Episode 71
Vaginismus, Sexual Dysfunction & What Doctors Get Wrong | Dr. Corey Babb
What if the pain isn’t just physical—and what if fixing the body is only half the battle?
Sexual pain is one of the most misunderstood issues in medicine. I invited my friend and colleague Dr. Corey Babb to dive into why so many women still struggle with pain, even after their doctors tell them everything looks “normal.” Corey just released his new book A Practical Guide for Female Sexual Medicine, which aims to help clinicians actually treat sexual dysfunction—not just study it.
We unpack the deeper reasons patients experience conditions like vaginismus, vestibulodynia, and hypertonic pelvic floor, including trauma, religious shame, and outdated medical training. Corey and I also explore the groundbreaking Pacik method for treating vaginismus, including why Botox and dilators can truly change lives (and minds).
But as we both know, treatment is never just about the body. We talk about the psychological side of healing—including why some patients avoid intimacy even after their pain resolves. Corey shares his insights on retraining the brain, rebuilding trust, and supporting patients beyond the exam room.
We also discuss why pelvic pain is so often dismissed, how to empower women to advocate for themselves, and why our field still has so much work to do when it comes to teaching clinicians about sexual health.
If you’ve ever been told to “just relax” or “drink some wine” to fix your pain—you’ll want to hear this.
Highlights:
- Why sexual pain can persist even after physical treatment
- How trauma and religious shame impact vaginismus
- The Pacik method: Botox and dilator therapy explained
- Why desire and intimacy often lag behind pain relief
- The critical need for better sexual health education in medicine
If this episode helped you feel seen or gave you new insights, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share the episode with someone who might need it. Your reviews help more people find this important information and advocate for their health!
Dr. Babb’s Bio:
Dr. Corey Babb is a Tulsa native who has dedicated his life to bringing awareness and acceptance to female sexual health. Through education, activism, and empathy, he helps people feel heard and validated, empowering them to find answers in a complicated medical environment.
In addition to being a board-certified gynecologist, he is a Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health, a Menopause Society Certified Menopause Practitioner and a member in the International Society for the Study of Vulvovaginal Disorders. Currently, Dr. Babb serves on the board of directors for ISSWSH, is a reviewer for multiple sexual medicine journals, is a respected lecturer and educator, and has been featured in numerous national and international publications, as well as the author of A Practical Guide to Female Sexual Medicine (CRC Press).
Get in Touch with Dr. Corey Babb :
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Transcript
Welcome to another episode of gyno girl presents sex drugs and hormones I'm dr. Smita Rahman and board certified gynecologist here in Chicago with
emphasis in sexual medicine and menopause care. Today I have a very exciting guest, a friend of mine again from the International. I always talk about Ishwish on the podcast. So, but as you heard in my introduction, I'm excited to have it's Dr. Corey Babb. Do you like my, do you like my Oprah intro? Yeah, okay.
Corey Babb (:I like that, that's very good.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:How are you, Corey? So good to have you on today and I'm so excited to talk about your new project.
Corey Babb (:Yeah, thank you so much. Now I'm doing well. I'm super excited for this.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Awesome. Well, I think, you know, we both met at Ish wish we both on the board and so we both have the similar interests and we both treat midlife woman and sexual dysfunction. So I love that, you know, we have. Oh, wait, I think, on for I think it was paused for a second. I think I might have accidentally paused. Okay. I don't know if we should just because it says only two minutes of recording, which doesn't make sense.
Corey Babb (:from patients that come in and they're like, my doctor told me that, sure.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Maybe we should, I'm sorry, maybe we should just start back. Yeah, that's weird. Okay. Okay, so hi everyone. It's me, Dr. Samira Mond, Gyne Girl. Welcome back to another episode of Gyne Girl Presents Sex, Drugs, and Hormones. Today I have a very special guest, a good friend of mine from Ishwish that you heard the introduction and we're gonna get at it with Dr. Corey Babb. He didn't think I'd do that. He wasn't as good as the first one.
Corey Babb (:I didn't think, yeah. It's still really good, still really good.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Hey, Corey, so excited to have you here. How you doing?
Corey Babb (:I'm doing well, thank you, thanks for having me.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:So we both practice sexual medicine and menopause care. You guys will read in the notes, know, from my introduction, you know that Dr. Babs over at the Haven Center and we both know the trials and tribulations of learning how to do sexual medicine and how it comes about. So Corey decided to fix it. So Corey Tellis-H decided to fix sexual medicine for people trying to...
