Should You Be Using Red Light Therapy... On Your Vagina?

Some things get better with age, like that special bottle of wine you got on your honeymoon or a cast iron pan after it's been well-seasoned. Your vagina does not. Sad but true. As women age, our vagina loses a bit of its *luster* so to say.

Ever pee a little when you sneeze or go for a run? Find a few skid marks in your undies (gross, but true)? Have to hit the restroom way more often than you used to? Feel like sex is a bit uncomfortable or painful? Think your vagina feels like the Sahara desert?

Yup, you can blame that on things like getting older, being pregnant, and giving birth. So, if you're approaching menopause and have had kids, well, I'm sorry for the double whammy. Your pelvic floor is probably weak and your vagina is drying up.

You may have heard of strategies like pelvic floor PT, Kegels, or using a good lube during sex to combat these effects, but there's a newer treatment promising major benefits that celebs like Halle Berry are fans of: red light therapy for your lady bits.

I talked to Dr. Sara Reardon, aka The Vagina Whisperer, a board-certified pelvic floor therapist and author of Floored, to get the dish on red light therapy for your vagina.

What is your pelvic floor, and how does it contribute to these symptoms?

“Everybody has a pelvic floor, all genders,” says Dr. Reardon, explaining that the pelvic floor functions as a supportive hammock for organs in your pelvis like your bladder, uterus, and rectum. While men can certainly have weak (or tight) pelvic floors, women are more likely to have these symptoms because of the trifecta of pregnancy, birth, and menopause mentioned above.

“During pregnancy, your pelvic floor muscles lengthen and expand,” explains Reardon. “You have dramatically decreased pelvic floor strength postpartum.” That decreased pelvic strength and tone can lead to the aforementioned symptoms.

What’s aging got to do with your vagina?

“With menopause,” Reardon continues, “you have decreased estrogen levels, decreased testosterone levels, and decreased collagen production, all things that are going to decrease pelvic floor tone and tension.”

“Literally, your vagina is atrophying,” she deadpans. Cool, cool, cool.

So, yet again, if pregnancy and birth didn’t weaken your pelvic floor, menopause will do the trick. Not only will this cause some of the same symptoms, like incontinence, but the lack of estrogen is what contributes to dry nether regions and painful sex.

How does red light therapy work for your pelvic floor and vagina?

You’ve probably lost count of how many influencers you’ve seen wearing red light masks, promoting how red light therapy stimulates collagen production, helps reduce wrinkles, firms up the skin, and reduces inflammation. It’s a therapy that’s common, generally considered safe, and regarded to be pretty effective, too.

It would be weird to see influencers showing off a vaginal wand, but the same principles apply for your pelvic floor. Instead of wearing a mask, you insert a wand with red lights on it into your vagina for 10 or so minutes a few times a week.

The idea is that using a red light therapy device for your pelvic floor can help strengthen and tone it, which could help stop things like peeing when you sneeze. Joylux, one of the at-home products on the market, promotes that wands like theirs also help hydrate your vaginal walls, which will help reduce pain with sex.

Does red light therapy work for post-partum and menopausal symptoms?

Results proved promising in a study Joylux helped fund about vaginal red light therapy. Overall, participants saw an increase in things like pelvic floor tone and a decrease in their urinary leakage, and they reported that their sex life was better.

Sounds pretty good, right? While Reardon agrees these devices can be an effective tool, she warns that they don't help people get to the root cause of their problem, whereas a pelvic floor PT will get to the bottom of things (hehe) and give you a tailored plan based on that.

"The way we're looking at healthcare now is a little bit through a wellness lens," she says. "Pelvic health is healthcare, but wellness makes it a little bit sexier. I really try to emphasize [pelvic floor issues] should also be looked at through a healthcare lens and not just a wellness lens."

She recommends people who want to try a device like this still talk to their doctor or work with a pelvic floor PT to figure out specifics on why the symptoms are happening but acknowledges that "people need a suite of options to figure out what works best for them."

Are there risks to vaginal red light therapy?

Anything you’re inserting into your vagina needs to be squeaky clean. If it’s not, you risk infections like a UTI. In addition, one participant in the study felt like the wand was too hot.

Reardon says one of the biggest caveats is that strengthening and toning your pelvic floor is a bit like working out — you can’t expect to maintain long-term results if you stop lifting weights.

“[These devices] can fix your symptoms now, but with aging, your hormone levels will decline, your muscle strength and tissue integrity will decline,” she cautions. “So you have to kind of know, How am I going to continue to rehab my muscles in the long term?”

Continued maintenance, in the form of red light sessions and/or pelvic floor exercises, will help with those pesky unpleasant symptoms.

The bottom line

Vaginal red light therapy seems like it can be an effective tool for easing postpartum and menopausal pelvic floor issues, but formal studies have been small, and the long-term efficacy of these treatments hasn’t been studied.

Still, if you’re looking for a way to snatch things in a bit, it’s unlikely that red light therapy would be harmful to your vagina. So, it could be worth a try.