Restoring Your Vaginal Health after Breast Cancer

Your Sex Life & Femininity Rejuvinated

If you are one of the 285,000 women in the United States diagnosed with breast cancer each year, the fight against your cancer may only be one battle in a much larger and longer war for your health. That is because the potent tools doctors use to fight cancer, like chemotherapy and radiation therapy, can have long lasting effects on your body. In particular, according to WebMD, 10% – 50% of women under the age of 40 who undergo chemotherapy experience a condition called premature menopause.

The Connection Between Breast Cancer and Premature Menopause

If you are in your 30s or 40s, menopause is supposed to be decades off. Unfortunately, a diagnosis of breast cancer can change everything. As if having and fighting cancer isn’t bad enough, the treatments that are supposed to help you may actually harm your ovaries in the process. Both chemotherapy and radiation therapy are highly toxic treatments that work to destroy the cancer cells in your body. Unfortunately, they can also damage your ovaries, causing them to lose eggs and to stop producing the important sex hormones, like estrogen, that you need to maintain your sexual health. As a result, your cancer treatment could slingshot you directly into a condition known as “premature menopause.” The fact that you and your mother can now compare hot flash war stories is a small comfort.

The Challenges of Premature Menopause

Developing premature menopause can seem like just one more devastating blow from the universe. Wasn’t the cancer, losing your hair, and surviving the constant fatigue and nausea of chemotherapy enough? You are young, still in the prime of your life; so why do you feel like an old woman, suffering from night sweats and vaginal atrophy?

One of the cruelest aspects of premature menopause is that it can take away a woman’s feelings of youth, femininity, and sexuality. Many women who are diagnosed with breast cancer undergo mastectomies. Losing your breasts can be an incredibly traumatic event. Even if you get reconstruction, you may still feel self-conscious about your appearance and attractiveness. Now, add on top of this, the unpleasant side effects of menopause, which can include vaginal dryness, painful sex, lower libido, weight gain, hair loss, and infertility, and it is understandable how a woman could feel lost, frustrated, and incredibly self-conscious about her own femininity.

Solutions to Correct Premature Menopause

If you are experiencing premature menopause, there is no reason to give up hope and resign yourself to knitting sweaters, baking cookies, and other grandmotherly tasks. You, amazing lady, can do anything, including overcoming premature menopause and recapturing the life you want.

First, your ovaries may not be in full retirement; they might just be resting. Sometimes, chemotherapy treatments merely shock the ovaries, and they eventually recover over months or years. This is more likely to happen in women under the age of 40, so never give up hope!

Even if your ovaries are done for good, you don’t necessarily need them to regain an enjoyable and fulfilling sex life. One of the reasons your vagina is dry and itchy, and why sex is painful is because it needs estrogen. Estrogen is a powerful hormone that keeps the lining of the vagina thick and flexible. It also promotes a healthy vaginal mucosa, which makes penetration pleasurable rather than painful. Additionally, you loose collagen and elesticity which are important for moisture and support. Without estrogen, your vagina dries up like a flowerbed without water.

Many women who want to fight the symptoms of menopause undergo hormonal therapy to replace the sex hormones that their body is missing. This type of therapy has a good record in helping women manage symptoms of menopause, and I regularly recommend hormonal therapy to certain patients.

Depending on your specific case, your doctor may suggest that you apply a small amount of estrogen vaginally, so that you can enjoy the benefit of this hormone without putting a lot of it in your bloodstream. Personally, I think there is a much better solution, which is particularly suited for women with a history of breast cancer. This solution is called the MonaLisa Touch.

Introducing the MonaLisa Touch for Premature Menopause

The MonaLisa Touch is a non-hormonal treatment for vaginal atrophy, making it an excellent option for women with a history of breast cancer. The MonaLisa Touch is an intravaginal laser that stimulates the regenerative processes of the vagina in a safe and painless way.

A laser? I know it sounds kind of futuristic, but the truth is that medical professionals use lasers all the time. You may have even received laser facial treatments at a high-end spa to help stimulate collagen growth to keep you looking young.

In essence, this is what the MonaLisa Touch does for your lady parts. During your appointment, an experienced medical professional will insert the MonaLisa Touch into the vagina, where it will pulse painless laser light into the walls of the vagina. The laser will basically wake up your vagina. The MonaLisa Touch was FDA approved for use in the United States in 2015 and has been used by top doctors in Italy and Australia for years on thousands of patients. The results are impressive. Researchers have found that just three to four appointments with the MonaLisa Touch; stimulates more rapid turnover of the cells lining the vaginal wall, increases collagen production, stimulates the growth of blood vessels, and encourages the vagina to produce moisture. See the difference the MonaLisa Touch can make after just one treatment:

Patients have reported that the MonaLisa Touch helps eliminate vaginal dryness, itching, and painful sex, as well as other unpleasant symptoms related to menopause, including urinary incontinence. In other words, your vagina will feel brand new!

Each appointment with the MonaLisa touch usually takes 15 minutes or less, and patients can go right back to work or finish up the rest of their day after an appointment. I believe in this treatment so much, that I was one of the first OB-GYN’s to invest in one for my private practice.

If you have entered premature menopause due to chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy, there is no reason to feel ashamed, unfeminine, or hopeless. You already can beat cancer, so I know that you have the strength to beat premature menopause too! If you live in the Templeton, Paso Robles, or Atascadero areas of California, contact my office today to schedule a MonaLisa Touch consultation.