Discover Surprising Treatments For Sexual Dysfunction

Introduction to Libido and Regenerative Medicine 0:00

When we talk about libido, I think we're mainly talking about desire, and especially for women, that tends to start here. So this is maybe not so much that it boosts desire as much as it can improve sensitivity, pleasure, lubrication, et cetera, so that a good experience, but there are a number of things that we can do that really can kind of turn back the clock. These are regenerative medicine. We're improving the health of the pelvic floor and the different tissues better the way that they were supposed to in the past.

This is Dr. Talks. Hey everybody, Dr. Diane, your libido doc here. Welcome to another interview on our Sexual Dysfunction Summit. I am thrilled to have with me today, amazing sexual health expert and friend, Doctor Deb Matthew. Thank you so much for joining me, today. Hey, it's so great to see you. Same here, same here. So I know you've done a lot of these, so I'm sure some of our audience has seen you before, but I am sure there's plenty of people who haven't. Let's start with just talking a little bit about, if you just want to give us kind of the brief rundown, why this topic is so exciting to you, how you got to be an expert in the field.

Can you go down that road for us for a moment? Sure. So in my personal life, I was exhausted all the time and I struggling with belly fat that I just couldn't make it go away no matter what I tried and i was so irritable. I mean, i just flying off the handle at my kids way too often and then I felt like the worst mom ever. I mean, I had so much mom guilt because that's not the kind of mom that I wanted to be. And I didn't understand what was happening to me. Like nothing in my medical training would explain this.I knew that it wasn't normal.And what really changed everything for me is my husband found a book

Dr. Matthewu2019s Hormone Imbalance Journey 2:00

written by Suzanne Summers, and it was called The Sexy Years. And now if it had been called the book about women's hormones, you know, he wouldn't have touched that thing with a 10-foot pole. But he saw the books and on the back, it's got all those bullet points about no longer having fun and the things he used to enjoy. He saw me. So he thought that it is something that I probably should read. Honestly, I had a really bad attitude. what doctor wants to get their medical information from a celebrity, but I knew that I had to do something.

And so I read the book and it changed my whole life because when I red the stories about the women in the books who were just like me and how much better they felt when they got their hormones back in balance, It really helped me expand my mind and suddenly I understood what was happening to me because I was hypothyroid and I already knew this and had already been on the standard thyroid medicine for 10 years but I didn't feel any different because the medicine was making my labs look normal but it wasn't making me feel normal.

And I in my late 30s at the time and my female hormones were starting to shift. But when you're in your 30's you are not starting think about menopause. But because my progesterone level was starting to go down, I was irritable. I wasn't sleeping.I was waking up in the middle of the night with panic attacks for no reason. So once I understood the problems, then Iwas able to get the help that I needed. l was ableto find places where doctors can go and get trained. And I completely changed everything about my medical practice because once l got my hormones balanced, lgot my energy back, my kids got their mom back.

My husband got his wife back And I got my life back, but I just couldn't go back to the old way of writing prescriptions all day long because that just didn't make any sense anymore. I'm thinking about there's a joke about country songs backwards of when you like play a country song back where you get your life, back your wife, your home back and all that. Right. So that's like what that what balancing the hormones really, you know, really are as they provide all of that for us and. So let's go into that now because I know you do a lot of bioidentical hormones in your practice and in this particular interview we are gonna spend a lotta time talking about alternative types of therapies that people can do for sexual dysfunction.

But before we get into some of those nuances, Can you kind of lay the land besides what you just shared with us in your own experience of like, when do people need to really consider hormone replacement therapy? Why is this so important? And why is it important to do and to consider before jumping down some of these other types of therapies we're going to talk about? Yeah, you know, hormones play such an important role in how we feel on the inside. How we relate to the world around us, how react to other people.

And when our hormones are off, we just don't feel right. You're not exactly sick, but you that this isn't right, so the most common thing that I hear women say when they come in to see me is, like, I just feel like myself. I want to get back to feeling like my self again. One patient said, just won't worry back. So, when our hormones are out of kilter, we don't feel right, may not sleep right. It affects our energy, our mood, memory, libido, desire for intimacy, but also our ability to become aroused and the vaginal lubrication and sensitivity.

