Top Ohnut Alternatives

The Ohnut is a wearable device for men that gently limits penetration depth, helping reduce discomfort from deep penetration. While it's a great tool for managing this specific type of pain, it doesn’t address other underlying causes of dyspareunia. Finding the right alternative depends on identifying what’s behind your pain during sex and choosing solutions tailored to your needs.

Why Might Someone Need Ohnut or One of These Alternatives?

For women over 50, painful sex-also known as dyspareunia-can result from a mix of physical and psychological factors. Physical causes often include temporary issues like allergic reactions to new hygiene products or vaginal infections, as well as more persistent concerns such as vaginal dryness linked to stress, anxiety, or declining estrogen levels during perimenopause and postmenopause.

Other contributors include pelvic radiation treatments, pelvic floor dysfunction from weakened or tightened muscles, aging, or past surgeries. Gynecological conditions like endometriosis, fibroids, interstitial cystitis, pelvic inflammatory disease, vaginismus, and vulvodynia can also play a role in painful intimacy. Psychological factors are equally important. Negative sexual experiences, past trauma or abuse, body image concerns, relationship difficulties, or performance anxiety can all create a mental association between sex and pain.

Essentially, when the brain perceives sex as painful or threatening, it signals the body to respond defensively, often making intimacy more difficult or distressing.

Proven Alternatives to the Ohnut

Taking the numerous causes of painful sex outlined above into consideration, it becomes clearer that the Ohnut cannot solve them all.

While it can successfully ease the pain of going too deep during intercourse, the Ohnut will not address pelvic floor dysfunction, vaginal dryness, allergic reactions, vaginal infections, underlying gynecological conditions, or the psychological causes of pain during intimacy.

Antibiotics and Medication

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs), urinary tract infections, yeast infections, and bacterial vaginosis are treated with antibiotics, antiviral or antifungal medication, depending on the type of infection, and comfortable intimacy is usually resumed once the course is completed.

And by omitting the irritating hygiene products or washing detergents, allergic reactions tend to subside quickly.

Lubricants and Moisturizers

Instead of the Ohnut, vaginal dryness over the age of 50 can be more successfully addressed by using a personal lubricant for intimacy and applying an organically made vaginal moisturizer to soothe vulvar dryness or irritation during the day.

Eternity Silicone-based lubricants are recommended for their long-lasting glide without being too greasy and their glycerin-free ingredients prevent irritation while safely maintaining a balanced vaginal microbiome. For improved sexual arousal, welcome your partner to apply the lubrication as foreplay.

You can shop our lubricants and moisturizers online.

Local Hormone Therapy

Rebalancing hormones with local estrogen therapy is another solution to vaginal dryness during or after menopause. It's also helpful in treating other genitourinary symptoms of menopause (GSM) like urinary leaks and recurring UTIs.

Bioidentical hormones, such as Estradiol, are considered safe and effective with fewer potential side effects due to their compatibility with the estrogen strains produced by the body. Furthermore, using localized hormones in the form of vaginal inserts, creams, or rings, means estrogen does not pass through the liver and the potentially small risks like clotting and breast cancer are completely ruled out.

Physical Therapy

Pelvic physical therapy is a fantastic place to start if irritants, vaginal infections, or vaginal dryness are not the cause of painful sex. Trained to diagnose and treat pelvic disorders, dyspareunia, and pelvic floor dysfunction, pelvic physical therapists also encourage patients to continue treating their symptoms at home after initial consultations.

Learning which pelvic product or device can be helpful to treat the cause of your dyspareunia is invaluable for a quick recovery or ongoing treatment when required.

For example, the following pelvic health tools are regularly recommended for home use by pelvic physical therapists to treat painful sex, vaginismus, and pelvic floor dysfunction.

Vaginal Dilators

Designed to gently mobilize tight vaginal tissues and pelvic floor muscles, vaginal dilators are excellent pelvic health tools to treat vaginismus, vulvodynia, tight pelvic floor muscles, endometriosis discomfort, and painful sex.

Sold in sets of ascending sizes, lengths, and widths ranging from a small tampon to an erect penis, vaginal dilators help ease the pain of vaginal penetration in a gradual and non-stressful way.

We highly recommend vaginal dilators made from smooth, non-porous, medical-grade silicone for ultimate comfort and hygiene. Lubricant helps ease dilators into place, and for medical-grade silicone dilators, a water-based lube is always recommended.

Pelvic Wands

To relieve painful sex caused by tight pelvic floor muscles, pelvic wands are ideally shaped to reach and massage pelvic muscle spasms, painful myofascial trigger points, and tight pelvic floor muscles. Female health experts, Intimate Rose, are globally recognized for designing the best pelvic wands for this purpose.

Perfectly shaped and manufactured from velvety-smooth medical-grade silicone, new variations of their original pelvic wand also provide vibration, temperature, and ultra-bendable features for extra comfort and relief.

Counseling or Sex Therapy

When pain during sex is caused by psychological factors (vaginismus), easing it may require some counselling or sex therapy. Unearthing and understanding why the mind is triggering a tightening of the vagina for protection can help release the fear, doubt, or anxiety surrounding sexual activity.

Once identified, discussing these underlying issues with your partner can help synergize your approach to intimacy as a couple and incorporate exactly what you need for penetrative comfort.

Conclusion

The Ohnut provides an effective solution to sexual pain during deep penetration by preventing the penis from entering too far into the vaginal canal. However, given that there are several causes of painful sex, it's important to understand that the Ohnut is not designed to treat all of them.

When the cause has nothing to do with depth, personal lubricants, pelvic floor physical therapy, vaginal dilators, pelvic wands, Kegel weights, soothing vaginal moisturizers, local estrogen therapy, and sex counselling are top alternatives to Ohnuts for treating pain during intimacy.

To find out which one is right for you, consult a pelvic physical therapist or gynecologist to understand the true cause of your dyspareunia. If you don't find the right healthcare provider in your area, or you're too embarrassed to speak with local doctors about your sexual pain, Intimate Rose provides 1:1 online pelvic therapy consultations via secure video calls.

References

Mayo Clinic - Painful Intercourse (Dyspareunia) https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/painful-intercourse/symptoms-causes/syc-20375967

Mayo Clinic - Vaginal Dryness After Menopause: How to Treat it - https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/menopause/expert-answers/vaginal-dryness/faq-20115086

Cleveland Clinic - Pelvic Floor Dysfunction - https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/14459-pelvic-floor-dysfunction

National Library of Medicine - Vaginal estrogens for the treatment of dyspareunia - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21091878/

The pelvic Hub - The Best Vaginal Dilators - https://www.thepelvichub.com/blogs/pelvic-pain/best-vaginal-dilators?

Intimate Rose - Intimate Rose Wand Videos & Product Guides - https://www.intimaterose.com/blogs/videos/wand-videos?

The Pelvic Hub - Kegel Weights: Complete Guide - https://www.thepelvichub.com/blogs/health/kegel-weights-complete-guide