The Leading Causes Of Vaginal Atrophy And New Cosmetic Treatments

Posted on: 14 November 2017

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Come on, ladies! Vaginal atrophy, or atrophic vaginitis, is a real thing. You might think that a dry vagina is just old age, and maybe it is, but it does not have to be. In fact, your own cause of this disorder may not be old age at all! Would you not want to fix that if you knew you did not have to live with it? Well, you can, through various cosmetic procedures, a newer procedure called the "MonaLisa Touch," and understanding which of the following causes is responsible for your personal vaginal condition.

Baby-Stretching

Vaginas can do some incredible (and simultaneously horrific) things, such as push a baby the size of a watermelon out a hole that was originally the size of a large grape. The more babies you have, the looser and more stretched out your vagina becomes. While your babies are totally worth it, you will experience atrophic vaginitis right after birth until you heal up, and again later in life when your pelvic floor muscles have nothing left to give.

Baby-stretching also causes your vagina to lose collagen. Collagen is that elastic fiber in your skin that helps it bounce back into shape. It is the same stuff that is present in your skin and is lost when your skin is stretched and you get stretch marks. A loss of collagen in your vagina due to childbirth is akin to getting stretch marks inside your vagina. There is nothing, really, that can put the collagen back in there without causing a lot of other health problems. Hence, cosmetic procedures are the only effective treatments.

Endometriosis Treatments

If you suffer from endometriosis, your doctor probably has you on prescription medications that reduce the amount of estrogen your body produces. Since estrogen is what causes this painful disorder to flare up, the idea is to take away the estrogen to stop the endometriosis. The problem is that, in taking away your natural production of estrogen, you not only lose your sex drive, your vagina suffers atrophic vaginitis on a regular basis. 

Clearly, you cannot stop treatments for endometriosis because the disorder can kill you. However, whatever sex you may still be interested in having is very uncomfortable and probably even painful. The only way around this is to use a cosmetic treatment for the atrophic vaginitis, because you cannot even use an estrogen cream topical to the vagina without causing problems to the endometriosis.

Cosmetic Treatments

Most cosmetic treatments for atrophic vaginitis fall under "vaginal rejuvenation." Yes, these are some of the same procedures that make your vagina super-tight again. While that is not really what you are going for here, it is a "side effect" of many of the procedures that can help you with your atrophic vaginitis.

  • There are surgical procedures which help remove some of the dry, painful tissue of your vagina. Downtime is as much time as it takes for the tissues to heal from stitches. This may provide some relief, but not as much relief as heat rejuvenation.
  • With heat rejuvenation, a very warm wand is placed inside the vagina to encourage production of vaginal mucous and speed production of collagen to provide more collagen to the vagina than what you currently have. There is no downtime for this procedure, although it may feel somewhat invasive and uncomfortable, like a transvaginal ultrasound.
  • Laser surgery, provided by machines and techniques (e.g., the MonaLisa Touch) cuts away dry tissue too, only you barely feel it, and there is almost no downtime either. Because it also uses a heated laser, your vagina is encouraged to produce more mucous as well.

Ask your gynecologist about all of the above procedures to see which one he/she recommends for your atrophic vaginitis.