Beyond Lubricants: Reversing Mid-Life Vaginal Dryness with MonaLisa Touch®
Sex is a part of our lives and deeply affects personal relationships and our overall self-image. Sexual dysfunction is a common problem for women, with 40% complaining about a variety of issues, including lack of interest, inability to reach an orgasm, or experiencing pain during or after.
Painful sex often comes from some form of vaginal dryness, and though you may think of this being a problem more common in women going through menopause, it actually affects almost 20% of women between 17-50.
This problem develops for many reasons, and though there are several options for treatment the MonaLisa Touch® is a method that can help relieve vaginal dryness and other issues without hormonal therapy. Let’s examine this procedure by looking at why vaginal dryness happens, how the process helps, and what to expect from treatment.
Women living in the Mooresville, Davidson, Cornelius, Huntersville, or Charlotte, North Carolina area looking for ways to manage problems like vaginal dryness can find help with Diane Parks and her team at The Well for Health.
Reasons for vaginal dryness
The friction involved in vaginal penetration is managed through a thin layer of moisture in the vaginal walls to keep sex pleasurable, and women struggling with dryness have less secretion to lubricate because those walls are thinning. This is often the result of hormonal levels changing, specifically estrogen, and if those levels get too low, you can experience burning, soreness, light bleeding, lack of interest, itching, and urinary tract infections.
Estrogen levels lower during menopause, but there are several reasons this happens, including stress, depression, cigarette smoking, childbirth, breastfeeding, cancer treatments, and immune system disorders like Sjögren syndrome.
How MonaLisa Touch works
MonaLisa Touch is the term for a laser treatment that helps to treat the production of collagen (through a process known as neocollagenesis), a protein your body uses to keep skin and tissue firm, and works to restore the elasticity, firmness, and dryness that vaginal dryness brings.
The heat from the laser is directly applied to the tissue and stimulates neocollagenesis and allows the vaginal walls to firm up as they heal. In addition to managing vaginal dryness, this also helps with yeast infections and will reduce the number of times you deal with stress incontinence.
The treatment procedure
This is the process for treating dryness using the MonaLisa Touch:
- Disrobe your lower body and and recline on the exam table
- Cover with a gown and place your feet in stirrups
- Your vaginal walls are covered with a numbing cream
- The laser wand is inserted, with the sensation from the treatment feeling like tiny needle vibrations
The process is short (taking about five minutes), and recovery doesn’t take long either, but you may experience irritation or mild discomfort shortly after treatment, which can be managed by lubricants. A typical regimen involves getting this procedure three times in six-week intervals.
Vaginal dryness interferes with sexual pleasure, but MonaLisa Touch can help you find relief and feel better about being intimate. If you’re ready to see what this treatment can do for you, make an appointment with Diane Parks and The Well for Health today.