Welcome to OBGYN Champs, the show where no question is off limits. Join host Morgan Allen and board-certified OB/GYN Dr. Suny Caminero, MD, as they tackle the topics women are often too embarrassed, afraid, or unsure to ask about. From hormones, menopause, and sexual wellness to pregnancy, pelvic health, cosmetic gynecology, and everything in between, each episode offers honest conversations, expert advice, and practical insights to help women confidently take control of their health.
Whether you’re in your 20s, navigating motherhood, approaching menopause, or simply looking for trustworthy answers, OBGYN Champs is your place for real talk, myth-busting, and empowering education. Tune in, ask your questions, and join the conversation because your health deserves to be talked about.
Dr. Suny Caminero, MD, OB/GYN
Founder of Cosmetic Gynecology Florida
Website Address: https://cosmeticgynecologyfl.com/
Why are we so sensitive down there?
Dr. Suny Caminero:
I didn’t think of it that way, but it is true. It is so sensitive down there. Everything affects it. Sex affects it. The pool affects it. The beach affects it. If you’re sweating too much, it affects everything. It really affects it.
Wrong soaps, birth control. It’s an incredible part of our body, but she is very sensitive. She has to be treated with kindness, seriously. And to tiptoe around all these different things that we go through is good.
The biggest thing is that she’s sensitive to pH changes. The vagina wants an acidic pH, and anything that changes that can cause irritation and increase the risk of other bacteria growing.
For example, it isn’t uncommon to have a little bit of yeast in the vagina and have no symptoms. You don’t know you have it, and the only way to know is to do a swab and check for yeast DNA. That’s the only reason that you would know. The vagina, the entry point of the vagina, from anywhere, can have a little bit of yeast. It’s totally normal. Not an issue, not causing a problem.
But if the pH of the vagina changes for many different reasons, the yeast amount is too high. You’ve been in the pool for too long. Spermicide, sex, sperm, birth control. Fascinating differences.
Morgan Allen:
What is spermicide?
Dr. Suny Caminero:
Gels that kill sperm. And some condoms have spermicide. It’s listed on the label.
If you have any of that kind of stuff, it changes the pH. So the vagina no longer has an acidic pH, which affects the bacteria inside the vagina. The normal bacteria that live in the vagina produce acid, essentially hydrogen peroxide. It produces acid.
Anything that kills those bacteria—antibiotics are a perfect example—kills them and changes the pH. Now the vagina is no longer acidic, and bacteria that live in basic environments can now thrive. Yeast does not like an acidic vagina. So it doesn’t go in because it’s like, “I’m going to get killed if I get in there.”
If the pH changes, it’s like, “Oh, I can come in now.” And it enters, and it overgrows. Bacterial vaginosis can be right in the perineum, which is the space between the rectum and the vagina. And if the pH changes and now the vagina is not acidic anymore, the bacterial vaginosis goes, “Oh, I can go in,” and then goes in and overgrows.
You also have this magical odor, this vaginal discharge, and often the irritation that comes with it. The vagina is very sensitive, really, to the pH itself. And it’s based on the bacteria. The bacteria in the vagina are extremely important for keeping the vagina healthy.
What are some of the symptom differences between a yeast infection and bacterial vaginosis?
Dr. Suny Caminero:
With a yeast infection, people typically have white vaginal discharge. That’s what we call it in medicine. We call it cottage cheese. It has that kind of clumpy, white kind of look to it, and the yeast is very irritating to the vagina.
You can have just itching and burning, where you just want to scratch it off, or warm water feels good because it’s kind of soothing that area. So yeast is more itchy, like you’re sitting down and you just kind of feel itchy.
Bacterial vaginosis (BV) doesn’t usually cause itching. It’s really more of a creamy type of discharge and an odor, a fishy type of odor is what we call it.
Women notice it especially when they go pee and wipe, and they’re like, “What is that smell?” And they smell it, and then women think, “Oh my gosh, everyone else is smelling it.” You think that somebody else is smelling it when they’re not. It really is you because you just sat down and you smell it.
