Love Stings, what you need to know about Herpes, symptoms and how to deal with it
December 7, 2006
It’s not a pleasant topic, but if you’re sexually active you need to know about herpes. It’s one of the most common STD’s contracted by adults.
“There are two forms of the herpes virus,” says Chris Baptiste, R.N., a nurse at Wilmington Health Center in Wilmington, MA. “Cold sores or oral herpes (HSV-1) appears on or around the lips, while genital herpes (HSV-2) generally appears below the waist on the genitals.”
According to Planned Parenthood, the virus can be spread through touching, kissing, or sexual contact including anal, vaginal, and oral sex. Herpes can be spread even when the infected person is not having an outbreak of the virus.
Planned Parenthood explains that cold sores are common in young children, who can contract them from exposure to active cold sores of adults and other children. Emily Watson*, a senior at Norwich University, has had HSV-1 (oral herpes) since she was a young child. “I can remember having ‘cold sores’ as young as four or five,” she says. “I am not sure where I was exposed to the virus, but as I have gotten older the outbreaks have not been as bad.”
Obviously, genital herpes has different symptoms than its slightly less offensive oral counterparts. “The patient will feel an initial tingling in the area where the lesion is going to appear,” says Lenny Sinclair, R.N., a nurse at Burlington Medical in Burlington, MA. “It is usually followed by pain. The virus lies in the nerve root and produces painful lesions.”
An individual’s first genital herpes infection is known as primary herpes. Symptoms include:
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The Inside squirt on Condoms on Campus: Ribbed, Flavored & Lubricated
December 7, 2006
When used correctly, condoms are 98% effective in preventing pregnancy. When used with a spermicide, condoms are 99.8% effective in reducing the risk of a sexually transmitted disease. Those are pretty good odds. One study found using a condom during sex is 10,000 times safer than not using one, according to Monica Rodriguez of the Sexuality Information and Education Council in New York City.
Still, it seems a lot of guys out there try every excuse in the world to get out of using condoms. I’ve probably heard most of them from my ex-boyfriend personally. (Notice I said ex.) Here are some of the most common excuses — and why they make no sense.
I’ll pull out at the very end.
Most people assume all the semen comes out at the end and if they pull out at the pinnacle of pleasure, they’ll prevent pregnancy. However, Rodriguez says, “When the penis is erect, there is a little bit of pre-ejaculatory fluid that is released. This fluid may contain sperm as well as the virus or bacteria that causes STDs.” Also, the probability for pregnancy using “coitus interruptus” (did you know there was a technical term for it?) is 19%. That’s a little too high for my taste.
I’m embarrassed to buy them at the store.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!What to do when you catch the flu?
December 2, 2006
Sunday morning arrives and your head is aching. You feel like you’ve been blindsided by a Range Rover. Your hall-mates give you unending grief; long gone are the days when they offered sympathy to the hung over. What they don’t know is that you went to the movies last night and didn’t drink a drop. What showed up and knocked you down? The flu.
Flu 101
Many people mistakenly believe the flu involves a storm in the stomach. If you’re spending most of your sick time praying to the porcelain god (and you haven’t been drinking) you most likely have gastroenteritis, commonly called “stomach flu” but in reality no relation to the influenza virus, a.k.a. the flu.
The influenza virus is one of a changing group of viruses that causes upper respiratory infections, much like a cold or acute bronchitis. Unlike the sly cold, however, the flu arrives as subtly as a freight train, causing head and muscle aches, chills, fever (up to 104° is common), fatigue and dry cough. Right from the start you’re utterly spent. After a few days, these harsher symptoms fade and are usually replaced with more cold-like sensations such as congestion and sore throat.
Insidiously, the influenza virus sneaks into your body through the mucus membranes in your eyes, nose, and mouth. The beastly bug resembles a sphere with spikes sticking out, little thorns made up of proteins called antigens. After arriving uninvited, the antigens begin to mock your immune cells, which respond to the taunting by sending sniper proteins — antibodies — to fight off the virus.
Every strain of flu virus has slightly different antigens, meaning your immune cells must create a new slew of antibodies every time a different strain invades. Fortunately, the immune cells never forget a foe; if a flu strain shows up to wreak havoc a second time, the antibody pattern is pulled from the memory bank and quickly replicated.
Shooting Up
Up to 50% of the US population is stricken by the flu every year, and people in highly concentrated areas (read: classrooms, dorms, bars) are more likely to fall prey. However, there are several approaches you can take to avoid the virus. The most common involves getting a shot.
Stop Chlamydia before it starts
December 2, 2006
Do you know enough about chlamydia? You probably know you don’t want it, but there’s more you need to know.
First of all, chlamydia trachomatis (that’s its full name), a bacterial infection, is the most common sexually transmitted infection (STI). Four times as common as gonorrhea. Six times as common as herpes. More than 30 times as common as syphilis. Three million Americans get it every year. And guess who’s most at risk? Women and men under the age of 25.
