I’m Susan Bratton, intimacy wellness expert to millions. I’m with Cheryl Schaaf, a board-certified registered family nurse practitioner. She is also an aesthetic nurse practitioner, which means she spends a lot of time helping women with treatments that reverse the atrophy of aging, vaginal incontinence, dryness, lubrication issues, and other issues that we face as we ages and have children. Read on to learn about Femilift for Vaginal Lubrication.
In this segment, we will talk about the Femi-Lift, Cliovana, and the Viveve. This is a series of videos for you to figure out the right technology for you. Cheryl gave me a couple of Femi-Lifts four years ago when I had vaginal pain, dryness, and incontinence. They helped me so much. There are newer technologies, but yet you say that the Femi-Lift is still your favorite.
Cheryl: This is the Femi-Lift, and we utilize fractional CO2 energy. So, carbon dioxide lasers. It’s the most robust laser we could use. However, we’re using it within the strictest, safest protocols. Most people think of fractional CO2 as used on the face. Plastic surgeons will often use this technology aggressively on the face so that women will look like burn victims. But once they heal entirely, they can look ten to twenty years younger because they re-surface their entire face and re-generate new healthy tissue and collagen.
Again, we’re not burning off the vaginal canal. We’re creating healthy, new tissue in the vaginal canal and stimulating collagen, essential for elasticity, sensation, and sensitivity. We’re stimulating blood flow which is very important for natural lubrication. We want the opposite of dryness. This also helps with mild urinary incontinence. Many women will leak a bit of urine when they cough, sneeze, or exercise. The Femi-Lift helps with that as well.
This is good for women of all ages. I’ve treated women in their 20s to 92 as the oldest. The average age is 54. This is good for stress incontinence, toning and tightening, increasing sensation and sensitivity. This is not only for women. The partner will feel a difference too.
Susan: Because you get the grip. You get the tone back. And to have a good orgasm, you need a good grip.
Cheryl: The lubrication is fantastic. Most women do not need lube after they have had this series of procedures.
Susan: Show us the wand itself and tell us how it works. One of the things I understand about CO2 lasers is you’re doing subcutaneous micro-damage to the vaginal mucosa. How many layers does the vagina have? Is it 7 or 8 layers?
The CO2 goes a couple of layers deep. The surface of the vaginal skin doesn’t get treated. Instead, it’s deep within where the collagen does the healing.
Cheryl: That’s what makes the fractional CO2 special because it is ablative. We are breaking down the tissue. Other modalities such as radio frequencies only heat it to a specific time and temperature. It doesn’t create those tiny micro-injuries.
Every time I press the button to deliver energy, it comes out of this nine-by-nine cubic cm window. Every time I press it, it provides 81 little micro-injuries in the vaginal canal surrounded by healthy tissue, so it heals quickly, creates new tissue, stimulates collagen and blood flow. It does all these fantastic things. Other modalities heat but don’t ablate. You get the best results with this in the face and vagina.
Susan: So the laser is emitted from this flat window and not the tube?
Cheryl: Yes, the laser is emitted from a 9×9 grid. I deliver about 150-200 pulses depending on the length of each individual’s vaginal canal. We go as far into the vaginal canal as we can comfortably go, and we come all the way out to the opening. We’re treating the entire vaginal canal. We do a series of two complete passes and a third and final pass focusing on the top of the vaginal canal to target stress incontinence specifically.
Susan: The fractal laser strategy makes a lot of sense because you’re focusing the microdamage on little tiny locations, but the skin all around it is excellent. You’re not going over the same spots and double-treating them. You’re getting a spiral all around the vaginal canal.
SUPER SAFE
Cheryl: Again, we’re using the super-safe settings. It feels like a pinch on the inside of your vaginal canal. It is very tolerable. For women who experience atrophy or are post-menopausal and cannot take hormones, it might be a wee bit more uncomfortable. But from the time I insert the probe and take it out, it’s five minutes or less. It’s incredibly tolerable, and the results are worth it. There is no downtime. It’s three days of nothing in the vagina. So sex, tampons, hot tubs, douches, and the rationale is that we don’t want to introduce anything that can cause an infection. Otherwise, you’re good to go.
Susan: I have a lot of watery discharge. It felt like it got burned, and I ended up getting a herpes flare-up on my labia. I remember we did a different treatment at the time. You were doing my inner labia on both sides with the Viora Revive.
Cheryl: That was for skin tightening on the labia majora and minora, which eventually we’ll have again. I like that tool for aesthetic purposes and tightening the labia.
Susan: Especially the outer labia under the pubic hair can get saggy as you age. It’s nice to plump those up. Are you thinking of wing lifts and other O shot types of treatments too?
Cheryl: The O Shot is an excellent treatment that goes hand-in-hand with any of the lasers. It uses the PRP to wake the orgasm response. You bought up a good point: if you have a history of HSB2, we should pre-medicate any treatments that can wake that up. It even occurs on the face when I do botox and fillers. So we use Valtrex.
Susan: I know you want to talk about the sheath and how every woman gets their unique sheath.
Cheryl: Every woman gets their probe cover. Nothing that touches you touches another patient. Again, we insert it as far into the vaginal canal as we can comfortably go. We treat the entire vaginal canal. All of it comes through this 9×9 cubic cm zinc window creating tiny micro-injuries that give us excellent results.
Susan: How long are woman’s vaginas? What’s the range?
Cheryl: Every woman is different. Some are shallow, while some can take the whole thing. Typically, we get to about 4 inches in. But just like penises, women come in all different shapes and sizes.
Susan: That’s the Femi-Lift. We will also talk about the Cleovana, which is clitoral sensitivity-oriented tech. That will be my first time talking about it. We will also talk about the Vive RF (radio frequency) rather than CO2 lasers.
