Bladder leaks. Burning pain in your vagina. Hair loss. What would you do if these things suddenly started happening to you, but every doctor said there was nothing more they could do to help?
This is everyday life for many of the 13 million women currently going through the menopause. And while these afflictions are common, they can be hard to treat – particularly for those who do not want to use hormone replacement therapy (HRT), such as those at a high risk of breast cancer. Now many women are turning to a new range of radical – and often surprising – cures for the frustrations of the ageing body.
One in three women over 50 is living with pelvic-floor weakness, for example – a condition that can be caused or exacerbated by the huge drop in oestrogen that occurs at menopause and causes those embarrassing bladder issues. The fact that it’s extremely common doesn’t make it any less annoying to deal with, as 53-year-old Sandra, from Kent, knows only too well. The after-effects of two traumatic births started to catch up with her – and her bladder – once menopause began. “The leakage just got worse and worse, probably over a year or so. You just think, ‘oh no, surely I’ve not got to use these pads every day for the rest of my life?’” she says. “I got to the point a couple of months ago where I just felt really stressed with it.”
Frustrated by the lack of support from NHS doctors, Sandra and her husband started researching new treatments for menopause symptoms. Now, twice a week, Sandra travels to a local clinic to sit down for half an hour and flick through a magazine while sitting on the Emsella Chair – an electromagnetic seat that sends a current through her body, which forces the entire pelvic floor muscle to contract. A short course of the treatment, she claims, has “really changed my life”.
The seat is occupied while she is fully clothed and a 28-minute session is the equivalent to doing 11,000 pelvic-floor exercises. “It’s a strange feeling,” Sandra explains. “The only way I can describe it is like when you have a plastic helix ruler and snap it on the corner of a table – the vibrating is just like that. It’s not painful – it’s like a drumming in your pelvic muscles, and you can feel them pulling right up.”
One course of six sessions on the chair, costing around £1,200 and delivered over three weeks, is enough to help prevent leaking and bladder weakness for at least a year, often longer, and Sandra has seen immediate results. “There’s definitely a difference. To be able to not have to worry when you’re on the go, in places where there’s not a toilet around, is so great,” she says.
According to Dr Shirin Lakhani, who prescribes the use of the Emsella Chair to patients in her private clinic, the treatment – which “stimulates the pelvic floor and does supersonic kegels for you” – has a 98 per cent satisfaction rating among her own clients. She believes the novel treatment should be offered routinely on the NHS, particularly as incontinence is the most common reason for women to be placed in nursing care later in life.
The Emsella Chair is just one of a number of radical new approaches being used in private practice in order to tackle troubling menopause symptoms. Another technique used by Dr Lakhani is a new application of the so-called “vampire facial”, a procedure that takes concentrated plasma from the blood of the patient and injects it at certain sites in the body to help stimulate cell regrowth and regeneration. If you’ve heard of them already, thank Gwyneth Paltrow – she got one on her Goop Lab Netflix show for a very different reason. These PRP (“platelet-rich plasma”) injectables are hugely popular for aesthetic purposes such as curbing the signs of ageing on the face. But now they’re being used for a whole other purpose.
I use PRP for women to inject into the vagina and clitoris to regenerate the whole area— Dr Shirin Lakhani
Dr Lakhani uses PRP injections to help boost the growth and health of the vulva and vagina after menopause. It’s an alternative to using hormone replacement therapy for those suffering from vaginal atrophy and related symptoms such as pain, dryness and recurrent bladder infections. “When you take the blood and use the concentrated plasma, which has a higher concentration of platelets, you can use it to rejuvenate different parts of the body,” she explains. “I use it for women to inject into the vagina and clitoris to regenerate the whole area.”
The NHS is trialling PRP treatments for joint conditions including arthritis, but it so far lacks the data to prescribe it for the symptoms of menopause – a situation Dr Lakhani hopes will change soon. There’s already growing evidence that these injections help to treat more severe, incurable illnesses experienced by women after menopause such as lichen sclerosus, a condition that causes patchy, thinning and discoloured skin around the genital and anal areas. It’s something that Denise, who is 70 and from Bedfordshire, suffers from. Before she started treatment, she was sitting on a bidet for almost an hour a day just to calm her symptoms. She had also abandoned wearing trousers, choosing only loose skirts as any restrictive clothing was unbearable for her.
“If I sit down for too long, it’s very uncomfortable and feels like burning. When I’m standing up and keeping occupied it’s not so bad, but when I sit down again it hurts,” she explains. Denise is in a Facebook group for lichen sclerosus patients and has tried multiple medical and holistic treatments, but none gave her longer-term relief. She read that PRP treatment has the potential to boost the body’s own healing of the vaginal area, with results lasting for years, so she decided to give the injection – known as the “O-Shot” because it is also used in younger women to increase the sensation of orgasm – a chance.
At first her sensation of pain increased, particularly around the anus, but after a few weeks the healing began. “Now I feel quite comfortable, so I’m thinking that it’s working and it can only get better. I also feel things are a bit plumper,” she says. Denise is yet to try on her trousers again, but she thinks as the healing improves that she’ll be ready to get back into her old wardrobe – something that “disappeared overnight” when she was first diagnosed.
Also using PRP in his clinic is hair-loss specialist Dr Furqan Raja. He sees many women who first believe they will need a full hair transplant to treat the hormonal hair loss they are suffering. Dr Raja recommends a less invasive method: he is successfully treating post-menopausal hair thinning with these injectables – even though the use of it is still a radical new application of the technology at this stage and, he admits, doesn’t work for everyone.
“Some people do much better than others,” he says. “But it’s your own plasma we’re using, so the side effect profile is [minimal], and we’re delivering stem cells and growth factors to those areas. We tend to have a good patient satisfaction rate with that treatment.”
One of his trial patients is Louisa, a 48-year-old from West Yorkshire, who considered her hair pre-menopause as her “pride and joy”. “When it started thinning as a result of menopause it really impacted my confidence,” she explains. Louisa tried three sessions of PRP after three months and found the treatment to be successful, describing her hair as “now thicker and healthy” thanks to injections of the growth-boosting serum.
More popular for thinning hair is the use of microneedling, a technique that also injects stem cells into the scalp. “We’re delivering the body’s healing signals to those areas of loss by injecting stem cells. They will signal the cells to start the healing process and improve the blood circulation. They tend to improve in quality and thickness. You tend to see an improvement in the volume.”
All these treatments are still in their infancy; their use in tackling the frustrating side effects of menopause remains experimental. But private doctors are reporting exciting results from their clients, and NHS treatment guidelines are considering their introduction to a wider population. And yet, with NHS menopause care currently focused on HRT, women who could benefit from alternative options are missing out. Those who can afford to pay privately are benefiting from a greater quality of life while those who cannot are forced to suffer needlessly, widening the health gap between the richest and poorest communities. As the reports from private practice show, these experimental techniques are having positive, sometimes even life-changing, results – meaning it’s high time that the NHS began to invest in the health and comfort of older women.
