By Adaira Landry,Contributor,MD MEd

Copyright forbes

A female doctor discusses treatment plan with patient.

Women’s health has become one of the fastest-growing sectors in healthcare—and investors are taking notice. In 2024 alone, venture capital investment in women’s health surged by 55%, reaching $2.6 billion in the U.S. and topping global records. Yet, despite this momentum, essential aspects of womanhood, like intimate wellness, remain too often neglected. While funding and innovation accelerate across reproductive, cardiac, and mental health domains, open conversations around sexual and hormonal health continue to confront stigma and systemic neglect. Destigmatizing intimate wellness is not just progressive—it’s a critical step toward holistic health for all women.

What is Intimate Wellness?

Intimate wellness spans vaginal and labial health, hormonal balance, sexual satisfaction, and emotional well-being.

Key elements of intimate wellness include proper vaginal health practices like hygiene and regular gynecologic care, managing hormonal changes through different life stages such as puberty, pregnancy, and menopause, and addressing sexual health concerns like libido, arousal, and satisfaction. Emotional health also plays a crucial role, where stress, anxiety, and relationship dynamics can significantly impact intimate wellness.

Dr. Carine-Ange Tagni in her white coat
Dr. Carine-Ange Tagni

“The current problem is that we’re telling women not to share the issues they have around intimacy,” says board-certified gynecologist and intimate plastic surgeon Dr. Carine-Ange Tagni. Her clinical practice focuses on helping women embrace pleasure and comfort throughout womanhood and remove shame issues such as bladder leakage, low libido, pain with intercourse, and vaginal dryness. She understands that when left untreated these issues can lead to breakdowns in relationships when discussions around intimacy are omitted.

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How Labiaplasty Surgery Impacts Intimate Wellness

One example of how intimate wellness intersects with both health and confidence is labiaplasty. “During delivery of a child, women may have soft tissue injury that distorts the look of the vagina or labia,” she adds. She tells me that these patients often view the area as unsightly, using words like, “ugly,” even after years of healing. This insecurity often limits a woman’s interest in intimacy.

Not all issues related to the labia stem during labor and delivery. Tagni also treats patients with labial hypertrophy, a condition where the labia are enlarged to the point where patients describe them “as a scrotum.” Labial hypertrophy can be congenital or acquired during puberty, when rising estrogen levels cause growth of the labia minora. Other causes or contributing factors may include pregnancy, trauma or injury to the genital area, infections, or physical pressure such as from prolonged wheelchair use.

Tagni explains that enlarged labia can cause extreme pain when pressure or friction is applied, such as from wearing tight pants or riding a bike, where the skin rubs together and can lead to painful fissures. Despite visible signs and symptoms, the condition is often misdiagnosed or overlooked. These individual stories mirror a larger global trend.

Labiaplasty is among the fastest growing cosmetic surgeries in world. According to the latest available data from the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS), approximately 189,000 labiaplasty procedures were performed worldwide in 2023, representing a 66% increase since 2013, when data collection began.

In the United States, Tagni is one of approximately one hundred board-certified physicians in intimate wellness. For most labiaplasty procedures, Tagni blends surgical and non-invasive methods. “The goal is to correct the size and shape of the labia, removing excess skin that causes pain and discomfort,” she says. Surgeries are brief, often lasting under two hours with light sedation. Recovery can last 3-4 weeks for non-invasive treatment. She encourages all patients to be certain their procedure is being performed by a board-certified plastic surgeon or gynecologist trained specifically in labiaplasty.

But intimate wellness extends far beyond surgical interventions

Additional Therapies in Intimate Wellness

“As women came to me to correct their labia, I noticed an entire world of women who were older and dealing with other intimacy issues.” She now provides care for women goi

ng through hormonal transitions from perimenopause to menopause. Common symptoms are vaginal dryness, pain with intercourse, bladder prolapse and leakage, lack of orgasm, poor libido, and general symptoms like poor sleep, brain fog, and mood swings.

Her patients often say, “I do not want to have sex. There’s something sitting in my vagina. I don’t know what it is and it causes me to feel uncomfortable.” Often, the culprit is bladder prolapse, where the bladder can shift to fall into the vagina, a risk that increases after pregnancy and delivery.

Dr. Carine-Ange Tagni
Dr. Carine-Ange Tagni

Pelvic floor dysfunction affects almost 50% of women within 10 years of giving birth. Vaginal delivery is the most important risk factor. Urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse (like the bladder) are two of the most common symptoms.

Many women feel shame in discussing bladder leakage openly. Patients tell Tagni they “concerned about new odors and don’t want to engage with sex because of the scent from urine leakage.” Many don’t know how to use direct language with their partner, such as, ‘Every time I sneeze and cough, I have urinary incontinence.’”

When asked about pelvic floor rehabilitation, Tagni acknowledges that kegels have their place for issues related to the bladder, but most patients struggle with consistency. For many patients, she offers a “sped up version” through treatments combining electromuscular stimulation with radiofrequency energy. These procedures produce results faster than kegels and treatments generally work for 12 to 18 months, with maintenance visits.

For other women, the challenge is less about physical support and more about sexual satisfaction.

The Orgasm Shot Helps with Sexual Libido

Many patients complain of decreased sexual libido with aging. Tagni approaches this issue by delivering the “O-shot” or “Orgasm shot.” This injection of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is administered in the vaginal and clitoral area to stimulate growth factors, promote tissue regeneration, and improve blood flow. This results in “increased sensation” and “enhances the response of the nerves” to improve sexual arousal and the orgasm experience. She describes a patient who had “not had an orgasm in years” returning three weeks after treatment reporting positive sexual satisfaction results. It is not unusual for Tagni to get midnight texts from patients who eager to share, “it worked!”

Yet, treatments alone cannot solve the deeper issue: stigma.

Removing the Stigma within Intimate Wellness

“We need to talk about intimacy health more,” says Tagni. She clarifies that intimacy wellness isn’t just related to sex. “If I have a woman who is no longer engaging with her children in a way that is organic because she’s avoiding running and playing with them because she’s leaking, that is a level of intimacy with her children that she’s losing.” She emphasizes the downstream impact on relationships and self-worth. “You can see how far it goes when you have marriages breaking down because people do not have the language to share what they’re struggling with and they shy away from an intimate act that used to once bond them.”

Her mantra is to lift the stigma that exists when we talk about intimacy, especially in menopause. “These women suffer in silence and have 30, 40, 50 years plus to live.” She reminds women, intimate wellness is not a luxury; it is essential.

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