And then BV, over time, can cause inflammation of the vaginal walls. You’ll have this recurrent injury to the walls of the vagina. Some women can have recurrent bacterial vaginosis, so you’re treated with the normal treatments that we do, but you don’t get rid of all of it. The walls of the vagina are injured by the inflammation. Even though you just treated the BV, that inflammation is still affecting the normal bacteria that live in your vagina. So now BV can come back in because you haven’t quite fixed that pH of the vagina.
Can an IUD increase your risk for yeast infections?
Dr. Suny Caminero: The IUD increases the risk of bacterial vaginosis more than yeast infection, actually. If there are bacteria when you put the IUD in, then they went in with the IUD and into the uterus. And now your immune system is always trying to fix whatever bacteria you have. So you may have chronic, low-lying bacteria that’s sitting there in the uterus, and it’s not really causing many issues, but it can spill into the vagina.
I’d say more than 20% of women have bleeding in the first few months of using an IUD because the IUD is staining the lining of the uterus. You bleed and bleed and bleed, and that may last three months, sometimes nine months for women. It’s not bleeding all of the time, just bleeding sporadically. All that blood has a very basic pH, which then also changes the pH of the vagina, which is also the reason why women after a period go, “Every time I have a period, again, it’s an infection.” Well, you’ve just got three, five days, maybe seven days of blood in the vagina, and now the pH changes.
Morgan Allen:
So your period can create an infection?
Dr. Suny Caminero:
Yes. At the end of the day, try to be as healthy as you can, just to make sure that the bacteria that live in your vagina are healthy and growing.
Vitamin D is so good for our bacteria, for all of our bacteria. Having a good vitamin D level is so important for the growth of our natural bacteria. That’s really important. Not everybody gets recurring BV and recurrent yeast infections, but when they happen, they tend to just keep happening until the normal bacteria of the vagina is reestablished and the inflammation in the vagina is done.
If you are in the cycle of getting infections and taking suppositories that lead to infection, how do you stop the cycle?
Dr. Suny Caminero:
You don’t have to deal with it forever. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
The goal is to really kill off the bad bacteria and then help you regrow your normal bacteria. There are probiotics that you can take that are for the vagina, so you can do that. If you kill off your normal bacteria, you can take probiotics for the vagina. You can also make sure that the vagina has enough estrogen, right? So if you don’t have enough estrogen in the walls of the vagina, they’re not going to be healthy. So, if you have enough normal estrogen, that would be super healthy for the vagina.
Once you replenish that normal bacteria, you can look at what else you could be doing better. If you’re going to the pool and you’re in the pool all day and you’re sitting in a wet bathing suit all day, you’re probably going to get another recurrent yeast infection.
So if you’re in the pool, then bring another set of clothes and make sure that you’re not sitting on it. When you exercise and sweat a lot, make sure you don’t sit in those underwear and tight pants all day in your exercise clothes, because that can cause a yeast infection. Small habit changes may also help lower your risk of infection.
Another thing is that we now know bacterial vaginosis, in particular, can be passed from a partner. It’s not necessarily a sexually transmitted disease in the sense that we think of a sexually transmitted disease, like an STD, like gonorrhea, chlamydia, that kind of thing. But a male partner can also have it, and they can keep passing it back and forth. If we treat the woman and we don’t treat him, the recommendation is not to treat him right now. The recommendation is to treat her, and if she then ends up with recurrent BV, meaning you believe this is happening because of the partner, then treat the partner as well so that you’re not continually giving it to each other.
Morgan Allen:
Can that antibiotic that treats the BV give you a yeast infection?
Dr. Suny Caminero:
It can. Yes, definitely can. You want to be on some probiotics.
What does BV treatment look like for men?
Dr. Suny Caminero:
It’s very similar to women. It’s an antibiotic that you take. There are different antibiotics that you can take. The most common one is called metronidazole, or Flagyl. And you just take that twice a day for five to seven days.
How does semen affect your pH balance?
