Women's Sexual Health · Diabetes · Clinical Report

This Bed Belongs To A 52-Year-Old Diabetic Woman. Her OB-GYN Explains What Happened That Night

If you have diabetes and you stopped getting wet, stopped feeling and stopped coming, it isn't your age and it isn't your marriage. It's the same damage they look for in your eyes and your kidneys, in a place they never check. And it takes two minutes to fix.

A diabetic patient of mine, 52, sent me this photo the next morning. They had to flip the mattress.

By Dr. Rachel Solis

OB-GYN · 14 years in women's sexual health · Updated: November 4, 2026

I'm an OB-GYN. And there's one sentence I hear so often in my office that I know when it's coming: the woman lowers her voice, glances at the door, and says "Doctor, this is probably not your area, but."

Marcia is 52 and was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes nine years ago. She came in for something else. She was going to walk out without telling me.

When she finally said it, she said it like this:

"In nine years they've checked my feet, they've checked my eyes, they've checked my kidneys. I prick my finger four times a day. And nobody, not once, asked me about what I stopped feeling."

That sentence is this whole article. But let me tell you how it ends, because the photo above is her bed, three weeks after that appointment.

The Exact Order In Which A Diabetic Woman's Body Shuts Down

In women with diabetes this doesn't start on diagnosis day and it doesn't happen all at once. It happens in an order, and in them it happens faster than in the rest of my patients.

The squirt goes first. That big release that actually soaks things. Most of them don't even miss it, because nobody ever told them their body could do that. One day it simply stopped happening.

Then the lubrication goes. The burning starts. Sex that used to flow now needs a gel, and the gel lasts as long as it lasts. Penetration goes from uncomfortable to painful.

Sensation goes last. And that's when they come to my office, if they come at all. Almost all of them describe it with the same image: "it's like being touched through a glove."

And there's a fourth thing only the diabetic women tell me, always last, always embarrassed: the infections that keep coming back. Yeast every two months. The antifungal they now buy without a prescription because they know the name by heart.

By the time a woman tells me this, she has spent years faking it. Avoiding it. Going to bed before her husband so she can pretend to be asleep. And carrying guilt that isn't hers.

He Got A Pill. She Got Told To Buy Lube

Here's the part that makes me professionally angry, and I'll say it knowing it's uncomfortable.

When a diabetic man says in a visit that he can't stay hard, nobody asks him about his marriage. Nobody tells him it's normal at his age. They explain that diabetes damages the vessels and the nerves of the penis, and they prescribe something that brings blood to that area. In the same visit. Without him having to push for it.

Marcia's husband is diabetic too. He got the blue pill four years ago, no drama.

When she brought up hers, in the same office, the answer was:

And it isn't bad intent. It's that the vascular and nerve damage of diabetes is studied in men and treated in men. In women it exists just the same, it's documented just the same, and it's almost never looked for. If it isn't looked for, it isn't found. If it isn't found, it isn't treated.

So she goes home believing the problem is her age, or worse, that the problem is her.

Why Nothing You've Tried Has Worked

By the time a patient reaches me she has already spent money. Always. And always on the same things:

• Lubricants. They wet the surface. They take the friction away for twenty minutes and then they dry. They don't bring a single drop of blood to the tissue, so they give back neither sensation nor orgasm.
• Vaginal moisturizers. They hydrate the lining for a few days and cost a fortune every month. And when her partner touches her, she still feels nothing.
• Libido pills. They work on the brain. But my patients want it. The problem was never desire.
• Hormones. They help some women, but they take months, they need a prescription and monitoring, and for plenty of diabetic women with other risk factors we simply won't prescribe them.

And the big one is missing, the one they told you would fix everything:

• Controlling your glucose. You have to do it, and I am not telling you to stop. But here's what nobody explains: lowering your glucose stops the damage that's coming. It does not reopen the vessel that already narrowed. That's why you can have a perfect A1C, get congratulated for it, and still feel absolutely nothing.

That's the trap in this whole subject. You did everything they asked of you. And you still don't feel anything. Because all of that treats symptoms or prevents the future. The cause of what's happening to you today is something else, and it's one single thing.

What High Blood Sugar Did To The Smallest Vessels In Your Body

This is what doesn't fit into a fifteen-minute visit, and it's what changes my patients' faces when I draw it for them.

High blood sugar sustained over time does two things, and both have been measured for decades:

One: it damages the small blood vessels. The walls thicken and stiffen, and the vessel loses its ability to open when it needs to. We call it microvascular damage. It's exactly what they're looking for when they dilate your eyes and when they order that urine test for your kidneys: those are organs packed with tiny vessels.

Two: it damages the nerves. Neuropathy. They look for it in your feet with a little filament, because that's where it shows most. But the nerve that carries sensation from your clit is made of the same material as the one in your foot.

Now put those two things together with an anatomy fact almost nobody knows.

The fluid that comes out when a woman squirts doesn't come from the bladder. It comes from the Skene's glands, which sit on either side of the urethra, behind the front wall of the vagina. And those glands aren't floating loose: they're wrapped in erectile tissue, the same kind of tissue your clit is made of, which is far bigger than you were taught and extends several inches inward.

When blood reaches it, the tissue swells, squeezes the glands and forces them to fill. If blood doesn't reach it, the tissue doesn't swell, the gland doesn't fill, and when the orgasm comes there is nothing to expel.

I explain it to them with a garden hose: the hose is fine and the garden is fine. What happened is that somebody turned the valve halfway down and left it like that for years. Without water nothing blooms, no matter how well you tend the soil.

Now reread the list above. Not the lube, not the moisturizer, not the libido pill, not lowering your glucose opens that valve. That's why every one of them failed.

Stage 1: tissue with no blood flow, gland empty. Stage 2: the vessels open. Stage 3: the tissue fills and there is something to expel.