If you’re sexually active, especially with multiple partners, you’re at risk. Chlamydia is spread by vaginal and anal intercourse. “It’s so easily transmissible,” says Susan Kaufman, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey.
The news gets worse. When you have a cold or the flu, you know. You have symptoms. With chlamydia, there’s a very good chance you won’t know you have it unless you get screened. According to Planned Parenthood, up to 85% of women and 40% of men infected with chlamydia show no symptoms.
Therefore, sexually active individuals should get screened.
Diagnosis is fairly simple: It can be done by a urine test, a test of cells from the penis, cervix, urethra, or anus, or examination of the cervix. If you are diagnosed with chlamydia, you should tell your sexual partners and you can both begin treatment with antibiotics immediately — even if you’ve never noticed any symptoms.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!Girls, Guys & Gonorrhea: Facts and information about the common sexually transmitted infection
December 2, 2006
Got gonorrhea? You don’t want it. But if you do have it, you need to deal with it. NOW.
Unfortunately, you might have it and not know it: According to Planned Parenthood, 80% of the women (who have the greatest risk of contracting the infection) and 10% of the men with gonorrhea show no symptoms. So if there’s any chance you could have gonorrhea — which is spread through vaginal, anal, and oral intercourse — you should get tested as soon as possible.
If you do have symptoms — and many people with gonorrhea do not — here’s what you might see, according to Planned Parenthood.
Women may experience frequent or burning urination; menstrual irregularities; pelvic or abdominal pain; pain during intercourse or gynecological examination; yellowish or greenish discharge from the vagina; swelling or tenderness of the vulva; or arthritic pain. Symptoms would appear within ten days of infection.
Men may experience pus-like discharge from the urethra or pain during urination. These symptoms can show up one to 14 days after infection.
Left untreated, gonorrhea, a bacterial infection, can lead to
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!How to deal with Bad breath, farting and other interesting bodily functions
December 1, 2006
You’re sitting in class and you smell something awful coming from the back of the room. Who could it be? The guy in the hat and sweatshirt who looks like he just rolled out of bed? The girl who looks like she spent all morning getting ready and would never own up to it? Or is it your own stench that is making your classmates gag as they sit through another thrilling day of Ancient European History? Surely, it couldn’t be you. Could it?
It might be body odor; it might be gas. Whatever the random ailment is, it’s probably something no one likes to talk about publicly.
But all of us have quietly had to deal with it on the giving and receiving end: Gas, bad breath, body odor and other embarrassing ailments have been a part of everyone’s lives at one point or another. So, before you start losing friends, here’s how to avoid these and other bodily malfunctions, and what to do about these ailments if preventive medicine fails you.
Halitosis (Bad Breath)
This is a terrible affliction that can affect your social, school, or work life without anyone ever mentioning the problem. It can lead to late night failure with that special someone you’ve been eyeing and it can turn job prospects into bad memories.
According to doctors at American Breath Specialists, 85-90% of bad breath comes from within your mouth and can be treated with a healthy dose of breath mints and some basic dental hygiene (brushing your teeth and tongue and flossing). Experts also suggest keeping your stomach acid calm and your nasal passages clear to avoid scaring away your neighbors.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!Low-carb diets are all the rage - but do they work?
December 1, 2006
For years, many dieters have believed that a low fat diet — including pasta, breads, and even low-fat cookies — is they key to achieving successful weight loss. But if Dr. Barry Sears, creator of the Zone diet, and his fellow low-carbohydrate proponents are correct, then there are a lot of mistaken dieters out there.
When Sears’ book “The Zone” was released in 1990’s, most popular diets of the time advocated eating lots of carbohydrates like vegetables and fruits, and cutting out proteins and fats like red meat and butter. However, Sears’s book resurrected the idea of the high protein, low carbohydrate diet, which was first popularized by Dr. Robert Atkins in the 1970s. There are now a multitude of variations on these low carbohydrate diets, including Sugarbusters, Protein Power and Get Skinny on Fabulous Foods.
The Zone advocates eating carbohydrates, protein, and fat in a 40-30-30 ratio. The Zone is supposed to work because it’s tailored to a person’s lean body mass (total weight minus weight of fat) by adjusting the amount of food consumed according to a specific formula Sears developed.
In theory, the Zone optimizes the body’s performance by eliminating quick fluctuations in insulin levels due to the consumption of certain foods. Insulin removes sugar from the blood and stores it as fat; by suppressing large fluctuations in insulin, the amount of fat the body stores is theoretically reduced. Most of the low carbohydrate diets follow some variation on Sears’ reasoning that insulin is “the fat molecule”.
Jim Benson, MD, an endocrinologist at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, takes issue with the depiction of insulin as the reason for weight gain.
“Proponents of these diets make insulin sound dangerous,” Benson says. It’s not — insulin is a naturally created hormone.
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