Corey Babb (:Hahaha
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Well, specifically clinicians who are looking to get help for sexual medicine needs. you know, like, tell us how you're, what you did.
Corey Babb (:Yeah, so I kind of took the knowledge that was out there and condensed it into a book called A Practical Guide for Female Sexual Medicine. like you said, it is directed towards clinicians, although it can be, I tried to make it so that anyone could understand it, but basically it takes kind of the discipline and distills it down into.
You know, overviews of anatomy, physiology, endocrinology with it, the domains of sexual dysfunction, different treatment modalities, diagnostic testing, different things kind of like that to try and put it together so it can literally be a, I wonder what I should do with this patient with low desire or, this patient's got vestibulitis. How do we treat that? And instead of going through a giant textbook and trying to flip through all the pages, you're like, boom, it's right there in that chapter. You can jump right to
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Mm-hmm.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Wonderful. And so it's a practical guide. And so I think that's what's the key here, because I feel like a lot of times when you read textbooks, is just a lot of maybe some research presented and probably, you know, some, you know, maybe nuance, maybe not as many nuances and actually how to treat patients. And although we know it's not truly like, you know, sexual medicine is not really algorithmic medicine, but there are things that we can do that's research based.
and so I feel like that's really amazing that you did this is, is that sort of where you're at with this in terms of like how it came to be.
Corey Babb (:Yeah, pretty much. It really was kind of this desire to say, know, those of us that do this and do this kind of day in and day out, we know these things, but, you treat patients a little bit differently than I treat patients who treat different for a little bit so and so, you know, and trying to have kind of a central source where we can take what's out there from the research, but distill it down into an easily accessible way was really kind of the impetus for doing it.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:That's great. And so you kind of talk about all the conditions that we treat in this realm. So do you want to kind of go through some of the big chapter topics and tell us?
Corey Babb (:Yeah, sure. So yeah, so it's basically divided into three different sections. So the first section is really a anatomy, physiology, endocrinology overview, and also kind of talking about the sexual medicine patient, like in a way to approach them. So talking about, you know, how are you doing informed consent with sexual medicine patients, like looking at things from a previous trauma standpoint, how to do specific types of exams, like vulvoscopy or things like that.
And the second portion really delves into the four domains of sexual function, know, so desire, arousal, orgasm, and pain. And I break down the most common conditions in those area and kind of go through a, you know, each portion has a quick reference guide. So if you just wanted to flip to that and say, okay, this is how do you diagnose this? How is it treated? Kind of thing like that, or it goes into a little more detail. And then the third section is a diagnosis and treatment specifically. So, you know, what lab tests could
you run? What are you looking for with those lab tests? Or if you were to do imaging or use different, you know, sexual metrises like the FSFI or DSDS, how could you use those in clinical practice? There's a surgery section in there. And then, yeah, that's kind of the breakdown of the three main sections for it.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Awesome. I love that. think that's great because, know, although I think there are, you know, there's one that was done through itch wish at some point, but, know, to really make it more practical and more applicable, I think is great. And, you know, people use multiple avenues of learning things. I think it's great.
You know, tell everyone, I mean, I always loved to hear the journey because we all have our journeys how we entered into this area, right? Like we were all doing delivering babies at one point and well, not everyone, I guess some people were urologists or what it means, but like you and I were both delivering babies at one point and doing things like what brought you into this area of practice?
Corey Babb (:Yeah.
Corey Babb (:So, you know, I was kind of thinking about this just randomly recently, like, why, what am I doing here? Why am I doing this? Yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:I'll do that like, what the hell am I doing right now?
Corey Babb (:Exactly. So, you know, when I went to college, I wanted to be a laryngologist. I want to do voice disorders. So my undergraduate degree is actually in music composition. And I was like, you know, I'm going to help people with, you know, if they have these singers and voice problems. And then I spent some time with a laryngologist and it was the most boring thing I've ever done in my life. No offense to them. Yeah, yeah, but.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Dr Sameena Rahman (08:07.808)
God bless those ENTs, you know?