So many things change. Hormones impact so many things that if we're trying to use vitamins or different procedures and things like that, there's only so far that we can get. So when somebody should think about their hormones, I guess I would say if you're not feeling your best and you've already tried to eat a healthy diet and get enough sleep and do kind of the standard things you can do in order to try to improve your overall health, then getting your hormones checked might be a good idea, especially women over the age of 35, because our hormones do start to shift during that phase of our life.

And there are many hormones that affect libido, in particular in sexual health. So if your thyroid is not doing a great job, one of the really common things that we see is a low libado. That's just not on our list of things medical doctors are thinking about. We know Low thyroid can cause constipation and you can gain weight and be cold, but low libido is a really, really common one. Testosterone is really important for women. We actually have 10 times more testosterone than we have estrogen. It's just that men have ten times as much testosterone as women do.

But testosterone is so important to desire but it's also really for lubrication. So without testosterone, you could have dry eyes, a dry vagina, dry skin, and dry hair. it just puts some lubrication there and it makes a really big difference in libido.

Why Hormones Matter for Sexual Health 7:00

But it's not the only one. So sometimes what I see is women go to the doctor thinking, oh, I just need some testosterone and they get a prescription for some testosterone replacement, but it is just one of many things and is not a magic bullet. Another really important one is cortisol because that's our stress hormone. And if you're under stress and cortisol goes up, that just shuts libido right down. In fact, it's a common cause for fertility issues because it so intertwined. Your body in its wisdom knows that there's lot of stress going on.

It's not the right time to procreate, kind of shuts things down estrogen is really important to keep moisture in our body. So without estrogen, we get vaginal dryness and the tissues in the vagina area get thin and dry and they're no longer like juicy and elastic. And what a lot of women say is, I don't feel feminine. I feel like a woman. It changes. So estrogen is really important for our sexuality too. There are a lot of different hormones that are at play. When women don�t feel good, a lotta times we are treated with things like sleeping pills and antidepressants and birth control pills, which especially the birth-control pills can really take away libido.

So sometimes it's a side effect of the medicine that they were treating the first problem with. But some of these treatments that we're going to talk about, some these procedures, the healthier the body that can do the treatments on, better the results are going be. If you have a dry vagina that has no elasticity, there's no lubrication, no moisture there, these treatment can help, but if you had healthy vaginal tissues we would just get so much more under the treatments. Yeah, and one of the things I really appreciate that you're saying, too, that I just want to pinpoint is, I think one other thing I see sometimes when we're talking about libido and sexual dysfunction is this very, it's very abstract, right?

It's like, oh, how do I even know if this is a problem? But when you were talking hormone imbalances, there's so many things from how the brain works to how you interrelate, to you sleep. So I want just to make sure to really hone in on that for people. Even if you're kind of in this question of like, do I have low libido? Do I not? Which we do talk about in some of these other interviews. Think about all the other things that Dr. Matthew's saying here is like we have a lot, lot more. There's so many more different symptoms that really are influenced by these hormones and just our sex drive.

So really appreciate that. Now let's say that somebody's in the situation and they check cortisol and check their thyroid and all their sex hormones and get on any replacement therapy they need and maybe they get some shifts, right? Maybe they probably do if they're being balanced correctly. They almost certainly do. But let say their drive is still low. What are some of the alternative types of therapies that people might not know that they could do? And I know some these things are going to be different for females and males, so let's maybe start with females first and get through some those female treatments and then we'll switch over to the guys.

Well, there are so newer procedures that make a really big difference, but I think I want to really specific. to say that when we talk about libido, I think we're mainly talking about desire, and especially for women, that tends to start here. And what these procedures that we are talking are really helping more down there. So this is maybe not so much that it boosts desire as much as it can improve sensitivity pleasure, lubrication, et cetera, so that it becomes a good experience because if it's painful, like who's going to desire that?

