Participant Testimonials

As someone who has lived with vulvodynia for some years now, it was heartening to participate in Dr. Schlaeger’s experimental study. Perversely it gave me the assurance that I was not alone in what had long been a cloudy and mysterious ailment that had brought my sex life to standstill and tainted my experience of physical intimacy with the anticipation of pain, frustration and disappointment. When I first began to experience vulvodynia symptoms about 6 years ago, I did not know then that nearly 1 in 5 women experiences pelvic and sexual pain in their lifetimes. The silence in the medical and research communities worldwide around this condition is staggering and left me feeling at loss for many years in trying to understand and treat my symptoms. Dr. Schlaeger’s study is a big leap in this direction and I hope it is one of many that will bring solace to the millions of women worldwide who suffer these symptoms in silence and shame. Dr. Schlaeger’s inter-disciplinary research team were very professional, sincere and respectful throughout the study and they are motivated by a genuine desire to understand vulvodynia and help patients through alternative medicine-based treatments. I had never tried acupuncture before and I appreciate the chance to have tried something new whilst simultaneously helping advance scientific knowledge about a condition that besets 20% of the female population worldwide.