Corey Babb (:So I went to med school, I was like, man, what am I gonna do? And you my whole family is women's health. My dad was OB-GYN, my mom worked in women's health, my sister, it was a labor and delivery nurse. She's now a hospice nurse, so kind of out of that. My wife has a master's in herbal medicine with a concentration in menopause and, you know, herbal therapies for that. So literally it is like, it's women's health everywhere in my family. And my dad was mostly an obstetrician. That's really what he loved to do. He loved delivering babies.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:I think I knew that, yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Mm-hmm.
Corey Babb (:And, you know, I kind of really liked more of the reproductive endo side of it. Like that was really what I loved. And so I even thought about doing fellowship in REI, but then, you know, the infertility stuff just wasn't really super exciting. you know, get out into practice and start getting asked questions that have no idea how to answer because we're taught that and find iswish. And then that kind of starts the journey of going down
that way and then getting menopause certified with NAMs at the time and then doing stuff with the ISSVD for bulvar disease. so here we are.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Great, that's it. mean, we have to learn through our own mechanism after a while, because it's not, although we're changing that, right? We're slowly starting to change it a little bit, but it's not there yet. Well, that's great. And I know that one of your areas of interest specifically in what, as was mine, is vaginismus. So can we talk a little bit about some of the patient difficulties that you see with vaginismus, know, who you're seeing or pelvic?
Corey Babb (:you
Corey Babb (:That's right, that's right.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:know, this form of pelvic floor dysfunction, genital pelvic, you know, pain disorders. I think that, you know, we both see it in different ways and, you know, I think we even share patients, but, you know, what, what do you see the commonalities, you know, where do you go with treatment? Let's talk a little bit about that.
Corey Babb (:Yeah, sure.
Corey Babb (:Sure, so, you know, I'm in Oklahoma, so we have a lot of Bible Belt kind of purity culture related vaginismus. I would say if there was one thing in this specific geographic area, my geographic patients that I see, that's kind of the main cause of it. Yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Right.
Corey Babb (:And so, you know, we kind of the thing that I, I am a huge fan or actually kind of my vaginismus treatment journey. happened to meet Peter Pasek at, you know, in this wish and actually like he had, he had just retired and I was like, I know what you, you're the Botox vaginismus guy. And he was like, you know, I'll come out and teach you if you want. I was on faculty at Oklahoma state at the time. And so we had like a grand rounds and everything and brought him out. So he trained, taught me and how he did it.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah.
Corey Babb (:And so I that's kind of my main Yeah, yeah, so he's awesome guy, so
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah, he walked me through my first one too.
that's awesome. And so let's talk about that because I don't think I've ever really gone into detail about sort of the PASIC, the Peter PASIC model of treating vaginismus and why it's so important, especially with these patients. know, we're speaking about the patients that, know, more likely just, you know, they can't have any penetration. They've never had any penetration. They've never used tampons. They've never, it's been ingrained in them not to have, you know, any kind of
Corey Babb (:Mm-hmm.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:anything in the vagina. So they come to us because they can't consummate relationships, marriages, whatever, or tolerate exams. And so what's your approach with them in terms of, and then tell us a little bit about the Dr. Pysits model that we both use in our work.
Corey Babb (:So I think the first thing that really helps with these patients is giving them a name of what is going on and saying, hey, this is an actual thing. And I know there's some conflict. If you look at the DSM, this GPPVD, vaginismus, is this a thing? I've gotten into some, yeah, you're right, right. But it's interesting like,
Dr Sameena Rahman (:It's such an old term, It's from like Sims days or whatever.
Corey Babb (:when you look at some of the newer data with it, is there a difference? Looking at actual EMG readings of the pubococcus aegismi, you can see that there is something there. You know it, you can test it from that. so to me at least, that's kind of the big thing to say this is a separate entity. Exactly.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Right. Right.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Right, it's just not Hypertone Pelvis, right?
Corey Babb (:Exactly. I think, like I said, kind of starting off with that, giving them a name to what's going on and kind of explaining why it happens is really helpful. And then with the PASIC model, you're looking at doing a combination of Botox and then using vaginal dilators. And I mean, we have our patients, they do the full, like they're sleeping with a dilator in the first three months, like now varying degrees to make which month they're in and dilating more frequently during the day than when I talk
to my pelvic floor PT colleagues. They're like, they dilate for 15 minutes once a day. We're having them dilate two hours in that first month every day. But for the patients that go through it, we have, I think, our last statistics, around 95 % curate for it. For the patients that do actually do the whole thing.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Right, exactly. And I think it's around the concept of, because most of these, your patients are also sedated or asleep for, know, right. So, you know, I think that's distinguishing it from when you do it for high tone pelvis, you know, for vestibulodinia, for high tone pelvis, these are patients that can't tolerate anything. And so we put them to sleep. And then, Pete, can you tell them all about how we leave the dilators in and stuff?
