Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, welcome to It's a Kinetic Thing with Karen Kay. I'm Karen Kay and today we're going to talk about radio frequency microneedling for the vagina.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: So probably one thing that we probably the most needed but probably the least talked about, would you say?
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: So, so tell us what it does exactly.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: So just like radio frequency microneedling such as Morpheus A tightens and improves texture and tone of a face. They have now developed one for the vaginal canal and it's going to do the same thing. So it's definitely going to help with things like stress urinary incontinence. It's going to help with vaginal dryness, painful intercourse, kind of loss of sensation. As we get older, we know that the vaginal wall somewhat collapses, the pelvic floor muscles aren't as strong as they used to be. It really helps with those things. You can also do it on external area, the labia. And so for some women that maybe don't like the appearance there, feel like it's too large or protruding, we can actually shrink that tissue somewhat as well. So it has some aesthetic benefits. But I would say the biggest benefits come from the actual physiological changes that happen.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: So how does it help with incontinence?
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Yeah, so obviously when you have stronger pelvic floor muscles and you have healthier tissue and everything is tight, you have better control.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Is it support of the bladder?
[00:01:33] Speaker A: The pelvic floor with pelvic floor muscles do support the bladder. Yeah.
So a lot of women get pelvic floor weakness as they get to menopause after childbirth. Some women just have it.
A lot of high impact sports can cause it.
So all those things can lead to stress urinary incontinence. And honestly, I don't know very many women over the age of 40 that don't have some, you know, and a lot of times I'll say, do you have stress urinary incontinence? And they'll say no. And then I say, so when you jump rope or laugh or cough or sneeze, do you ever leak a couple drops of urine? Oh, yeah, every day. Well, that is stress urinary incontinence.
So the other thing that happens a lot of times can happen to women of all ages. But definitely when we get perimenopausal, postmenopausal, you know, that vaginal tissue atrophies, it starts shriveling up and dying, for a lack of a better way to describe it. And so that tissue becomes more friable. We have more vaginal dryness. So a lot of women get yeast infections or bacterial vaginosis every time they have sex. And they're like, or they have pain or they have bleeding. That all comes from vaginal atrophy. And so just like Morpheus aid on your face kind of tightens and tones everything up. Morpheus aid vaginal, can tighten and tone everything up inside. So if you have healthier tissue, it's doing the lubrication that it should. You're less likely to get infections in that dry crack compromised tissue.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Because doesn't it create little micro tears?
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: Okay, well that can be healthy when you think about the long term.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: You know, think about, think about the skin on your arms. I mean, I'm almost 60 now and I see all the time, my husband's always like, how'd you get that scratch? How'd you get that bruise?
Well, it's my tissues. Yeah, it's thinning out. And any little tiny trauma is going to cause an injury. Same thing happens inside.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: So I think that probably it's not something that people like to talk about. Obviously it's a thing that happens, but no one wants to talk about it.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Yeah, nobody wants to talk about it. And so you really should ask, you know, and there's other modalities that can go with it as well. So for instance, on the platform that we have, we have the Morpheus 8V which is radio frequency microneedling for the vagina. We have just form of E, which is radio frequency alone. No needles. Again, does the same thing. When we add the needles. It goes a little deeper, penetrates better, probably get better results. Yeah, a lot of people are terrified when we talk about needles inside.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Pain, pain.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: But really what we do is we put a topical numbing cream up inside the vaginal canal. We let it set for 30, 45 minutes. That area is so vascular. It just really sucks up that topical numbing. So you really don't even feel it. Or you feel a little buzz, tingle, but it's not really painful. But if you're terrified of needles, then just do the radio frequency intravaginal. And it works great too. And then we also have included or an add on is a V tone. So that's electrical muscle stimulation. Just like, you know you have a muscle injury, they put a tens unit on and it causes your muscles to contract. So we can add the V tone in there. And it looks, it's kind of like a little small kind of egg shaped device that has electrodes on it and it goes in there and contracts your pelvic floor muscles. And so it's like doing, I want to say it's like 100,000 kegels in 15 minutes. And you can't not do them correctly. Which a lot of times with women, they don't really know how to do the Kegels. But putting the V tone in there, we're getting muscle stimulation as well as we're improving collagen elasticity, lubrication inside the vagina.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: And is that something they could all three be done at the very same time?
