The area of urinary incontinence and sexual dysfunction is one that causes great distress to people, but due to the embarrassment surrounding these issues, many people suffer in silence.
Women are particularly vulnerable to suffering with urinary incontinence due to the after-effects of pregnancy or the changes wrought by menopause.
Mary-Jane O’Regan, operations manager at Cork’s aNuMe Medical Clinic, feels that it is very important that people open up more about intimate problems, particularly as there are cutting-edge treatments that can help with these issues.
“It’s quite a niche area, but it’s a conversation that needs to happen,” she says. “There are people who still can’t use words like vulva and vagina, but we’re opening the conversation up in a big way. It’s something we should be talking about, because if men suffered with urinary incontinence, there would have been a solution years ago, or the conversation would have already happened.”
As well as medical aesthetics, aNuMe does a lot of pelvic floor wellness work, and one of its founders, Professor Barry O’Reilly, is an internationally-recognised consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist. He has vast experience in the area of pelvic floor dysfunction, as well as being a leading specialist in functional and aesthetic gynaecology. He pioneered the introduction of transvaginal laser therapy in Ireland to rebuild and restructure damaged tissue of the vagina walls through collagen and elastin recovery stimulation.
“There’s exciting things happening in the clinic and we have a small theatre as well,” says Mary-Jane. “We also do a treatment called Empower, which is a female radiofrequency micro-needling in the vaginal area to help tighten it and help with urinary incontinence and sexual dysfunction.”
The treatment, Empower by InMode, is a comprehensive, non-invasive solution for pelvic health, vaginal rejuvenation, and muscle strengthening. It combines radiofrequency, electromagnetic stimulation and therapeutic modalities to support core recovery, bladder control and intimate wellness—with safe, comfortable treatments and no downtime.
The clinic also has a chair called the StarFormer, and its IntimaWave treatment uses non-invasive High-Intensity Tesla Magnetic Stimulation (HITS) technology to strengthen, tone and firm the pelvic floor muscles, effectively addressing urinary incontinence without the need for physical exertion.
“It’s a really, really high-tech treatment for pelvic strengthening for men and women, and it does lower back strengthening too,” says Mary-Jane. “We have a lot of sportspeople coming in to use it too.”
Mary-Jane, who won an award in London for her advocacy work on safety in the beauty industry, has extensive experience in the area of beauty and wellness, dating back to when she worked in a front-of-house role in an aesthetics clinic.
“I saw firsthand how transformative it was, and back then, it was a holistic thing and we would have been treating people with acne and skin problems,” she says. “Toxin and filler were very subtle, as it was before Kylie Jenner and people and the whole thing wasn’t as commercialised.”
Mary-Jane writes a beauty column for the Cork Independent, and over the years, was invited in various clinics to try different treatments. She was always very honest about the procedures, and as a result, she became a patient advocate.
“I saw medical aesthetics evolve as an industry,” she says. “People were getting filler blindness and were becoming that kind of ‘Avatar’ face, or the ‘Bratz’ doll style with the big lips. A lot of that was because there were non-medics injecting people, so I started advocating for patient care, finding safe clinics and working with safe practices.”
At the time, Mary-Jane was working in the media industry and wasn’t aligned with a particular clinic. Having done some consultancy work with aNuMe Medical Clinic, she is now its operations manager, overseeing the clinic’s day-to-day operations, staff coordination, marketing, and service development.
She has seen aesthetics become more mainstream, with people coming in at lunchtime to get their toxin treatments and integrating the cost into their self-care budget. She noticed a rise in the demand during the pandemic, when we all started looking at ourselves more on screens.
“It’s really important that people realise the safety implications, and that these toxin and filler treatments need to be done in a safe environment,” she says. “The industry needs proper regulation, and that’s a hill I’ll probably die on. I get a lot of grief online for saying that, because people think I’m criticising people carrying out the procedures, but the way I feel about it is that if you can’t manage any complication that might arise, then you shouldn’t be doing the procedure.”
For further information on aNuMe Medical Clinic, see anumemedicalclinic.com