Corey Babb (:Correct. Yep. Yep.
Corey Babb (:Right. Yeah, so they, yep.
Corey Babb (:Yeah, so and that's kind of, think, one of the things you have someone who's never been able to tolerate penetration at all. And even the thought of having something internal can trigger that, you know, almost that hypervigilant state. And so you put them to, you know, conscious sedation, you go and you do the injections and you, start, you know, dilate them under anesthesia to make sure there's not any type of anatomical barrier that, know, because some of these patients, may, you know, they're, they may have an imperfect hymen or something, you something like that.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah, that's always a surprise that I'm like, it's imperforate.
Corey Babb (:a microperforate hymen. Yeah, yeah, I had an Amish patient recently that, yeah, she had a microperforate hymen. And so, you know, then they wake up with the size four dilator, kind of the...
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Because we also get into the mindset like, this is purity culture again. So this is what it is. But then lo and behold, they have a congenital anomaly. And so I've had a number of patients like that. And it's like, well, I mean, they're probably both, but this is a big obstructive.
Corey Babb (:Exactly. Yeah.
Corey Babb (:Yeah, well, and you you're trying to if they're like, well, I'll just push through it's like, sure, you know, we know that it's it's the pain associated with tearing those things is not anything that anyone wants to deal with. so. Right. Yeah, exactly.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:And then sometimes they're really thick, the band is.
Corey Babb (:Yeah, they wake up with that dilator in place. And I think that's honestly my favorite thing with the whole procedure is when they wake up and they're like, you're like, how are doing? Like, I'm fine. Like you have a dilator and like I do. What are you talking about? And you're like, look, you can feel it. And they're like, what? And they take it out. They can put it back in. It doesn't hurt. And they're like, what is going, you mind blown type thing. That's and that that's awesome. I love that.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:It takes out immediately.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, I think he says it flips the switch in their brain, which I think it not. He's always like, it's going to flip the switch. so, but I think that's what it takes because I always, you know, we've always talked about the, the absence of pleasure, absence of pain is not pleasure. And so for even any of these patients who have been traumatized for so long with either like, you know, medical trauma or genital trauma, whatever, or just having this, these diagnoses that come to them.
Corey Babb (:Yep.
Corey Babb (:Right.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:that even when you fix their anatomical issue, you do a vestibulectomy, you do a hymenectomy, you give them the Botox and you fix their physical problems. But there's this element that, know, we don't tell patients it's in their head, but that's part of it. Like it's all, it's biopsychosocial, right?
Corey Babb (:Right, exactly. Well, and that's the other thing too. You know, get them to where you're like, all right, hey, now you can have sex. Now we have to get you, or, you know, help with the want. You know, that's the other aspect of it too. So I, we always tell patients like, this is the first part of it. And some people dive right in afterwards. They're like, I'm having sex every day. You can't stop me. You know, it's been however long. But then you have patients who are like, okay, I can do it. It doesn't hurt.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yep.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah.
Corey Babb (:but I still have that anxiety that it's going to hurt again. So I still have the avoidant behavior.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah. So then you have to retrain the brain as well as the pelvic floor, is, think the challenge, think that's even the most challenging for most patients. When you say, especially with the ones that go years and years without consummation. And so do, is there, do you think there's one type of like, I guess, psych therapy that helps them more than others? Like, are you trying to other things other than just like pure cognitive?
Corey Babb (:Mm-hmm. Yep.
Corey Babb (:Right, Yep, yep.
Corey Babb (:So.
EMDR and ART are the two main things I recommend for that. know, if there is a specific trauma, I'll do EMDR mostly. If it's more of a generalized thing than ART. I do wonder a lot on this, just kind of thinking out loud about like TMS, you know, the trans cortical magnetic, you know, stimulation. I just, think those are, that would be really interesting, even ketamine therapy for some of these patients. just, but there's, you know, not any data on that for this. So.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah, I think I've tried that with a couple of patients who I knew had some PTSD and then they, know, really bad depression. There's only one patient I think it actually helped. The other one was like, and then, know, there's like the whole stellate ganglion block with patients that have PTSD. I had been hopeful for like some PGAD patients that had that where I felt like it was coming from.