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And we really recommend that's kind of the best case scenario. Obviously, some people budget won't allow all three. Or maybe they're, like I said, afraid of needles or they're allergic to the numbing agent. So we could mix and match them if we need to. But yeah, best case scenario, you do all three, generally about three sessions a month apart to get your best results.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: And how long does it take to do that? If you did all three, what's your timeline?
[00:06:04] Speaker A: If you did all three with the numbing, for the, the microneedling, you're probably going to be there an hour to an hour and a half.
It's not. Obviously, no. Women are super comfortable being in a position, you know, vulnerable, their legs up and apart. Generally, I don't put people in stirrups. I just let them pull their knees up and, and spread them apart.
With the V tone, we can insert it and basically leave the room. And it's just sitting there, causing muscle contractions. Don't even have to be in there. You can have your legs down, you be covered up with the form of E, which is radio frequency alone. It's about a 15 to 20 minute procedure. And it's a small little wand, smaller than an ultrasound wand you might have had. If you've ever had a vaginal ultrasound, like when you're having a baby and it's really, it's not uncomfortable at all. It's just the wand is there. The operator is moving it in and out and all around. So we get full 360 of the vaginal canal and then the Morpheus 8v probably takes 7, 10 minutes max. Okay. So for the form of E, the Morpheus 8v, you would have an operator in there, healthcare provider in there for the tone. Then we could just insert that, walk out and come back in when your procedure's done so that you relax. Yeah.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: What kind of downtime afterwards, recovery.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: So if we are. It depends on what we're doing. If we do the full Three modalities. Then we generally say nothing in your vagina for about four to seven days afterwards. So no hot tubs, no swimming pools, no intercourse, no tampons, things like that. If we don't do the needling and we just see the radio frequency and the tone, there's no downtime whatsoever. You can walk out of there and do whatever you want to do 30 minutes later.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: And afterwards, for like, if you do the needles, is there any pain afterwards or is that pretty minimal?
[00:08:03] Speaker A: I. I'm pretty much none. Afterwards, you might feel. I would say at most you feel like maybe you had intercourse.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: You know, that kind of.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: Just a little achiness.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Nothing horribly uncomfortable. Occasionally you'll have some very mild vaginal bleeding, Pink discharge, but that usually goes away overnight.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: And then how soon do the patients notice a difference?
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Usually when they walk out the door.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Oh, really? It's that quick?
[00:08:32] Speaker A: It's crazy. It gets better over time.
It takes about six to eight weeks to build collagen, and you're continuing to build for up to a year afterwards. But I have done the procedure and had people call me and say, I went all day and I haven't leaked any urine. This is crazy. The other thing that really works well is a lot of women have urgency. So, like, they may go all day and not think about going to the restroom, but the second they. Their brain says, I need to go urinate, like, they can't hold it and get their clothes off quick enough to go. And that really helps that and very immediately helps that.
You know, I always tell a funny story as well. I tell people based on their timeline of what they've had, whether they just had the radio frequency, the tone, or if they've had the micro needling as well. You know, as soon as you're able, whether that's immediate or about three to seven days, try it out. Don't tell your partner what you did and just see what happens. They notice. Your partner will notice, too.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: That was one of my questions. Do they notice?
[00:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah, they definitely do. And I was gonna say, why Funny stories. I had a lady that used to spend a lot of money in my facility, more on aesthetic things, but she decided she wanted to do. Do the vaginal rejuvenation, and she went home. And the next time she came back in, her husband came with her, and he slapped his credit card down on the counter, and he said, I don't know what you did, and I don't care, but you keep doing it and I'll pay for it. And he said it was like prom night all over again.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Funny.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: Like, yeah, the, the, his sen is better because things are tighter and toned. Her muscle contractions are better. And so yeah, it really does improve orgasm, sexual health, you know, pleasure and intimacy.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: And so she's probably more willing to do it because she's not in pain.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: She's not in pain like she would have been before. She's enjoying it. I had another couple come in afterwards and they said they couldn't quit giggling. It was just so different from what they were used to enjoying it so much, but it made them giggle.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: So they, they come for the three times a month apart. Then how often do they do it after that as like a follow up.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Yeah. So then we usually recommend just a single session, not the series of three again.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Just a single session about every six to 12 months.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Younger ladies with less dysfunction can usually get away with about every year, maybe postmenopausal that have had more atrophy, more dysfunction, they probably need to come in for a touch up every six months.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Does it also, obviously this is a, like a no brainer, but it also would help with confidence like at the gym or running because you're never having to worry about that.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: The leaking for sure.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: Yes. You know, another anecdotal story, I had a lady that had, I want to say she had four children.
