#1 OB-GYN: The LIE Women Were Told About BODY ODOR (This Changes Everything) | Shannon Klingman | #147

**Shannon Klingman** (0:00)
I think I just cracked the code on odor below the belt, and I think I'm gonna be able to tear down the entire feminine hygiene industry that has this baked in assumption that the vagina is to blame for odor below the belt, and they're wrong.

**Vonda Wright** (0:12)
I have Dr. Shannon Klingman, who is an OB-GYN, a wise woman and has become one of my favorite people.

**Shannon Klingman** (0:19)
Women were being over-medicalized for vaginal conditions they never had, and being over-treated with antibiotics they never needed, and walking out of the office with a diagnosis of bacterial vaginosis as an explanation for odor.

**Vonda Wright** (0:32)
God has equipped you mightily. Shannon, you are going to change the lives of millions of people.

**Shannon Klingman** (0:38)
Well-behaved women rarely make history, and you're going to ruffle some feathers, and you're going to make some people angry, but you're not here to live their life, you're here to live yours. Imagine creating a product in a new category that's going to disrupt the way women feel about themselves and their skin, and eliminate the odor between showers that makes us the most self-conscious. I was going to be able to change the lives of millions of women.

**Vonda Wright** (1:06)
So everybody, I am literally jumping out of my seat because this morning I have Dr. Shannon Klingman, who is an OB-GYNI entrepreneur extraordinaire with Exits, which is everybody's goal. She is a wise woman and has become one of my favorite people just because we were courageous enough to cold DM or cold call, if you will, in modern time. And so one reason I'm thankful for social media is because I get to be now around people like you. But I think about you every day, my girlfriend, not only because I think about you every day, but because like this morning, I had my tube of Lume body wash that does the real thing. And so the first time we had a phone call after we're like, I gotta meet you, let's DM, let's do something. You told me the whole story, the whole Lume founding story, starting as a OB-Gynie, sitting in the Fish Bowl at work, which is where you guys gathered apparently to do your charting, realizing that there had to be a better way. Do you mind sharing us? Because I think that'll lead us into your business and to whatever part of your personal life you want to talk about. But you and I were in the shower together this morning, Shannon.

**Shannon Klingman** (2:27)
I am Lume. I say I am Lume. If Lume was a person, you would be it. Yeah, I would be it. But I love this story because I think it really is a story about where good ideas come from everywhere, and then it just takes persistence and never fail, which is easier said than done. But as an OB-Gyn resident, I really recognized that women were being over-treated, over-medicalized for vaginal conditions they never had, and being over-treated with antibiotics they never needed, and walking out of the office with a diagnosis of BV or bacterial vaginosis as an explanation for odor. There's this vicious revolving door that when you notice this odor and you are treated for it, it gets in your head like there's something wrong with me. And so, when that odor returns, you just call the doctor's office and they phone in another prescription for you. And I noticed that this was happening like more than five times a year for some of the patients that I was seeing in our resident clinic. And these are walk-in clinics. It's a population for women who are uninsured or don't have an assigned physician. And so, it's kind of an urgent care situation. But we did have a consistent following of quite a few women, repeat customers and patients that were coming in.
So, it wasn't as if I was seeing these women one time and I was just taking their word for it. What I was recognizing is they were being seen by healthcare providers. An objective or a subjective evaluation was happening where you're looking at, is there discharge? Yes or no? Well, you know, that's subjective. Is there odor? Yes or no? Well, check the box, yes. Is the pH of the vagina a little bit elevated, which can be an indicator of BV? Well, there's a lot of reasons why a woman's vaginal pH would be higher. Post-intercourse, post-Menses, and then in the perian post-menopausal years, the pH of vaginal discharge goes up. So really, we have really benign and physiological explanations for why these things could be true, but yet we were given women this label. So I suspected that these odors were happening on the outside. When I personally experienced it, I was trying to get pregnant as a resident, and I was post-call, and I went to use the bathroom, and I sat down, and I smelled that smell. And I was like, well, I have BV. And then I did some checking around, and I recognized that this odor is on the outside, and it's happening because of exposure to semen. And my suspicion at the time was that bacteria that are commonly found in our GI tract find their way to the outside of our anatomy.