This Vaginal Treatment Could Be the Answer to Your Major Sex Issues

If sex has become too painful to manage and your lady parts are feeling dry, itchy or downright off, you may have vaginal atrophy.

It sounds scary, but it's a common condition that arises prominently in post-menopausal women, though it can develop at any age. It hits when your body produces estrogen at below-average levels and causes your vaginal wall to thin. As if this doesn't sound bad enough, vaginal atrophy causes pain during sex, difficulty urinating and leads to discharge, itching or burning down there.

Ironically, though, sex is often the answer for treating the uncomfortable condition. You just have to fight through the pain to work on healing things down there.

But rather than suffer through painful sex (which is a solid way to kill your libido for good), many women are opting for vaginal laser therapy to put their lady parts back on track.

MonaLisa Touch is a type of fractional CO2 laser technology treatment that uses a probe to release hundreds of tiny pillars of laser energy inside your vaginal wall, according to the company. The laser pulses for less than a tenth of a second to remove a tiny bit of tissue, then it creates a tiny pinhole to stimulate the growth of new, healthy tissue.

Three treatments spaced six weeks apart are required to treat the condition with vaginal laser therapy and each session takes about 10 to 15 minutes. The only post-treatment instructions are to avoid sex or major activity for five days.

But does it really work? One client, Helen, gave her testimony of success to Buzzfeed News.

"I had tried tablets and some creams, but I didn't find them useful, and sex was becoming painful, so I just accepted it and thought there was nothing I could do," she said. "It upset me and I knew that it upset my husband, but I just assumed it was something that must happen to women."

Helen says her first procedure — which requires a local anesthetic — was "really painful," but it cleared her symptoms and she's maintained a healthy sex life since.

She says it was difficult to decide to get the treatment, though, because of the stigma that older women have no use for sex. "It is that horrible stereotype that a menopausal woman should shut up shop and say goodbye to her reproductive years, along with the enjoyable and physical aspects of that, and just start knitting." After her procedure, that certainly isn't Helen's reality.

And though the treatment has yielded such success stories, some medical experts aren't yet ready to give it the green light.

"We don't have the strongest possible evidence before it becomes used in a widespread fashion, and certainly before it becomes commercialized and pushed from a marketing perspective," gynaecologist and obstetrician Jason Abbott said.

"We want to know for how long it works, and the long term risks and complications," he added.

In the US, this specific treatment hasn't been studied head-to-head against oestrogen therapies, but one is underway in Cleveland, Ohio. Another pilot study of 50 patients who tried another type of fractional CO2 laser technology found that treatment outperformed traditional oestrogen therapy.

If cleared by the FDA for treatment of vaginal atrophy and proven to be a stronger treatment plan than traditional methods, this device could help up to 40 percent of women who are silently suffering reclaim their lives, especially in the bedroom.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

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