Josie Bright

I never stopped wanting my husband. The desire was all still there - the dryness was the problem. For about two years I told myself I was just tired. The truth was harder: I’d got dry enough that intimacy had started to hurt, and “not tonight” had quietly turned into a habit I never actually chose. It was never about him, and it was never about me losing interest. My body had simply stopped keeping up — and I didn’t yet understand why. I did everything you’re meant to do. Lubricants — I lost count. Moisturisers. A cream the doctor suggested. They all did the same thing: helped for the few minutes they were on, then nothing. Because they sit on the surface. And the surface was never really the problem. HRT wasn’t on the table for me. Some women can’t take it. Some are told not to. Some try it and it barely helps. And almost none of us were ever told there was something studied that wasn’t a hormone. Here’s what finally made sense to me. After menopause, oestrogen drops and the tissue itself changes — it thins and loses some of its ability to hold moisture. The cells in that tissue are built partly from fats. A lubricant can’t change that. It’s like misting a houseplant’s leaves while the roots stay bone dry. The dryness is on the surface. The change is in the tissue. Senora is a daily softgel of sea buckthorn oil. You swallow it like food. Its omega-7-rich fatty acids are absorbed and used to support the lipid-rich cell membranes and mucosal tissue — the layer that’s meant to hold moisture in the first place. Not wetness on top. Support underneath. And not just any sea buckthorn. he omega-7 lives in the fruit — the pulp oil — not the seed. Senora is built around the fruit-oil fraction, which is why a cheaper “sea buckthorn,” often seed oil or an undisclosed blend, may not have done much. And it isn’t a hunch. In a 2014 randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in Maturitas, 116 postmenopausal women took 3g of sea buckthorn oil daily for three months. They were 3.1 times more likely to improve their vaginal tissue integrity than the women on placebo. Not surface moisture — the integrity of the tissue itself. I’ve been taking it three months now. It wasn’t a switch flipping. It was quieter than that — one evening I realised I wasn’t bracing. The dread went first. And then it was just us again. If the desire is still there and your body just isn’t keeping up, this is worth understanding properly. I’ve put the study, the dose, and how it works below. P.S. It’s non-hormonal — no oestrogen — which is exactly why it’s worth a look if hormones aren’t an option for you. P.P.S. Three softgels a day. Nothing to apply, nothing to time, no cream living by the bed. P.P.P.S. Give it the full twelve weeks the study used — Senora backs it with a 90-day money-back guarantee, the same window, so the trial’s on them, not you. Individual results vary.