Corey Babb (:Nah, that's not it.
Corey Babb (:Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:you know, region five at some point. I don't think it, and it's so complicated. feel like when you're working on that region five, the brain stuff gets too complicated to really like say one.
Corey Babb (:Yeah, and you're almost like, yeah, throwing up trying to figure out like, what you know, is it a locus coeruleus thing? Like, is it a, you know, this hyper adrenergic, you know, aspect of like, what all kind of and
I think that would be really interesting just to kind of think about. And I don't know if you're seeing more patients that kind of are fitting into some of these dysautonomia type profiles. And they got this hyperandrenergic dysautonomia, this constant fight or flight all the time. How do you calm that down?
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Mm-hmm, for sure.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yes. Yes. Yes.
Corey Babb (:And we see that with sexual issues, with obviously pelvic floor, the correlation there with hypertonicity. That's, think, a brave new frontier for what we do. Yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah, we got to figure that because it's just like that constant catastrophic station that happened. Like, and it just feeds itself like the whole thing. And that becomes very challenging, I think, not only for the clinician, obviously the patient who experiences it. And it's just very overwhelming. Is the thing we always talk about, like we can fix the biology, we can fix the physical stuff sometimes. There's a lot of work.
Corey Babb (:Right. Right.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Sometimes I feel so bad telling patients how much they have, like you have to do the work. It's like, you know, but you do, you have to do some of the work to kind of.
Corey Babb (:Some people want the magic bullet and it's like, well, you know, I wish there was one thing to that could fix it all, but you know, it's so multifactorial.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:So multifactorialist thing, What are you seeing a lot of in your office otherwise, other than the vaginismus? I know you probably see a lot of menopausal stuff happening right now.
Corey Babb (:Yeah, I mean would say the you know perimenopause menopause stuff is super hot right now.
So we see a lot of that. The other thing, I've had a couple more PGADs they've kind of filtered in recently. Yeah, but I mean, I'd say between probably our most common procedure that we do is Botox or pelvic floor dysfunction. So I'd say outside of the menopausal slash kind of hormone patients, that hypertonic pelvic floor stuff is the most common thing that we probably see.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah, yeah, I have a of this too actually.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah. I was just telling someone, I'm like, well, I mean, if you're not clenching, I don't think you're paying attention with what's going on in the world. I feel like everyone's clenching right now. The anxiety is pan-adapted. Yeah, It's so true though. Like, I just feel like, you know, and then you always ask, clenching your jaw? Okay, then the pelvis is also happening. Yeah. So that's how it.
Corey Babb (:If you're not clinching, you're not paying attention. That's that should be your that's your t-shirt.
Corey Babb (:Yeah, I see.
Corey Babb (:huh, yeah. We got plantar fasciitis,
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Well, what's happening? What else are you going to be doing lately? What's next up on your frontier here?
Corey Babb (:So what I like, know, depending on how this book goes, I have this idea to do like a whole kind of practical guide series of.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Very nice.
Corey Babb (:of things kind of focused, know, in more of these, I'll say niche areas. I don't think they should be niche areas. And they should be, you know, the, yeah, very, you know, lots of people have this stuff, but, know, kind of that same format with, you know, menopause or vulvar disorders or things like that. That's kind of long-term thought, you know, at Haven Center, we're trying to figure out like, okay, do we need to grow? You know, because right now it's me, you know, it's just me. I have an RN and then I have my office manager and kind of my, my
Dr Sameena Rahman (:No, they're not niche, but yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:or mounthly.
Corey Babb (:you know, front office person. And it's like we're kind of getting, you know, booked as much as we can see during the day. And we always try and have rooms we can work people in, but it still is like, do we need to move? Do I need to get, you know, another provider? What type of stuff do I need to do for that?
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Mm-hmm.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:It's hard sometimes.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah, I think that's the thing when your name gets out there and people start realizing that they can get help and what do you do with your practice? Because you've been solo now for a whole long.
Corey Babb (:will have been open for three years in October.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:wonderful. And before that, what were you doing again?