At least two of them were over ten pounds.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Oh my gosh.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: Yes. And had them vaginally. And she was very athletic. She rode mountain bikes, hiked everything. But she said, you know, typically every morning getting out of bed, she would leak some urine and have to go back and clean it up. Getting, just getting to the restroom. And she said, I don't have that anymore.
And I'm back. I haven't jumped rope in 10 years. I'm back jumping rope. So yeah, it definitely makes a big difference.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: I worked out at a boxing gym for a while and it was funny. You could tell all the women that had had babies and all the women that hadn't had babies because you do jump rope, as you know, every three times for three. A minute apart. Three times. I mean, for a minute, three times. And you could always tell the women that it had babies, weren't jump roping. They would go get on the treadmill to warm up or they do something else because they weren't going to jump. Because yeah, they would leak. And then the younger girls that, you know, hadn't had kids would do the jump roping. And I thought that's got to be Miserable to live like that, where you just like, I can't do certain things because you know you're going to leak if you do.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
Obviously a much bigger percentage in women that have had multiple children and older women, but also had a young lady in her 20s who had never been married, no children. She was not overweight at all. She was. She modeled, actually. Tall, thin, but she did a lot of high impact sports in junior high and high school. And she had the problem and it definitely fixed her issues.
Had another lady in her 60s who was morbidly obese. She was a diabetic and she was almost ready to have to. She was a nurse on her feet all day and she really was considering doing disability to retirement. She was leaking urine so much and she's like, it changed her life where she felt like she could work comfortably and not have to carry a boatload of pads and things.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: So how does it differ from like creams or lasers or other treatments?
[00:13:29] Speaker A: So some of the lasers can work in a similar fashion.
What they're doing, obviously, is stimulating collagen, which approves elasticity and tightness and fibrin and stimulates lubrication. So a lot of those work the same. A lot of them have a lot longer downtime and they're more uncomfortable, obviously. There's some other devices out there that work in a similar fashion. There's the Emsella chair, which you set on.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: I have heard of.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And it vibrates and it uses, I think, electromagnetic waves again, tightening the pelvic floor. That one's pretty good. It's not going to do anything for lubrication. Pain, things like that definitely will help with stress, urinary incontinence, but it's not going to change kind of, you know, the inside as much.
And then what was the other one you. Oh, creams.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: Creams.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: Yeah, creams are gonna. They're only going to do so much. They definitely can help with lubrication. They can help make the vaginal canal a little healthier. A little. Or tissue. But it's not going to touch the pelvic floor muscles at all. So it's really not going to help to stress urinary incontinence or very little.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: And then how does. How about hormone replacement therapy? Does that tie in and help with that?
[00:14:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, estradiol is. Estradiol.
You can take it locally like in. Inside the vagina. And it's going to help, obviously will help reduce like some infections and bleeding. If you do pellets in the estradiol is going to do the same thing if you take estrogen orally. Also help. None of those are going to really change the strength of your pelvic floor muscles. They can help with the actual vaginal tissue itself somewhat.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Oh. What are the most common misconceptions you hear about vaginal rejuvenation treatments?
[00:15:22] Speaker A: One that it's horribly painful, definitely. With the morpheus and things. It's not. If you've got a skilled provider that knows what they're doing, they have the appropriate numbing cream, you really feel very little that you have to continuously redo it or that it doesn't work. I think those are the big misconceptions.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: What's something you wish more women knew about how childbirth or menopause impacts vaginal health long term?
[00:15:48] Speaker A: Oh, it's crazy how much it impacts. And the worst thing is that some of the things obgyns routinely do just make the issues worse.
So one of the things they're often telling women right after they have a baby is take ibuprofen, 800 milligrams, you know, three times a day to decrease the inflammation. Well, the inflammation is a healing process and it helps your muscles and tissues come back. So we're suppressing all that. Episiotomies are going to obviously make things worse. You know, I trained with a very great obgyn who actually helped develop this technology.
