The Catwoman actress recently spearheaded her very own wellness company, Respin, and introduced a lubricant to help women going through the same thing.
Appearing on the Drew Barrymore Show this week, the 58-year-old spoke candidly about her relationship with boyfriend Van Hunt – who she has dated since 2020 – and what led to her first product launch.
‘When I was 54, I had just met Van,’ the Oscar-winner began. ‘I manifested this man, and we were having the best time. I finally met my person. It was amazing. It really, truly was amazing.
‘One morning, I tried to go to the bathroom. I couldn’t go. It was so painful when I tried to let a little bit out, I couldn’t go. I had to squeeze it. It took me almost 10 minutes to just empty my bladder because it was so painful.
‘Substances were down there that I had never seen before and I thought, “What is this?”
Halle immediately went to the doctor, who initially misdiagnosed her with ‘a really bad case of herpes’.
‘Van, he drove me there because this [her nether region] was so swollen, I couldn’t even put my legs together to drive,’ she continued.
‘We spent the next 72 hours doing the blame game, trying to figure out who gave it to me, who gave it to him…
‘And then a couple of hours after that, my doctor called me and said: “You do not have herpes”. I was like, “Okay then, what is it?” And this was the defining moment for me, he said, “I don’t know, that’s what it looked like.”’
It was her doctor’s lack of knowledge that led Halle on her own journey of research, and she concluded that she suffers from dry vagina syndrome, which ‘women have when they are in perimenopause’.
‘I had all the symptoms of what that felt like,’ she said, sharing that the symptoms made it very difficult – and hugely painful – to be intimate with Van.
‘I did have about six months or seven months [where] we struggled with finding a way to have sex again, getting rid of the dryness, making it more enjoyable because it got pretty rough for a minute.’
When Drew described the feeling as ‘sandpaper’, the Monster’s Ball actress interjected: ‘Razor blades.’
Menopause is technically the name given when a woman’s periods stop due to lower hormone levels.
While this usually affects women between the ages of 45 and 55, symptoms can happen far earlier as estrogen begins to decline, in what’s known as perimenopause – some can experience changes as early as their mid-30s.
According to the Mayo Clinic, the level of estrogen rises and falls unevenly during perimenopause, with changing menstrual cycles – including some where their ovaries don’t release an egg.
As well as vaginal dryness and sleep issues, symptoms can include irregular periods, hot flashes, vaginal and bladder problems, changes in sexual function and many more.
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