Dr Amir Khan

for those conditions.

Now, there is other things that make it painful as well.

There's something called vaginismus, which is where the pelvic floor muscles really tighten up at the thought of penetration or if something is trying to penetrate you.

A lot of that is psychological, particularly if you've been through sexual trauma in the past or there's something that doesn't feel right about that particular sexual encounter that can happen and that is incredibly painful and needs

some deep-seated long-term treatment.

There's also something called vulvodynia, which is an oversensitive nervous system around the vulva.

And even the light touch can be painful for those people.

And that is really tricky to treat, but it does need a lot of understanding as well.

So those are the kind of things that cause this problem.

superficial painful sex.

Deeper things are things like endometriosis, adenomyosis, fibroids, ovarian cysts.

Those kind of things can cause a much deeper pain.

So painful sex, yes, common, but not normal.

If you bleed after you've had sex.

So bleeding after sex, people automatically think, God, this must be something serious like a cancer.

But more often than not, it's not.

It is something that definitely needs checking out.

And particularly if you've had persistent bleeding after sex for six weeks or more, we need to have a look at that.

But what it could be is an STI, a sexually transmitted illness.

That still needs checking out and it still needs treating, but it's not a cancer.