And he said, I now, four weeks after my women deliver, four to six weeks after they deliver, I bring them in and I start the treatment. He does tone the V tone form of E and Morpheus 8V, he said, because a lot of the stress, urinary incontinence has been accepted as that's part of aging and having child. And he said, doesn't have to be. And he said, so I don't put my women on ibuprofen often. And as soon as their tissue is healthy enough, I bring them in and start this. So I'm saving them issues. 10 down, 10 years down the road.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: What a great idea.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Yeah. He actually trains a lot of people on this devices and technology.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: Somebody that's just like childbirth, menopause, or someone that's had a full hysterectomy, does it. Does it come sooner rather than later? Like for someone that has had a hysterectomy versus someone that just went through menopause, does that change the dynamic any?
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Well, it can, because obviously a lot of times you'll have a hysterectomy younger because of whatever complication, the longer your body is deprived of estradiol and things, the more damage you're going to have, so the more issues you're going to have.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: I saw that with my mom because she had a hysterectomy young and then by the time she was in her 70s, it just was a mess. She couldn't contain any of it. She was wearing pads and.
Which is never fun. Is it ever too late for someone to benefit from this?
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Oh, really?
You know, definitely you want with the whole package. I always say you want to get your hormones optimized. The sooner you start that, the better. You don't want to go years and years and years without any hormones.
You know, we just. FDA just pulled black box warning off estradiol and progesterone. They finally acknowledged that the one study that showed a risk of cancer was on a synthetic prostate vera and not on the arm of the estrogen study at all. And the study was mispublished and they slapped this black box warning on everything, including bioidentical hormones. And so they finally have, just like this month, removed that black box warning, acknowledged that the information that had been put out to women all these years was wrong and we were making women suffer for no reason.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: When did that study, what year was that study?
[00:18:57] Speaker A: In the 80s.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: Wow. So since the 80s.
[00:19:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: What a shame.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: It was a shame.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: I'll be interested to see like what medical doctors do with that now.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see one how much that knowledge and education is dispersed and how many of these people can get over their old biases and realize that it wasn't the truth and change.
You know, it's interesting, for years, many, many years ago, we didn't replace testosterone on men. And now, you know, if a man has any issues of signs of testosterone deficiency, we immediately start replacing it and insurances almost across the board pay for it. Even in men that have had prostate cancer, the second their prostate specific antigen is back to normal, they're prescribing testosterone immediately. So have the long term health effects of being deprived of testosterone. But we continue to deprive women of hormone replacement when we know they need it. So hopefully we're slowly making a move to let women have the same kind of good health care that men have.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: I saw a quote from a doctor online that said if men and testosterone in men dropped as rapidly as hormones do in women, men would be hospitalized.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: It just made me laugh because I thought, boy, truth. And then what poor women go through with when their hormones are out of.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Whack and yeah, and Being told it, it's just part of aging. Get over it.
Exercise more.
[00:20:35] Speaker B: So on that question back to is it ever too late? Is it also never too late or too old for someone to do the Morpheus and to get some results, even if they're in their 70s or 80s?
[00:20:44] Speaker A: No, they'll get still help. Yeah. Obviously sooner you get ahead of it, the less damage you have, the easier you can recover. But I would say never is.
There's never too late.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: Too late. Okay. What would you say to a woman who feels like this part of her health, which I think a lot of women think, just like you just said, with hormones, it's what happens when you get older, is, isn't worth bringing up to, to you or their primary care.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: Yeah. I would say, you know, know your provider and.
But talk to somebody. Maybe your primary care is old and out of touch and uneducated and they may blow you off. If that's the case, be your own advocate. Go find another provider that's going to listen to you, look at things that they do and find you a good provider that's willing to listen and try to help.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Well, there's so many wellness clinics like yours that are doing things like that for women where, you know, primary care doesn't necessarily focus on that. They, I don't know what they focus on, but that's not. Doesn't seem to be their priority. Where there's a lot clinics like yours that. That's your focus is just trying to help the overall wellness, including weight loss and hormones and.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: Yeah, all of it. You know, if you can fix the problem instead of throwing a pill to try to improve the symptoms, just like in other your weight or whatever, why not fix the problem?
[00:22:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it just makes so much sense. And the fact that their tools are there. Yeah, you just gotta. And maybe, maybe some are embarrassed by it, but it's, it's not any different than going to your getting your yearly exam from your gynecologist.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Probably less invasive, to be honest.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: I would say probably less uncomfortable. And yeah, you're gonna be. You, you may be there with your legs apart for a little bit longer, but I'm not going to be setting on steel with my face, nose right in there. I'm standing up, covering you and just, just chatting while we're getting the procedure done.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: And you don't have a nurse and a, and an intern standing there. Yeah, that happened to me once she came in, she goes, oh, I've got a couple people with me today. I'm like, oh, well, this is great.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: This is what you want in.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: Bring them all. If a woman is nervous or embarrassed to ask about this, what would you say to her?
