find nothing wrong/related to the pain is because vulvodynia is simply caused by the SHORTENING of your pelvic muscles due to the trauma of, say, an infection, accident, bad posture, bad habits, scoliosis, or even just stress...you name the cause, you're probably right. Those poor, stressed muscles have contracted to the point of causing internal chronic spasms (whether you feel them or not), which tug at your nerves, thus giving you pain! The secret to reverse it, then, it's simply to LENGHTEN the muscles back to their original shape, by stretching them. I, by the way, requested a fantastic book from the library ("Heal Pelvic Pain" by Amy Stein) which explains all of this in detail. You should look into it, too, if you are looking for more info about how numerous pelvic disorders are simply caused by the shortening of the muscles & by trigger points (she explains how to do trigger point therapy -which I love- on yourself, however I found that the stretch I "invented" was enough to make the trigger points go away on their own!). One of her most useful pieces of advice was the part about "dropping the pelvis": until I read her book I never thought/realized how super tense my pelvis always was. Catch yourself anytime and you'll see that if you have vulvodynia your pelvis is all tensed up, drop it! (It's the same feeling as when you have finally reached a bathroom after holding it in for a long time.) Make a conscious effort to drop it/relax it/let go of it as often as possible until it will become normal to you again. (To better understand what I'm talking about, see her book.) I did the long routine of stretching exercises (for different parts of the body) that Amy recommends however I felt none of them were really specific enough to solve the problem, or at least I wasn't feeling any difference fast enough (I'm kinda impatient)...so, as I am unemployed and I have a lot of time on my hands, I started mulling over where the problem was specifically arising from...I thought: it's not my back, or my butt, or my thighs,... my urethral spasms & vulvodynia pain MUST stem from the front of my pelvis (the area below my navel). Well, then! Those are the muscles I have to lengthen! So I created my own (easy) specific stretch exercise, which amazingly accomplished the job very quickly! I felt immediately better the first morning (I had no more urethral spasms! What a miracle!). After 2 days I was already MUCH better, and after a week my vulvodynia was virtually all gone! The longer you do it, the better. It's something you can do as a tune-up once in a while, too. THE SOLUTION: This is done in bed for as long as possible while you read or watch a movie (you'll know when you've had enough), you can get up once in a while if you really need to move around. (I guess you could try it on a table too, I used the bed as it's more comfortable and you can stay there longer.) On the VERY EDGE(<-important!) of the bed, without falling, put as many pillows as possible under your pelvis (it depends on how high your bed is, mine is pretty low), make sure you have some support for your back, too, if necessary, in order to be as comfortable as possible (you'll figure it all out on your own), but the important thing is that your pelvis needs to be a little HIGHER than your back TO CREATE AN ARCH! Then, let your legs hang from the edge of the bed, creating as much of a backward arch --between your thighs & your pelvis-- as possible. Simply lie there and feel the muscles of your pelvis and lower abdomen S-T-R-E-T-C-H. It's very easy. I even extended alternately my legs for further stretch of the pelvis, one leg at the time as much as possible. I did all of this while reading, so it's no big deal, it actually feels good. (I have a tile floor so I used a towel under my feet to made the sliding easier). This is all folks! Let me know if it works for you. If not, get Amy's book and try her stretches, maybe the muscles that you need to lengthen are not the same as mine. It depends on where your pain is, I guess. FURTHER ADVICE: #1 Months ago, when my pain was the worst, I noticed that the only thing that cut my pain in half was drinking a whole stalk of celery juice. Within hours it gave me so much relief! It might be for the same reason that celery is good for rheumatism (I don't have it), I'm not sure why it worked, all I know is that celery juice surely was a huge help! And it went to prove that my vulvodynia had nothing to do with too much oxalates, as celery is high in oxalates! If you strongly believe that your vulvodynia is caused by oxalates (very unlikely from what I've read) I highly recommend that before embarking on such a restricted, crazy diet at least you bother to get a test to confirm whether your oxalates are off, most likely you'll see that everything is normal! #2 As my therapist and Amy Stein say, do NOT do kegel or similar strengthening exercises until the pain goes away first! The problem is that exercises such as kegel actually tend to further contract/shorten the muscles which, in the case of vulvodynia, are already too tensed up to begin with! The exact OPPOSITE needs to be done, instead: RELAX them! #3 Do NOT constantly touch/mess with the area that bothers you! As my therapist said: if you keep on pressing on a bruise, you are preventing it from healing! #4 Also, as much as possible, try NOT to think about it, I know it's really hard, but you need to rewire your brain so that you DON'T constantly EXPECT pain from that area! Otherwise you're keeping the pain alive through a self-fulfilling prophesy.



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