'People might say I’m banging on about sex all the time, but I’m talking about your overall health and wellness'

Intimate health is as important as mental health when it comes to female wellness because without it, a woman can potentially have incontinence or leaking, pelvic organ prolapse, sexual dysfunction, relationship breakdowns, low self-confidence, and ultimately live a sub-optimal life.

That’s according to Laura Dowling, award-winning pharmacist, women’s health advocate, and CEO of fabÜ wellness, who is bringing her show Love Your Vulva Live to the Opera House on September 12.

The show will bring together some of Ireland’s leading voices in women’s health.

“People might say I’m just banging on about sex all the time, but what I’m talking about is about your overall health and wellness,” she said.

“If you’re comfortable with your pelvic floor, if you’re not leaking, you can exercise, you can live an independent life, dance at your daughter’s wedding, have sex with your partner – if you want to – or with yourself, it’s all of those things. It’s about a part of our body that’s been forgotten about, our vaginas and vulvas, which due to religious issues and social constraints we were never encouraged to talk about except in the context of child birth,” said the straight-talking Laura.

“People who come along on the evening will learn, will most importantly laugh their heads off, and spread the word that it’s so important to mind themselves,” said the mother-of-three.

The 46-year-old has recently been diagnosed with osteopenia in her spine, sharing the story with her 344,000 Instagram followers. Initially it made her feel old, she told WoW.

“I don’t have any perimenopause symptoms besides PMS and I’m not on HRT, but I thought I’d get myself checked now and checked again in my 50s and if there was some bone deterioration I could potentially go on HRT then. So I went in a bit smug, and was told I osteopenia in my spine, which means I’m having that conversation with my doctor a bit sooner.

“HRT can reverse it at an earlier stage as it can be due to a lack of oestrogen as well as being genetic, so my sister, in her early 40s, will now get tested too. At least I can do something about it. It’s not nice, but it’s not something that is life-threatening,” she said.

Laura pointed out how the general advice is only to go for a dexa scan at the age of 65.

“A lot of the damage is done by then, there’s no national screening. A bit like blood pressure, you can’t feel it so you don’t know unless you check. I don’t want to scare anyone, but it’s good to know your numbers; that’s cholesterol, blood pressure and now bone density.”

Laura has many credentials to her name: award-winning pharmacist, bestselling author and the founder of fabÜ wellness which she launched in 2022. That came about because while working as a pharmacist she routinely sent women to a nearby health shop with a list as long as their arms for products she felt could help them manage perimenopausal symptoms, until she decided to do something herself.

Since then, through her platform, live events and media work, she has become one of Ireland’s most trusted voices in women’s health - making topics that were once considered taboo accessible, practical, and empowering for women at every stage of life.

“Why should there be taboos around anything to do with the human body or human relationships? If there were less taboos we’d understand each other more and there’d be more knowledge, kindness and understanding. If you say it out loud, that gives another person the reason to say it to someone else and it sets off a chain reaction. As long as you’re educating and coming from a good place, why wouldn’t you talk out loud about things you know people are suffering from,” she said.

What drives her?

“I’ve always had boundless energy and I’m a really curious person. That helps, and I saw the gap in the market in terms of women’s health and the education around that, even with my own osteopenia diagnosis. That drives me.

“I’ve always been a busy person and I think in my 40s I’ve found my niche.

“I was a pharmacist for 21 years and I loved that job and it served me well and laid the foundations for everything I’m doing now because I would have seen the women coming in to the pharmacy, knowing they didn’t understand their bodies, and they were ashamed of their intimate health, and that’s what started the whole thing about educating people on Instagram,” she said.

Now, she admits she feels like she’s “on a train that won’t stop”.

“None of this was planned, there’s no big strategy. Things just seemed to happen. I did some corporate talks on intimate health and there were so many women coming up to me after who said ‘I can’t believe you said that out loud’, or ‘I’ve been experiencing that for 15 years’. There was one particular talk where every single woman in the room, 150 of them wanted to talk to me afterwards and I couldn’t talk to them all so that’s when I went home to my husband and said we need to do a tour.

“From the tour, I realised I’m not going to get to every woman so I needed to write a book. Everything has happened organically without much thought, which feels a bit wild to say!”

It’s four years since she launched her meno and peri products, and she feels that we still can’t talk about menopause enough.

“Menopause is one day in a woman’s life, perimenopause is about 10 years up to that, and then it’s post menopause from her early 50s on so it’s a third of her life, so we absolutely need to be talking about it all the time.

“We didn’t talk about it enough and that’s why women often got misdiagnosed, put on anti-depressants, their bones weren’t looked after, they were put in mental asylums.

“They were incontinent, had prolapse, sexual dysfunction, relationship breakdown, all because we didn’t talk about it, so we completely need to talk about it even more.”

With that, she breaks from the conversation briefly to chastise her three sons (17, 15 and 13) for messing in the background, over ‘probably something to do with food’. “I’m doing an interview here!,” she shouts at them, returning for a final word on the show which will feature a panel discussion with comedian Deirdre O’Kane; women’s pelvic health specialist physiotherapist Aoife Harvey; sexologist Emily Power Smith; and award-winning facialist and founder of The Skin Nerd and Skingredients, Jennifer Rock – with further guests to be announced.

“Love Your Vulva Live gives women the space to ask the questions they’ve always wanted to ask, laugh out loud and leave feeling informed, inspired and a little more connected to their own bodies,” said Laura.

• Tickets: €75 per person.
• See www.corkoperahouse.ie