What causes vaginal dryness and painful sexual intercourse?
Estrogen is essential for maintaining vaginal health. It helps vaginal tissue stay strong and elastic, promotes healthy blood flow, and ensures lubrication of the vaginal wall.
When estrogen levels drop for any reason, women often develop vaginal dryness, which often causes painful intercourse. While menopause is the most common cause of vaginal dryness, estrogen levels can also be affected by other health conditions, eating disorders, and intensive athletic training.
What is vaginal atrophy?
Vaginal dryness is a key symptom of vaginal atrophy, but atrophy includes other vaginal changes. When you have vaginal atrophy, or atrophic vaginitis, the vaginal walls become thin, fragile, dry, and inflamed.
Like vaginal dryness, atrophy is caused by low estrogen and affects women after menopause. Symptoms of vaginal atrophy include:
- Vaginal dryness, burning, and itching
- Painful intercourse
- Bleeding after intercourse
- Less lubrication during intercourse
- Burning during urination
How are vaginal dryness and atrophy treated?
Dr. C. understands the significant impact vaginal atrophy has on your sexual well-being. She and her staff go above and beyond standard therapies and MonaLisa Touch to help you achieve normal sexual function. They offer a variety of options to get you as close to your goal as possible, including, but not limited to:
- Vaginal dilators to improve elasticity
- Biofeedback devices to strengthen pelvic muscles
- Hormone therapy (vaginal, general, or both)
- Vaginal lubricants
How does the MonaLisa Touch restore vaginal health?
The MonaLisa Touch is an advanced fractional CO2 laser that safely and effectively treats vaginal dryness and vaginal atrophy. The laser is gently inserted into the vagina, where it delivers laser energy to vaginal wall tissues.
The laser stimulates production of new collagen and elastin in the vaginal wall, and increases blood flow in vaginal tissues. As a result, vaginal tone, texture, and lubrication improve, normal function is restored, and vaginal atrophy symptoms are relieved.
What should you expect during and after MonaLisa Touch treatment?
The laser treatment lasts only about five minutes and doesn’t require anesthesia, because it’s well-tolerated by most women. You may experience slight redness or swelling after the procedure, but you won’t need downtime to recover.
Complete healing may take a few days. Dr. C. gives you specific instructions about avoiding sex or other activities while you heal.
Major improvements may be seen after one session, but optimal vaginal restoration is achieved with three treatment sessions performed six weeks apart. After that, you only need one yearly treatment to maintain the results.
*Individual results may vary.
Nitronox analgesia to reduce discomfort is now offered free of charge for aesthetic procures.
