Prostate removal can have an ongoing impact on a man’s life.
Post-prostatectomy, a man’s pelvic floor can be left too weak to control his bladder, leaving him experiencing the humiliation of incontinence for the first time in his life.
“I think most people find incontinence quite debilitating in the fact that they have to wear continence products,” Monique Camm said.
“They have to be close to a toilet or they're worried about wetting themselves in public.”
Monique is a nurse of 15 years’ experience and the owner of GV Body Rejuvenation, a clinic that offers high intensity focused electromagnetic treatment (HIFEM).
HIFEM is a treatment that helps restore a weak pelvic floor after trauma like a prostatectomy.
It’s a completely non-invasive procedure where patients stay fully clothed and spend less than 30 minutes remaining seated in order to painlessly restore the control of their bladder and pelvic floor muscles, and eliminate incontinence or any kind of intimate discomfort.
“After you've had a prostatectomy, you've been naked enough, you've been examined enough,” Monique said.
“This is a good option to rebuild the pelvic floor strength and increase blood flow, to stop the dribbling that you get after you have your prostate removed.
“To go out in public and know that you're not going to have any issues, is quite an improvement in your quality of life.”
The HIFEM treatment is delivered by an EMSELLA, which is basically a chair with a magnet in it.
The electromagnetic energy is channelled through the EMSELLA chair and stimulates the pelvic muscles to produce contractions — like doing kegel exercises.
However, EMSELLA bypasses the nervous system to contract harder and faster than you can by yourself — which greatly speeds up the restoration of the pelvic floor.
In 30 minutes, EMSELLA can induce more than 11,000 contractions — resulting in pelvic muscle strengthening, helping reduce or eliminate incontinence in both men and woman, but also improving their intimate health.
HIFEM can help with erectile dysfunction, if it is pelvic floor-related.
“By strengthening the pelvic floor and increasing blood flow to those areas, it can benefit people with erectile dysfunction,” Monique said.
“A lot of people joke about erectile dysfunction, but it's actually quite a debilitating issue physically and emotionally for men
“If there's a way to fix it, that's non-invasive and not using medication that has its own side effects of drugs like Viagra.
“While [these drugs] work really efficiently, if you have cardiovascular disease or any other sort of vascular problems, they can actually be quite dangerous to take.
“But people still take them and risk it and having heart attacks and things like that.
“So this is a good way to avoid medication.”