Corey Babb (:So I did, like, I worked for Oklahoma State University for a good portion of time.
on clinical faculty there and then I did some stuff with managed care, know, just like local things, kind of the big healthcare groups, but that just did not speak to me. I liked academics a lot. I liked teaching a ton, but some of the politics with it gets to where you can't, you know, do a lot of what you want to do. So it's like, well, this is it. You know, you got to, I got to do my own thing.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah. Yeah. I know that's what I feel. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. All right. Cause yeah, then you just, I always say that the system really sets up us for failure in that respect, because it's like, you got to see 30 patients a day. You got to see these patients and it's just not feasible with the kind of stuff that we diagnose and treat, I think.
Corey Babb (:No, not at all.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah. And can you think of like a time where you felt like, you know, there's a patient that kind of woke up out of like, who maybe wasn't advocating for themselves, like, you know, because my big thing is like, we need to teach women how to advocate for themselves, right? Like, and I feel like on some level, it's easy to
Corey Babb (:Sure, sure.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:you know, discuss what's happening or maybe even to figure it out. then like when you're not getting the help that you need or not able to advocate for yourself, like how do you sort of promote, you know, women taking control or advocating for themselves? Because I think both of us practice in a way that we are, you know, trying to give the best care we can in a shared decision making fashion, right? We're not practicing patriarchal medicine. But I feel like that's I think that's always the hard
like when patients go to different places and they're like, well, how am I supposed to say this or what am I supposed to do or how am I supposed to do it? What are you helping?
Corey Babb (:Now, I mean, I think what we do kind of a mixture of, we do a lot of stuff with social media, obviously, trying to end just education. think education is key to have patients kind of really take charge of their own health. They have to be able to know what's going on and not just kind of accept some of these very, the platitudes. It's kind of like the, sex hurts, drink some wine. It's like, that's not really gonna fix anything. We actually had though, thinking about patients that really like after,
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Mm-hmm. All right.
Corey Babb (:coming down like really did something. We actually had a patient start a non-profit for women with gynecologic pain. It's called the Aziza Project.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah, I think I feel like, yeah. Aziza, right? Yeah.
Corey Babb (:Yeah, yeah. And so she was she came down to see us and you know was was just like I felt like my gosh. I you know she was in Washington state so she's like you know travel down to Oklahoma and she's like there's got to be resources for people because you know there aren't a lot of us that do this as you know. You you're in Chicago you gotta you know
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Right.
Corey Babb (:kind of in that whole area of the country. Here in Oklahoma, it's like I'm really the only one in Oklahoma per se, got colleagues in Dallas, but even in Arkansas, there's not really many Kansas cities, not too, but so people have to travel. And so that's what kind of the big thing with Aziza project was to have funding for people to be able to travel and see these specialists to get their needs taken care of.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah, yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:So if patients are having trouble, so you said the Zisa project is something, who's, you guys are funding it or you're raising money for it?
Corey Babb (:No, the patient started it and basically, mean, it just became a nonprofit, did the whole nonprofit filing and yeah. Yeah, yeah, her name's Stephanie. But no, it's a great resource. I also think another really good one too is whole Lykens Sclerosis Support Network.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:That's wonderful. Yeah, I think I follow her on social media.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Network, Yeah.
Corey Babb (:They are super active with doing things and education and stuff like that too. yeah, Type Lit, NVA, that's another good one too.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:And tight lips for you know, volar Yeah, I love that, know, because they're actually trying to get some of the clinicians to actually teach the residents I feel like that's still a part that we have to fix is you know
One lecture probably isn't going to fix it, but at least they're introduced to something that like, you know, we never got right. We weren't even stay away from the clitoris. Don't what's the best of you? know? Yeah.
Corey Babb (:Well, yeah, and I.
Yeah, exactly. So no, it's really interesting. I gave a lecture, I gave two lectures at a KUG, the Osteopathic OB-GYN Society, their annual meeting last month.
it was crazy that some of the people that came up, know, this one guy came up afterwards. He's like, well, so I've been treating, you I see a lot of these lichen simplex sclerosis patients. And he's like, you know, I don't think they need to be on long-term steroids. Like, I think they're just fine. You know, they don't have any symptoms. I tell them only use the stuff. And I'm like, well, I said this in a lecture, this is what the data says, this is the stuff he goes, but I mean, do you really believe that? Do you really think? And it's like,
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:What, do we not believe data anymore?