But there are a number of things that we can do that really can kind of turn back the clock. These are regenerative medicine, which is really exciting because we're really treating the cause. We're improving the health of the pelvic floor and the different tissues so that things just work better the way that they were supposed to in the past. One of treatments that we really are excited about is called an O-Shot and what this does is it uses platelet-rich plasma or PRP and we draw blood, just like you're getting a regular blood test, we separate out your own growth factor And then there's just little teeny weeny injections into the roof of the vagina, into clitoral area, and we got numbing cream.

I mean, it's really not uncomfortable. But what we're doing is we are taking your own growth factors and we just putting them in the area so that they can activate the stem cells that live in your body and the stems cells are the cells the trigger growth and rejuvenation. And you get more blood vessels and you got more collagen fibers and more nerve endings and so, that can translate into more sensitivity, better orgasms, more vaginal lubrication. It can help a lot if there's pain, so it helps a lots with painful intercourse.

And then a natural side effect of this treatment, or a happy side-effect, is it can helps with stress incontinence. So if you sneeze or cough and you kind of have to like clench because you're going to lose some urine, or if have you to really make sure that you empty your bladder before you go to your, you know, CrossFit class or whatever, this can actually do a really nice job to help prevent that. So I love that you're bringing all that up so much because I like, one of the things I've seen is that loss of elasticity, right?

With the pelvic floor muscles. So they start losing their elasticity and that's like beyond even pregnancy and those types of things. Like this is like some of this normal process that happens. Intravaginally pelvic, floor, muscles with aging. Right? So a lot of doing really is even turning back the aging clock of. The pelvic. Floor muscles of, the vaginal tissue, all of that. So I don't know if you've had people talking about pelvic floor physical therapy, but you can actually have physical theory for the pelvic to make things stronger.

Female Regenerative Treatments: O-Shot, Laser, and Acoustic Wave Therapy 13:00

But with the PRP treatment, with this O-Shot, we are regenerating, rejuvenating. We are taking your pelvic-floor tissues and making them as though they are younger. So if we're gonna do pelvic for physical-therapy, you will just get even better results. That's one of the things that's available. And typically, that's just a one-time procedure. Some people need to come back more than one time, but that is a really great option. Another thing that can be done is laser vaginal rejuvenation. And there are different types of lasers, basically what they do is they treat the inside of the vagina and they also improve lubrication, they can tone and tighten.

If you've had babies, when there's gravity, things just get stretched out and kind of like the elastic band of your underwear that's, you know, been in the dryer too many times, it doesn't really spring back again. So this can really make a big difference. And it changes the sensitivity, changes, the feelings for the woman. and it can really make things more pleasant. So it tones and tightens. It improves sensitivity. it improves lubrication, and, it helps to prevent stress incontinence. Once again, It helps prevent urinary leakage, which is the happy side effect of this.

Sometimes women do these treatments because they're looking for help with sexual function. sometimes people use these treatment because, they are really looking with urinal leakage. But it's awesome that we can get both two for one. And so then when would somebody say, try something like a laser versus something, like an O shot? Is there a time you might recommend one versus the other? That is such a great idea. I mean, it's such great question. And I don't have an exact answer. We often combine these treatments for the best results because they work.

Even though they're doing the same result, they work in a completely different way. So often we would combine it. The laser treatments are often done in the series of three treatments about a month apart, whereas the OSHA is often just a one-time treatment. Partly it depends on convenience and how close people live to the office and things like that. But I don't have a really great scenario to say this person needs that one, this Yeah. Yeah, it's like a lot of things in medicine, like we combine things, we try things.

We see what gives people the best results and that's where we get our decision making process. So what about anything else for a female? Any other therapies we want to talk about? Yeah so there's another treatment that uses acoustic wave therapy. In some practices it is called FemiWave and sometimes it gets different names. But acoustic wave therapy was actually used first in men to help with erectile dysfunction, which we can talk about that too. But what it does is it uses sound waves and the soundwaves go into the tissues and almost cause like a little bit of micro damage.

I don't know, it's not that uncomfortable. It feels like you're getting like flicked, you know with an elastic band or something like that. We have numbing cream that we could use. So again, its not an uncomfortable treatment. but it creates a little micro damage on the inside. And as it's healing up, that creates more blood flow and it pulls stem cells into the area for rejuvenation. The reason that this is helpful is because for men who are having trouble with erections, most of the time it is a blood-flow issue.