Dr. Suny Caminero:
It doesn’t happen to all women. There are so many of us women who, when we have sex, don’t have any issues after sex, no recurrent infections or anything like that. But for other women, it is an issue that every time you have sex and semen enters the vagina, you have another infection. And that’s very annoying. Some people choose to start using condoms every time in order to prevent that.
But really, at the end of the day, it’s making sure that she is treated. If it’s a recurrent issue, she’s treated, he is treated, and we’re getting the vagina back to healthy, back to normal walls, not inflammatory walls, avoiding things that are affecting the vagina, and also making sure that you replenish the normal bacteria in the vagina.
Does being pregnant decrease your ability to get infections?
Dr. Suny Caminero:
Those infections aren’t that common in pregnancy. They do happen in pregnancy, though, but it’s not that common to have them.
Your vagina is constantly flushing itself. It is just so lubricated. It is constantly—anybody who’s pregnant knows, particularly at the end of the pregnancy, your underwear is wet all the time. It’s always cleaning itself.
For women who are pregnant and get bacterial vaginosis infections, they should be treated because that can increase your risk of a preterm delivery.
Yeast infections aren’t common, but we also look at another one called Group B strep. We don’t really look at that one when you’re not pregnant because it doesn’t have that many issues, but when you’re pregnant, it can have issues when you deliver a baby, essentially. We look for that at the end of the pregnancy.
Any infections in pregnancy have to be treated because we don’t want anything to affect the vagina and cause inflammation, because uterine contractions need to happen before the contractions. And we want to really prevent any preterm delivery.
How long does BV treatment last for?
Dr. Suny Caminero:
For as long as you keep your vagina healthy, so ideally, forever. As long as you keep your vagina healthy, you shouldn’t have to continue to have recurring infections.
It is really important to identify the modifying factors. Is it the exercise? Is it the pool? Is it the semen? Is it the medications that you’re taking? Birth control will do that, too, because birth control kind of kills the vagina of estrogen.
I have women who have recurrent yeast infections, and now the walls of the vagina and the nerves have been affected by her long having that. So they’re having vaginal pain. They can’t have sex. They’re having many, many issues. So for them, we have to do things to calm the nerves, and we have to do things to fix the vagina. And sometimes it’s a three-month, maybe four-month process to get the vagina back to normal, where they’re not having an infection, they can have sex now, and the nerves are not overresponding.
So that can happen, and I see it the most with yeast infections, with really recurrent yeast infections.
Does Botox help with preventing recurring infections?
Dr. Suny Caminero:
The vaginal Botox doesn’t help with that. If there’s that much inflammation, the muscles have already contracted. They’re not giving out, and you’re in pain.
The minute anything wants to come into the vagina, the muscle just goes like that, right? And it just blocks everything. So for that, the Botox helps to just relax it and gives it no choice. It paralyzes that muscle, so you relax it and then you can fix everything else. But it at least gives it that break.
It doesn’t treat the infection. It just really helps with that contraction of that pelvic muscle.
How does odor indicate infections?
Dr. Suny Caminero:
You know what a good smell and a bad smell are like because you know your body. When you have a period, you know what that blood smells like. If you have that tampon in for a long time, yeah, we know what it smells like. If you wear a pad for a long time, you know what it smells like.
You kind of know what it looks like when you’re ovulating, too. Your discharge is clearer, which is completely normal. You might see it on your underwear. You may have a little mucus that comes out from the cervix. You’re like, “What is that?” But over time, it happens so frequently that you’re like, “Oh, that’s normal for me,” right?
And then you also know what the smell of sweat is, right? After you say, “Oh, yeah, I’m not fresh right now.” Like, it smells like sweat.
So you know that, and you know what you’d normally smell like because you live in your body. When something comes up, and it doesn’t smell like it normally does, you know that’s the issue. That is the issue when you’re like, “What is that?” You know that it’s an abnormal smell. If you’re itching so much, well, that’s not normal, right? You normally are not itching. You’re not walking around itching. So it’s really knowing you and knowing what you normally are and what is abnormal for you.