Corey Babb (:Yeah, I was like, yes, I do. And, you know, he's like, well, they're old. That's what he was saying. He's like, they're like 80. A lot of these patients, they don't want to be, use steroids every day. And it's like, you're, that's not the concern. There's a big difference when giving someone like, you know, methylprednisolone orally every day versus, you know, clebetazole.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Right. Topical.
Corey Babb (:know, twice a week for, you know, maintenance dosing for LS or something. So it has to be done at the, you know, resident level, the med school level, and even then, you know, kind of national meetings still.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:All right.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yes, absolutely. Yeah, that's great. I think that's what we have to do and we have to continue to do it and hopefully, because it's this generation that we are that didn't get it, right? So it's like we have to, have to like, which is why I think like this year the Menopause Society was sold out and Ishwish was I think sold out too. And so we had a lot of...
Corey Babb (:Yeah
Corey Babb (:I was like at the most in a tad, so...
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Like we had over 700 people this year. Yeah. Well, I guess we got work to do.
Corey Babb (:Mm-hmm.
I'm glad you're doing all the work. I'm glad you just wrote this book. wanted everyone to hear about it so that the clinician, well, anybody that wants to get a practical guide to female sexual medicine could find it. So we'll put all the information in the show notes. And, you know, I really appreciate you coming in. you're tired from this. No, but I love your
Corey Babb (:I got little bags under my eyes. I'm all right, you know.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:your Instagram too, always post a lot of good stuff on there.
Corey Babb (:Thank you. Yeah, I try to do like Mr. Rogers for sexual medicine is my tagline. I usually have the cardigan on, so, yep, yep.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah, you did actually you should start changing your shoes and then like Yeah, we're taking off your cardigan putting on the cardigan like yeah, I think we're aging ourselves people probably don't know who mr. Rogers
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Oh, well, let's talk a little bit about that. I mean, do you get do you still get stuff about I mean, obviously, you know, you know, gynecology used to be a very male dominated profession. And so I think that like, the shift happened, I don't know when maybe 1020 years ago or something that more. Did you find that did you feel anything like when you were like, do you still did you feel in the time of training that people didn't want to see you because you were male or I mean, because
Corey Babb (:We would see it occasionally.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:I feel like they're still
Corey Babb (:Yeah, so like it's interesting my residency class. mean in my like actual class there were four of us and like it was three guys, you know, three guys and a girl, you know, so like it so but even when I was on at on faculty you saw the shift from being very male dominated in the number of residents to being mostly female dominated. But you know I view this it's you're right I don't have experiential knowledge. I can't tell you what it feels like to have a period. I can't tell you what it feels like to have endometriosis, you know, things like that.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Okay.
Corey Babb (:Like I can empathize, I can be sympathetic and say, stinks. I have felt pain. I've had cramping, know, things like that before. But it's kind of, you know, and it sounds so cliche, but it's like, you know, you don't have to have a heart attack to be a cardiologist or, you know, like have cancer to be an oncologist. So, so I don't get it really much. And especially people calling the office now, they know like I'm the only one there, you know, I'm a guy, obviously.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Right. Right.
Yeah, right.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Exactly.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah.
Right. Right.
Corey Babb (:just on social media. usually TikTok and it's, you why you guy in, you know, with the girl part, you know, like it's for grammar and we use it to educate about, you know, things. So.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:Yeah.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:All right. Yeah. they'll say all sorts of stuff like hey, shouldn't you get your hair done? Like, I'm like, that's what your content. my God. Maybe you need to like, don't go rambling on. I remember that was like a big one on one of mine. You ramble too much. I'm like, just scroll on then you know.
Corey Babb (:No one has commented on my hair, so you know, well, maybe I'll go get my hair done.
Corey Babb (:Yeah, it's just the the joy of just having a conversation. I mean most conversations rambling, you know
Dr Sameena Rahman (:gone anyway. Anyway, well, thank you for coming on to the show today. And we'll put all the stuff in the show notes. And Dr. Corey Bab is amazing. know, if you want to get some help with any of these issues or you know, want him to come talk to you at your location to he's amazing. So we love having him with issue and everything as well. So thank you.
Corey Babb (:thank you.
Corey Babb (:Thank so much.
Dr Sameena Rahman (:My name is Dr. Smita Rahman. I'm Gyne Girl. Thanks for joining me on Gyne Girl Presents Sex, Drugs, and Hormones. Remember, I'm here to educate so you can advocate for yourself. Please join me on my next episode.