[00:23:03] Speaker A: You don't be especially, you know, a provider that, you know, provides, provides the service. We're more than happy to talk to you about it, explain it to you, show you the, the tips we use. So you see the size of them, they're much smaller than an average male penis, I can tell you that. And it's, it's not going to be some huge scary looking thing.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Well, and the beautiful thing about your clinic too is that it's such a private, you know, you're not going to walk in with a whole audience of people sitting in the waiting room. You guys do a really great job of keeping those appointments so that it's really just usually you there and you go in and you're not gonna have to. Even if, even though they're not gonna know what your treatment that you're getting, you just don't have that.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: Crowd of people.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: We work really hard to see people at the time of their appointment and not have, you know, we don't tell you to get there 30 minutes early and then you wait an hour and a half to see us, you know, tell you, get there at the time of your appointment. And we're usually putting you in a room at that time. And, and unless somebody shows up really early, there's nobody else in the waiting room.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: Yeah, you guys are really great about that. And so kind of want to go back real quick to the hormone replacement therapy. This would obviously be a really great add on.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: While you're going what, you know, if you're wear, if you're doing the pellets or even the creams, this would also be very beneficial to tie in with that.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: To help with all of it. So let's talk about how the Morpheus 8 machine can also help with face. You mentioned you brought it up a little bit, but kind of go into detail about what it can do for your face as well.
[00:24:35] Speaker A: Yeah. So we, we've, we've known microneedling for quite some time now. We've added radio frequency to those needles. So that energy is applied to the needles when it's down in the skin.
And that is going to stimulate collagen, improve elasticity, kind of shrink wrap your face, kind of tighten everything up, help with fine lines and wrinkles, helps your pores appear smaller, texture, appear smoother.
It can help with acne scars.
We can even depending on, you know, the Operator and what our goal is, we can do settings. If you have kind of a double chin, we can melt some fat while we're tightening the skin as well. So we can help with that. And then we can apply the same technology to the body areas and it actually even we use a little more energy, we use, use a little deeper depth of the needles. But like, you know, some women, I have these little, little baseball sized pockets of fat on the side of my hips and it doesn't matter what I do, I still have that. I can hit that with amorphous and really shrink that down and tone and tighten it. I've done a lot of above the knees where ladies starting to get a little crepey skin or up at the top of their knees. It does great for that, that little roll of fat that hangs over the back of your bra. We can, I've done amazing things with scars and stretch marks with it.
So yeah, the technology's there. We've had it for a long time and it just, it's getting better and then we're finding other uses and we were like, well, if it works on external skin, why wouldn't it work on, on the tissue in. Inside the vagina? And we did studies and we showed it, it does work.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: Can you do that on the scalp? Does that work on the scalp for hair growth or not?
[00:26:28] Speaker A: Well, you can do microneedling on the scalp. We typically don't apply radioframe frequency because the energy could actually hurt the hair follicles and most people don't want to lose the hair.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I love it that you guys are just kind of a whole wellness clinic. You can do weight loss, you can do hormone issues. Obviously this for women going through incontinence and.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And then adding, you know, peptide therapy and other things. I mean really looking at what can we do to improve your overall health that doesn't necessarily involve throwing a pill at something that comes with a lot of side effects.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: I like that about it. I think that's, that's what makes you guys unique from a lot of other companies. It's not, it's not your primary care that's probably not going to listen to you or going to do whatever they think. I mean I go to my primary care and I think it's a waste of my drive out there because well.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Most of them are given 10 minutes per patient and they have a demand of how many patients they need. Must see a day for them to make a living, honestly. And so it's more check the boxes, get them in, get them out. You get time to talk about one problem and I don't have time to address all this other.
And you know, so it's the primary care. Don't mean to bash them. They have a place.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: But this is not their focus.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: Yeah. And I love it because you also have supplements. So it's like you're a one stop shop for really just trying to make people feel better.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: We definitely try to be. And you know, we have great skin care products as well.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: All right, well, tell everybody where they can find you.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: You can find me at www.kinetic k I n e t I c clinic.net.
you can call us at 918-574-2376 or you can email me at contactneticclinic.net.