And a lot of things that go wrong for men, there's a lots of analogous things to go around for women. So as we get older, we don't have such great blood flow going to our pelvic area the way we used to do when we were young. And so when can do the sound wave therapy, it can help to improve bloodflow to the area, which just helps again, increase all of those things. It helps improve sensitivity and lubrication and helps to minimize stress incontinence. So again, now who would need this one versus another one?

Well, this is something that is typically done once a week for a series of six or more treatments. You kind of have to live close to where the provider is in order to do this. But again it can be combined with some of the other treatments in I love it, I loved it. Well, let's move on to the men now. So, you know, when we're talking about sexual dysfunction for men, like obviously the number one thing people are concerned about, it tends to be erectile dysfunction. But of course there's not, that's the only problem that can lead to sexual dysfunctions.

Can you kind of talk a little bit around like, okay, what are we thinking about when were thinking sexual disfunction for man beyond ED since that is the one that most people know about? Can we start there and then we'll move into therapies? Sure. Okay. So for men, men can have a decrease in desire, just like women can't have the decrease and desire. And the same things that affect women, can affect men. Stress like cortisol going up, shuts down desire so stress is a really big one. Depression is another really one that shuts-down desire anti-depressant medications.

shut down desire. So that's a really common thing that we see is men don't feel great because of whatever's, you know, going on and they get put on an antidepressant and then the next thing they know they've lost their sex drive and how depressing is that, right? Blood pressure medicines are another thing desire. So for men, we want to think about, are they on a medication that could be getting in the way? We think of that for women too. We thing about stress and cortisol. And then we also need to thing testosterone.

Testosterone is one of the most important hormones for man. It declines over time. With women, our hormone changes are kind of in our face. Like either we got a period or we don't. flashes like we're kind of aware at least something's up. But for men, it's a gradual decline. And so unless somebody is asking the right questions and maybe testing for testosterone, you don't really have a way of knowing that things are changing because it is such a gradually change. We're seeing low testosterone at younger and younger ages in men.

Partly because of stress, partly because lifestyle habits that aren't so awesome, probably because a lot of the chemicals that we're exposed to in the environment. So there's a of reasons. And the younger a man is when he has his low testosterone, the more important it is to dig for the underlying reasons and not just knee-jerk to a testosterone replacement prescription. We see men as young as 20 years old who have low-testosterone. there's a cause that we need to be looking for in that case. But in any case, low testosterone is a really common reason and low thyroid is another common.

And all of those things affect the desire which is happening in their brain. When we do talk about ED, low testosterone can be one of the things that contributes to erectile function not being so great. But even if somebody is low in testosterone and does whatever they need to do to get their testosterone levels up, and maybe that's a testosterone replacement prescription, doesn't always fix all of Yeah. Okay. So let's go from there. We get hormones. Let's say somebody does that. Their hormones are regulated.

Same thing we said for the women. They've done the basics. And when even when we're talking about some of the other root causes you mentioned, let us just say as far as they've cleaned up the chemicals, their diet's good. Like we know it's none of that, okay. What's next? We've exhausted a lot of root cause. So for men, one of the treatments that we really, really like is called Gaines wave. And this is the one that's using that sound wave therapy. So it can be called soundwave, acoustic wave, shockwave.

It all means the same thing. But what it's doing is it putting sound waves right into the penis and the soundwaves are breaking up little micro plaque in the blood vessels of penis

Male Sexual Dysfunction and Hormone Factors 21:00

in order to get better blood flow. because for most men, the erectile problem is not enough blood flow getting in, in order to get a strong erection, or maybe they're able to a get strong erection initially, but then they are not able sustain the erections and they lose it too soon. So opening up more blood-flow can give a stronger, more sustained erector. And the treatment is very effective. This is true for women too. The sooner you get the treatments, better results. So if you have a small problem, we can get great results for you.

And if, you've kind of got like a medium problem we, can really, do a good job. If you waited and you haven't had an erection in 10 years and, and a whole bunch of medical problems and on a, whole, bunch, of medications. That's harder for us to fix. So this is the kind of thing, the same thing is true for women with stress incontinence and the urinary leakage. Don't wait till it's a big problem. If it is just a small problem, it so much easier for to us fix it. if it a medium problem we can still get you good results.

