Why 75% of People Won't Seek Help for Sexual Health Problems - And Why That Mattered to Me

When we were building Your.MD, our mission was to democratise healthcare - to reach as many people as possible, anywhere in the world, with medically validated solutions. We built an AI-powered platform to provide reliable health information at scale, creating a global network of best-in-class providers to offer not just content, but tangible solutions.

What we discovered in the user data was unexpected. And revealing.

The top three topics users wanted to discuss with our AI health assistant were sexual health, mental health, and embarrassing skin problems. While GP waiting rooms are traditionally filled with patients seeking help for hypertension, respiratory infections, and back pain - the standard top three reasons people visit their doctor - our data showed that in the privacy of a digital interface, the hierarchy of human need looks entirely different. When you remove the human judgment factor, the data shifts completely toward the topics people are most afraid to say out loud.

The implications were profound. Research consistently shows that approximately 75% of people experiencing sexual health difficulties never seek professional help - and in some populations, that figure exceeds 90%. The barriers aren't primarily systemic. They are emotional: shame, embarrassment, difficulty communicating, and the fear of judgment.

Sexual health dysfunction affects hundreds of millions of people globally. It impacts quality of life, relationships, mental health, and physical wellbeing. And three-quarters of those experiencing it suffer in silence.

That insight stayed with me.

A Parallel Mission

In 2020, I was introduced to MysteryVibe, a company founded in 2014 with a vision that aligned perfectly with our work at Your.MD: democratising access to solutions that people desperately needed but couldn't easily obtain because of stigma.

They had built award-winning devices backed by FDA registration and decades of clinical research demonstrating that targeted vibration therapy could address conditions like erectile dysfunction, pelvic floor disorders, and painful sex. The technology was medically validated. The products worked.

But they faced the same fundamental challenge we had seen in the Your.MD data: how do you help people access solutions when the stigma is so profound that 75% won't even mention the problem to a doctor?

Their mission was clear: make sexual health solutions as accessible and stigma-free as any other aspect of healthcare. If people with high blood pressure could walk into a pharmacy and buy a blood pressure monitor without embarrassment, why couldn't people experiencing sexual health issues access medically validated solutions with the same ease and dignity?

This was exactly the kind of challenge Radycle was created to tackle.

The Strategic Challenge

The transformation required was not primarily technical. It was about repositioning an entire category in a way that reduced stigma rather than reinforcing it.

Medical credibility was essential. This meant working with recognised clinical authorities - urologists, gynaecologists, pelvic floor specialists - who could validate the medical applications and recommend devices to their patients. It meant publishing peer-reviewed studies demonstrating measurable outcomes. And it meant pursuing regulatory pathways that positioned products as medical-grade interventions, not wellness accessories.

But medical positioning alone wasn't enough. Here's the tension: if you lead with dysfunction, treatment, and clinical framing, you alienate the majority of potential users who don't want to think of themselves as patients. You reduce market size. You reinforce stigma by treating sexual health as a problem to be fixed rather than an aspect of wellbeing to be supported.

The insight that shaped the strategy came from conversations with medical advisors: "If you make it clinical, you will never reach the masses."

The solution was "pleasure-first with the medical behind it." Products designed for better intimate experiences. Messaging that emphasised enhanced pleasure, improved connection, greater confidence. But with the underlying technology clinically validated, medically backed, and proven to address real health conditions.

This was honest positioning. Sexual health and sexual pleasure are not separate categories. Arousal difficulties, performance anxiety, and painful sex all impact quality of life in ways that are simultaneously medical and experiential. Devices that address these issues are both therapeutic and enhancing.

Most importantly, this approach met people where they were. A person might never walk into a doctor's office and say "I have erectile dysfunction" or "sex is painful." But they will invest in something that promises better intimate experiences - and in doing so, access the medical intervention they need without having to label themselves as having a problem.

Content became the destigmatisation engine. There are approximately 250 million Google searches related to sexual health every day. Most lead to unreliable sources, contradictory advice, or content designed to sell products rather than inform decisions. The strategy was to become the most trusted source of information in a category drowning in misinformation - medically-backed articles, clinical information presented without judgment, a "safe harbour" for people too embarrassed to seek professional help.

This paralleled what we had learned at Your.MD: when you provide reliable, judgment-free information, people will seek it out. The demand is enormous. The barrier is shame, not lack of interest.

The Funding Barrier Nobody Talks About

One aspect of this engagement that revealed how deep the stigma runs: it was extraordinarily difficult for sexual health companies to secure investment - even with FDA registration, clinical validation, and clear market opportunity.

Many investors simply wouldn't engage. Even when the pitch emphasised medical outcomes, regulatory approval, and peer-reviewed studies, the category association created discomfort. Firms that routinely invested in health tech, medical devices, and digital therapeutics passed because it involved sex.

This was systemic, not anecdotal. The same mechanisms that prevent 75% of individuals from seeking help for sexual dysfunction also prevent capital from flowing to companies solving those problems - even when those companies have stronger clinical credentials than many funded health tech startups.

This dynamic made the mission more compelling, not less. If nobody else wanted to work on this problem because it was uncomfortable, that was precisely why it mattered.

Evidence of a Shift: 2014 vs. 2026

When MysteryVibe was founded in 2014, sexual health devices occupied a marginal category. By 2026, the transformation is measurable:

Veterans Affairs Integration: MysteryVibe's devices were added to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs procurement system. Veterans can now have these devices prescribed and reimbursed as medical interventions.

NHS Clinical Validation: The NHS published a controlled pilot study in the Journal of Psychosexual Health confirming efficacy for vaginismus, with significant improvements in pain scores.

Top-Tier Peer Review: Clinical data was published in Nature, demonstrating that patients moved from "moderate dysfunction" to "normal" function without systemic medication.

FSA/HSA Eligibility: The devices are now purchasable with health savings accounts, categorising them alongside mainstream medical essentials rather than lifestyle accessories.

The transformation wasn't just one company. It was an entire category repositioning - from taboo to mainstream, from lifestyle to medical, from shame to acceptance, with the recognition that the medical aspects and evidence are now fully integrated into sexual wellbeing, not positioned behind it.

What changed is that people who would never seek help from a doctor can now access validated, medically-backed solutions privately, without judgment. That's democratising healthcare access in a domain where stigma has prevented it for decades.

Why Radycle Takes These Engagements

The work with MysteryVibe exemplifies what Radycle seeks out - and what we actively avoid.

We don't do incremental optimisation. We don't work with companies that already have product-market fit and just need better execution. We specifically look for challenges where the strategic insight required is not obvious, where the market hasn't properly understood the category yet, and where success requires repositioning rather than just better marketing.

More importantly, we seek missions that genuinely matter - even when they make other people uncomfortable.

Your.MD showed me that when people have access to judgment-free information, they will seek help for problems they would never discuss with a human. Seventy-five percent of people won't seek help for sexual health problems from a doctor - but they will seek solutions if you remove the barriers of shame and embarrassment.

That's transformative work. That's democratising healthcare access in a domain where stigma has prevented it for decades. Helping move sexual health from a "taboo" startup category in 2014 to globally recognised, VA-prescribed medical authority in 2026 is proof that when you lead with empathy and back it with clinical rigor, you can break a silence that has lasted for generations.

The problems worth solving are often the ones nobody else wants to work on.