What I Gave Marcia (And It Wasn't A Hormone, And I Changed Nothing About Her Treatment)

If the problem is a valve turned halfway down, the treatment is obvious: open the valve. In medicine that has a name and fifty years of history. It's called local vasodilation.

What I had her use was an external cream applied directly to the clit and the labia, a small amount, with a fingertip, about two minutes before sex.

It has two things working together:

• Topical sildenafil. Yes, the same active ingredient doctors have been prescribing for over 25 years for circulation, and the same one her husband was handed without a second thought. In men it brings blood to the penis. Here, in cream form and acting locally, it does exactly the same for a woman's erectile tissue. It never goes through your stomach.
• L-arginine. It's the raw material for nitric oxide, the molecule that tells the vessel to open. In diabetes that production is already down, and that's part of the problem. The sildenafil keeps the order from fading; the L-arginine makes sure there's an order to give.

And now the part she cared about most, because it was her first question:

The result is mechanical, not magical: blood arrives, the tissue fills, the glands load up, the clit swells and the nerves wake up. Your own lubrication comes back, sensation comes back, and there is something to expel again.

The warmth you feel after two minutes is the signal that the vessels opened.

Click here to see the cream I recommend in my office (today it's buy one get one free)

Three Weeks Later, Marcia Sent Me That Photo Of Her Bed

She told me she put it on that first night in the bathroom with the door closed, convinced nothing would happen. She had already thrown money at other things and had already been told too many times to just live with it.

Two minutes in she felt the warmth. Then the pulse. She told me it was like that part of her body woke up after ten years asleep.

When her husband touched her, she felt it. Not "something": she felt all of it, with no glove in the way. And she got wet on her own, no gel, which hadn't happened since before the diagnosis.

He stopped halfway through and asked her:

"What happened to you today?"

That night Marcia squirted for the first time in her life. At 52, with nine years of diabetes behind her. She soaked the sheet, the protector and part of the mattress.

The next day she wrote to me with the photo and one line:

"Doctor, I thought this ended for me the day I was diagnosed."

That's what hurts me most about this subject. Not that they lost it. That they were left believing it came included with the disease.

And for the skeptics, who I completely understand, here's what Marcia did without me asking her to.

She spent ten days at her daughter's and forgot the cream. Those nights the dryness came back and the nothing came back, with the same glucose as always and the same treatment as always. When she got home and picked it up again, it all came back: the sensation, the lubrication and the squirting.

That isn't suggestion. That's tissue getting blood and tissue not getting blood.

"But Can I Even Use This As A Diabetic?"

It's the question all of them ask, and it's the right question. I'll answer it the way I answer it for them.

It's an external cream. You don't swallow it, it isn't a hormone, it has no sugar in it and it doesn't enter your metabolic control. It does nothing to your glucose and it doesn't interfere with metformin or insulin.

The one real precaution, and it's the same one as for any vasodilator, is if you take nitrates for your heart. In that case check with your doctor first. If that's your situation you already know it, because that isn't a medication anyone takes by accident.

And if you have open sores or an active infection in the area, treat that first and start afterward.

Other than that, it's one of the simplest things I recommend. Far simpler than hormone therapy, which is usually the only other option you're offered.

"So Why Didn't My Doctor Tell Me This?"

Almost all of them ask me, and almost always with anger. I think the anger is fair.

The honest answer is that there's no conspiracy. There's time, there's habit, and there's money.

A diabetes visit has a checklist to get through: weight, blood pressure, feet, eyes, kidneys, A1C. That checklist has no box for asking whether you still feel anything. It never had one. And since the patient doesn't raise it either, because she's embarrassed and because she assumes it isn't a medical issue, the whole thing doesn't exist for anybody.

Add to that the fact that there is real money in months of hormone therapy and in laser treatments that cost as much as a used car. In telling you "put this cream on two minutes before," there's no money for anyone.

So the conversation ends with "that's menopause" and millions of women go home convinced they're done.

The Cream Is Called Veloria™

The one I recommend in my office and the one Marcia used is called Veloria™ Arousal Cream.

It's used exactly as I described: a small amount on the clit and labia, about two minutes before sex. It's for external use, it contains no hormones, and it has a light vanilla flavor, which matters more for oral sex than people admit.

More than 30,000 women are using it, with a rating of 4.9 out of 5.

A small amount, with a fingertip, two minutes before. The warmth tells you the vessels opened.

What Happens In My Office Now That I Recommend It

Women of 48 with ten years of diabetes who tell me, laughing and mortified at the same time, that they had to go buy a mattress protector.

Women of 55 who stopped turning off the light, because they no longer have to hide their face.

Women of 43 who arrived convinced the problem was their marriage and who come back to tell me that now they're the ones reaching for their husband.

And one sentence I know by heart, because they say it differently every time and it's always the same:

It doesn't come with the disease. It comes with a closed vessel. And a closed vessel can be opened.

If You're Recognizing Yourself, Do This

If you made it this far it's because something I described is your body. The burning. The glove. The gel that isn't enough anymore. The infections that keep coming back. Or the squirt you never had and only found out today that you could.

Here's what I tell my patients:

1. Go to the official Veloria™ site from the button below. It's the only place the real one is sold.

2. Take the Anniversary Pack while it's still active: buy 1 tube and get the second one free. Two months of treatment.

3. Use it two minutes before and judge it that same night. You don't have to wait months like with hormones. And don't change anything about your treatment: this goes alongside it.

You can keep believing this came included with the diagnosis. Marcia believed it for nine years, and it turned out the only thing shut off was the blood flow. Or you can open the valve tonight, with your money back guaranteed if it doesn't work.

✔️ 90-day guarantee · 100% discreet packaging · Ships from the official site