But if its become like a bigger deal, its just so harder. For erectile function, this is a treatment that can optimize erections, you know, kind of for anyone. So there's no need to wait until, because this isn't an important thing to say. The words erectal dysfunction, people generally kind sometimes take that to mean like you're not able to have an erection. But please don't wait, until you are not be able have and erector. If you notice that it's just not as strong as it used to be, then this a good time to come in and get treated.

Yeah. Thank you for that. I really think that's an important distinction. And I know there's other treatments we want to talk about for the men, but before we do, I think the probably most obvious thing to bring up that a lot of people are thinking that as they're listening is, well, why not just, Why not take Viagra? Why would I not go on and take viagras? So can we talk like pros and cons of that and especially in just a Okay, so Viagra or Cialis, right, there's all these different medications and what they do is they open up the blood vessels so that you get better blood flow.

If you take a pill and it works super awesome for you, great. For some people, they get side effects. So it's opening blood vessels everywhere in your body, not just in one place. And so for some people, they can get headaches or other side effects and they just really don't feel good and don t really tolerate it. For some, you have to time it for different pills. If you take it with food, it doesn't work as well. Some of the different ones wear off sooner, some of them last longer. So sometimes you might not be quite ready in the right moment.

That's not perfect. And for some men, it just kind of stops working, like it doesn't work as well as it used to. So if you're somebody where when you take the pill it works great, you are a super awesome candidate for having Gainswave treatments because we can probably make it so that you can have the strong erections without needing the pills. They're not cheap. You don't have to worry about it anymore. If you're somebody where the pills just aren't quite doing it anymore and it just, you know, even with the pill, things aren´t so awesome.

When we do the treatments, we can make it so that you can get nice strong erections with medication and maybe you won't need the medication. So it's not that the medicines are a terrible thing, but there's pros and cons to everything. And wouldn't it be nice not to have to take a pill? Yeah. Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I think the other thing to just tie it back that to something you said earlier is like the pills are working, but there's still these micro plaques that are underlying causing the problem.

Then we could probably say that the roots not being treated and if it progresses far enough, then something like The Gains Wave is not going to work as well. Right. I Think that's such an important thing. whether we're talking about vaginal dryness in women or stress incontinence or erectile dysfunction, these things aren't getting better. These things only go in one direction. So if you have a small problem now, it's not like two years from now it is going to be gone and it will be better, so while you're having a problem is the time to get treatment.

The problem in the past, the only thing for women who had sexual dysfunction the doctors have nothing for you. Like, you can go tell your gynecologist or family doctor, but they're just going to feel uncomfortable, most likely, and they don't really have a solution. Or if you have stress incontinence, kind of the only solution that they had was surgery. And, for the men, all they really had is the Viagra. But because we have so many other things now, go before it's getting to be a big problem and fix the problem while it is relatively easier to fix.

Such a good point. Okay, so let's move on from Gainswave and let us talk about some of the other options that men have if we need a situation where some the basics that we talked about are not working. Yeah. Okay. So another thing that we can do for men is called a P-Shot. And so for women, we have the O-shot.

GainsWave, P-Shot, Exosomes, and Botox for Men 26:00

For men, We have a p- shot. This is PRP, platelet rich plasma. The same thing, were drawing blood and we separate out the growth factors and then we do little teeny injections into the penis. It's like we had numbing cream. it sounds horrifying. I know nobody wants a needle in their penis, but it's the tiniest little thing you ever saw. Its really not a big deal and it is just a one time thing. So there are treatments out there where you have to give yourself an injection every time you want to have an erection, but that's not what I'm talking about.

This is like a one-time thing. Sometimes people come back for a second treatment to get optimal results, But we're putting your own growth factors into the area. They activate the stem cells and the STEM cells get to work. with regenerating and rejuvenating the tissue, some more blood vessels, nerve ending, collagen fibers. And it works great if we do the gains wave with the P-Shot, because the gain wave opens up the blood vessel, pulls in more stem cells, then we hit it with a P shot to activate the stem cell, and we can get some really good results.

