Sitting in front of the mirror, kids at high school, or off with their friends, maybe at university. For the first time in a long time, you have chance to stop and look at yourself – really look at yourself. What do you see? Do you see someone who has grown into herself, who has aged well, with a mature but healthy complexion? Or do you see someone who has perhaps taken her eye off how she is looking and suddenly looks and sees the changes that had been happening all along?
Most of my clients come to me following the latter. They just say ‘what has happened to my face?!’, ‘what would you do with this face?!’, or do the classic move of grabbing their face and pulling it back into the ‘just had a facelift’ move! They want to suddenly put back what they had before, to regain the plumpness of the skin, the glow, the smoothness. But this has been happening for some time – it’s just that it can sometimes take a while to really notice, particularly when you have been busy with babies, kids, teenagers, careers, trying to have a life, while also possibly looking after ageing parents etc too.
The slowing of skin cell turnover, the gradual decline of collagen, hyaluronic acid and elastin in the skin, the reduction in bone density, muscle density and ligament strength all leads to a flattening and dropping of the features, and dull, lined skin on a flattened profile.
This can be quite depressing. The first thing I try to remind my clients is that we all age, it’s a natural part of our personal evolution and we should to some degree try to embrace it. (After all not all of us are fortunate enough to get there). Trying to reclaim too much ‘youth’ can lead to over-treatment, unusual looking features, and frankly gives aesthetics a bad reputation.
But all of these changes, funnily enough, seems to coincide with one fairly major event in a woman’s life.
Menopause.
Or peri-menopause – at this point, it’s all part of the same conversation.
Thanks to Davina McCall, Dr Louise Newson and other women in the spotlight, the term menopause and what it means to women is slowly being dragged out of the dark into daily language. People are using the word ‘menopause’ rather than ‘the change’ (usually in hushed tones).
So what does menopause or indeed peri-menopause mean for you? As we move past child-bering age, our bodies don’t need to maintain the functions we previously needed to get pregnant and carry babies. The resulting effect is a change in our oestrogen and progesterone levels (not necessarily a reduction (particularly in the early days), changes in menstrual cycle length (again, not always longer, sometimes cycle length gets shorter) and changes in periods including heavier flow, painful cramping etc. We tend to gain weight- and it is much harder to lose it, we suffer bloating and food intolerances, changes in alcohol tolerance, anxiety and hormone-induced depression. We end up on anxiety meds rather than HRT….
These changes can be saddening and frustrating – I remember as a child, women in their 50’s seemed old. They dressed old, they behaved old – I remember my nan sitting in her chair knitting* from when I was a very young child, and the general feel was that women had to put up and shut up – to accept what was happening to them, and deal with it.
Today, women in their 50’s and 60’s are very much not old (generally speaking anyway!), and are far less likely to be found under a blanket on a rocking chair. Women at this age go out, they socialise, they date, and they get remarried. They don’t want to shrivel up like a prune – they want to be sensual and have active sex lives. And why shouldn’t they?! Men have historically seemed to manage it well into their 70’s and 80’s.
The conversations I have with women tend to be fairly holistic – I’m not just there to stick needles in faces. I don’t just do fillers and botox. I help women to understand the process, we discuss diet, gut health, supplements, HRT. We talk about skincare, to help keep the skin hydrated, flexible and smooth. We add ingredients such as retinol, AHA’s, Hyaluronic acid, to actively treat the skin.
We plan treatment protocols that include rejuvenating and regenerative treatments, such as polynucleotides, exosomes, radiofrequency skin tightening and microneedling. We plan anti wrinkle treatments (never on their own – they won’t help with skin health!), we use fillers to replace lost volume, and skin boosters to give a wash of hydration. I give them a glow back, I give them confidence back. I make them feel like themselves again when they look in the mirror.
But that’s not the whole story.
While we struggle with physical changes such as dry, less elastic skin and increased irritation – this is the same for both the skin on our faces and bodies, but also intimate skin. The skin of the vulva and vagina thins, we produce less lubrication, our bits shrink in size and volume until they feel like prunes, we wee ourselves if we laugh, and our libido drops through the floor. Just at the point that we are starting to get a bit of time back and want to start enjoying our lives again! Oh the irony!
But that doesn’t have the be the case.
Just as we can treat issues on the face and body, we can now also address the more intimate issues that come with the joys of menopause. Here, in clinic, we can replace that lost volume with specially designed fillers that can be used safely to plump and rehydrate. Radiofrequency delivered from our very brilliant new device, the Neauvia Sectum, can improve skin tone and texture, address leakage, help with plumping, improve lubrication. Studies have shown that vaginal collagen increases by around 26% after a course of treatment, and vulval elastin improves by a whopping 60%. These improvements can increase sensitivity, lubrication and enjoyment, and subsequently libido, and stops you feeling like you are turning into a shrivelled prune! Combine these things with the right HRT and the sky’s the limit! (I can refer to our partnered specialist, Dr Sarah Wright for more support with this).
*please excuse the generalisation of people knitting – I will at this point give a shout out to my friend, the very talented (and very young!) Becki of Yarny Bees (visit her here) who makes a living teaching crochet and knitting! I love that she is raising the profile of this brilliant skill and bringing it back out of the dark ages!
