How MonaLisa Touch Can Help You After Going Through Menopause
Hot flashes, night sweats, and mood swings can have an extreme impact, but as you go through menopause they eventually go away. And then just when you think you have all the changes under control, new problems arise.
About half of all women develop distressing problems like painful intercourse after they reach menopause. Unfortunately, these new menopausal changes won’t resolve on their own; you’ll need help from the care we offer here at BioAge Health.
Women in Eagan, Minnesota, and the Twin Cities area depend on our compassionate care and the wide range of treatment options we provide for dealing with the changes they experience following menopause.
One of your treatment options, the innovative MonaLisa Touch®, is a safe and gentle laser that targets a condition called genitourinary syndrome of menopause, or more simply, vaginal atrophy.
Here’s everything you need to know about vaginal atrophy caused by menopause and how the MonaLisa Touch can help.
Menopause causes vaginal problems you probably didn’t expect
The tissues that line your vagina depend on estrogen to stay healthy. When your ovaries stop producing estrogen, your vaginal lining starts to thin out. It also becomes dehydrated and less elastic.
These physical changes combine to create a fragile vaginal lining that’s susceptible to inflammation. The acidity of your vagina also changes, making it easier for infections to take hold.
If you develop vaginal atrophy, you’ll experience symptoms such as:
- Vaginal dryness
- Vaginal burning
- Genital itching
- Painful intercourse
- Less lubrication during intercourse
- Bleeding after intercourse
Loss of estrogen affects the tissues lining your urinary tract the same way as the vaginal lining. As a result, women often experience postmenopausal problems such as urinary frequency, burning during urination, and urinary incontinence.
Here’s how the MonaLisa Touch treats menopausal changes
The MonaLisa Touch is a fractional CO2 laser that specifically targets vaginal changes due to menopause. During your treatment, we insert a slender, round applicator into your vagina.
The applicator sends laser energy into the vaginal lining. Innovative technology that’s built into the MonaLisa tissue carefully controls the depth and temperature of the laser, so it warms structures below the surface without harming the surrounding tissues.
Heat from the laser triggers a healing response, which means your body regenerates new blood vessels and increases the production of three key substances that normally decline when estrogen levels drop:
- Collagen to restore strength and tone
- Elastin to bring back resilience or elasticity
- Hyaluronic acid to increase hydration
As treatment with the MonaLisa Touch increases the amount of collagen, elastin, hyaluronic acid, and blood vessels, your vaginal lining regains its normal tone, texture, and elasticity. Your vaginal health is restored, and the symptoms of vaginal atrophy disappear.
During your vaginal treatment, the laser also affects tissues in your urethra. As a result, the MonaLisa Touch also helps treat mild cases of urinary incontinence.
Treatment with the MonaLisa Touch is comfortable, quick, and long lasting
While you may feel some warmth, your MonaLisa Touch procedure is painless and comfortable. Not only that, but it only takes five minutes to treat your vagina. Afterward, you may develop a small amount of redness or swelling, but that goes away in a few days.
We recommend avoiding sex until the swelling disappears; otherwise, you don’t need to worry about downtime. You can immediately return to your usual daily routine.
You may need one to three laser treatments, depending on the severity of your vaginal atrophy. After that, your results last up to one year.
If you need help with menopause-related problems like vaginal dryness and painful intercourse, call BioAge Health or use the online booking feature to schedule an appointment. We’re here to talk about your concerns, determine the underlying problem, and recommend the best treatment, including the MonaLisa Touch.