Yeah, I like that combo you're talking about there. That's really great. And then I know something you had mentioned offline a little bit was a bit more on exosomes and that whole thing. Do you want to talk about that? So exo-zones are, for the sake of what we're taking about here, they're kind of like stem cells. It's not exactly the same thing There are some places, it's not something that I do in my practice, but there are places who use exosome injections, kind of like how we would use a P-Shot.

And so instead of PRP, these exasomes are used. They are not FDA approved, this is like the new thing. So this where medicine is going. This is real regenerative medicine and they can have really, really good results. Another thing that's new is actually using Botox. for erectile dysfunction. And there are some doctors who are starting to use Botox because what it does, Botax relaxes the muscles in your face that cause movement, like the cause of the wrinkling. What the Botux does in the penis is it relax is that there're little muscles around your blood vessels and it relaxation them in order to open up and cause more blood flow.

So it's another thing that can be done. I know it is another injection, But this is something that only gets done once every, you know, six months or so has long lasting results. It actually seems to last longer for that than it does in our face. Yeah. That's a really, really fun, fun alternative therapy. And I appreciate you bringing up the fact that this sounds intense, but it's really way less. I mean, it is not FDA approved. Brand new. But there are some doctors out there that are doing it and it seems Yeah.

Well, thank you for keeping us abreast. So many of the alternative therapies out there. Is there anything that we did not talk about in this realm that you think we need to make sure to mention? Yeah, sure. do something that's not as sort of high tech. Another thing that is really great for both men and women is nitric oxide because nitro oxide opens up the blood vessels naturally in order to have more blood flow which is important for men than for women. So it's kind of almost like nature's version of Viagra and there are lots of different nitrous oxide boosting supplements out there.

Beets are a food that is naturally a great source of nitric oxide, but it's always best if we can do all the natural things first because whatever you're going to invest in getting some one of these treatments done, you want to do the treatment on the healthiest body that you can so that we get the best results that Yeah, thank you for saying that. I think that's a really good take-home point around. It's so exciting to find the new treatment and be like, oh, I want to do this thing. If you have so many chemicals in your body from all these endocrine disruptors and you do, there's probably just not going to work as well.

So give your buddy first what it needs. So let's talk about most of these treatments you do in your practice in North Carolina, right? So you guys that live out on the East Coast, you can look at Dr. Matthew. You can at her speaker bio. We'll have all of her contact information there, but want to make sure that we are leaving with just any concluding comments you want leave, as well as how people get ahold of you. And I know that you have an ebook to give away to everybody as. Well, so you wanna talk to us about all that?

Sure. Okay. So the book is called This Is Not Normal, A Busy Woman's Guide to Symptoms of Hormone Imbalance. And I wrote the books because, as we were saying in the beginning, like, how do you know if you have a hormone imbalance? Like, when should you get checked?

Nitric Oxide, Resources, and Closing Remarks 30:30

So this is to try to help answer that. It has a bunch of checklists that you can kind of go through to see. symptoms of low testosterone or high cortisol to kind of understand if you could have a hormone imbalance and then what are some of the simple things that you can do at home and how can you find a practitioner who can help you. So there's some different resources for websites you go to to look for somebody near you and so that's a free download. I have book for men too. It's called Why Can't I Keep Up Anymore and it has lots of information for about all things sexual health and optimizing performance.

The practices in Charlotte, North Carolina, and obviously a lot of these procedures that we talked about are in-office procedures. So, you know, these would be things for people locally. Yeah. And just so everybody knows that you also do bioidentical hormone, as well as a lot of different things around restoring health and supporting people with getting to the root causes of their health imbalances. I want to thank you so much for your time. This is a wealth of information. A ton of new ways to treat libido, to, treat any sort of pelvic floor dysfunction and leakage and all these different things you talked about.

So really appreciate your time, everybody, or time time today. And everybody else is listening. Make sure you check out Dr. Deb Matthew, her bio, it's where you can find information on how to get ahold of her as well as all of our offerings. Thank you everybody. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks.com.

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