STD’s and Teens

So much wrong information about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) gets passed around that it’s no surprise the diseases do too. Of course, the only way to be 100% sure you won’t get an STD like herpes, chlamydia, or HIV, is not to have any type of sex (abstinence). But if you do decide to have sex, you’ll need to stay informed and learn what’s true — and what’s not.
Here are 5 of the more common things that people get wrong about STDs.

Myth: Only “trashy” people get STDs.
Fact: STDs don’t discriminate.

Rich people get STDs. Poor people get them. Athletes get them. Math geeks get them. CEOs and professors get them. Even someone having sex for the first time can get an STD. The only people who have no risk of getting an STD are people who haven’t had sex or any kind of sexual contact.

What can you do? If you decide to have sex, always use a condom every time. Even if you’re already on another kind of birth control, like the Pill, you should still use a condom. That’s because condoms are the only type of birth control that reduces the risk of getting an STD.

Myth: If your partner has an STD, you’ll see it.
Fact: There’s often no sign that a person has an STD.

Even doctors often can’t tell by looking if people have STDs. So they need to do tests, like bloodwork. People with STDs might not know they have them: STDs don’t always cause symptoms. But it is possible to carry and spread the virus without ever having an outbreak. Untreated STDs can add up to serious health problems, like infertility (the inability to have a baby) or pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), which may land you in the hospital.

What can you do? Even if you both think you’re clean, get checked out before having sex. Then use a condom every time, just to be sure. It can take a while for some STDs to show up on tests.

Myth: You can avoid STDs by having oral or anal sex.
Fact: Where there’s sex (oral, anal, vaginal, or even just sexual contact), there can be STDs.

The viruses or bacteria that cause STDs can enter the body through tiny cuts or tears in the mouth and anus, as well as the genitals. Some STDs, like herpes or genital warts, can spread just through skin-to-skin contact with an infected area or sore.
What can you do? Use a condom or a dental dam every time you have oral or anal sex. If the taste of latex isn’t your thing, there are flavored condoms made specifically for oral sex.

Myth: Once you’ve had an STD, there’s no chance of getting it again.
Fact: You can get some STDs more than just once.

Some STDs are yours for life, like herpes and HIV. Others, like chlamydia and gonorrhea, can be treated, but you may get infected again if you have sexual contact with someone who has them.
What can you do? Protect yourself with condoms, of course! And if you’re having sex, let your doctor know so you can get tested regularly. If you do get diagnosed with an STD, your partner should be treated at the same time you are. That way your partner will avoid future problems — and avoid reinfecting you.

Myth: If you get checked and you’re STD free, your partner doesn’t need to get checked as well.
Fact: Your partner could have an STD and not know it.

Who wants to make the effort to get tested, find out they’re clean, and then end up catching an STD from a partner anyway?
What can you do? Get tested together. It may not be your most romantic date, but nothing says “I care” like trying to protect a boyfriend or girlfriend from illness.

STDs are more than just an embarrassment. They’re a serious health problem. Left untreated, some STDs can cause permanent damage, such as infertility and even death.
There are tons of myths out there about sex and STDs — the ones above are just a few of them. Luckily, you only need to remember two essential truths:
1. Use condoms.
2. Get tested.

Reviewed by: Krishna Wood White, MD, MPH
Date reviewed: June 2009
The Information for this blog was found on Kidshealth.org to find this article and more information on teen and sex.

Lack of Sleep

Lack of Sleep Can Affect Your Health

From the July 6, 2003 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution comes an article about how loss of sleep over a period of time can have dire consequences on your health.  The article states, “Recent research indicates that chronic under-sleeping does more than undermine productivity or make people more irritable. It also increases the risk of accidents and may contribute to serious, long-term problems such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease.”

The article notes that according to the National Sleep Foundation up to 60 percent of Americans report at least occasional sleep problems.  A national study published this year tracking 71,617 nurses found that women who got five hours of sleep or less nightly over a decade had a 39 percent greater risk of heart attack than those who managed eight hours.  Scientists at the University of Chicago also found that building up a sleep “debt” over a matter of days can impair metabolism and disrupt hormone levels. After restricting 11 healthy young adults to four hours of sleep for six nights, researchers found their ability to process glucose (sugar) in the blood had declined, in some cases to the level of diabetics.

Dr. Carl E. Hunt, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research in Washington notes, “Basically healthy adults who are acutely sleep-restricted tend to eat more, and what they eat more of tends to be carbohydrates and high in fat.”  One study published this year found that after two weeks of four-hour sleep, a group of healthy young adults performed as poorly on tests of alertness, memory and mental agility as those who had gone without any sleep for two nights. And they didn’t seem aware of their gradually deteriorating performance.

Sleep also adds benefits to health. Researchers who scanned sleepers’ brains found that the areas involved in learning new tasks remain active in slumber.  This suggests that sleep plays a role in storing information for future retrieval.  Dr. Steven M. Scharf, medical director of the University of Maryland Sleep Disorders Center summed up the situation nicely when he said, “I like the old days, when they played ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ on TV everybody went to bed.”

Tips for getting better sleep:

Change Your Day to Maximize Sleep

• Wake up and go to bed at the same time every day, even on weekends.
• Limit your intake of alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco products during the day, especially in the hours before sleep.
• Finish eating 2 to 3 hours before bedtime, avoiding big meals.
• Exercise regularly. Finish your exercise a few hours before bedtime.
• Eliminate napping or limit the duration to 20 to 30 minutes.

 

Create the Best Possible Sleep Environment

• Remove electronics like computers and televisions from your room.
• Keep the room cool, comfortable, quiet, and dark.
• Use a comfortable mattress and pillows.
• Use the bed only for sleep and intimacy.

World AIDS Day

There are Five things you can do to Respect and Protect.

1. Find out the facts about HIV and make sure the people you talk to know the facts not the myths.

2. Know your HIV status: get tested

3. Talk to all new partners about using condoms during sex: protect yourself and your partner

4. If someone tells you they are HIV positive, treat them with respect. Don’t tell their status without their consent.

5. Wear a red ribbon as a symbol of support for everyone affected by HIV and to raise awareness.

African American Women and Breast Cancer

Racial and ethnic minorities still tend to receive lower-quality health care than whites even when insurance status, income, age and severity of conditions are comparable and are still more likely to be diagnosed with cancer at a later stage when treatment is less successful.  With that being said here is a study that was published by the American Cancer Society click here to view.

Confused Over Cancer Screenings

The new recommendations for how often women should have cancer screenings has started a new political debate. Recent Cancer Screening Changes Leave Many Confused

But experts say science is behind reasoning that testing less is OK

Posted November 24, 2009

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
 
 TUESDAY, Nov. 24 (HealthDay News) — The world of cancer screening has been upended in the past two weeks.
 
 Not only did the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) just raise the age at which it recommends women get their first mammogram from 40 to 50, but the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (ACOG) decided that adolescents should be spared the inconvenience and possible risks of cervical cancer screening, and wait until they reach the age of 21 for such testing. Both groups also recommended screening less frequently.
 
 Add to that the long-simmering debate on the value of PSA testing for prostate cancer and the fact that both the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the American College of Radiology have condemned the new USPSTF recommendations, it’s no wonder patients and even experts feel like they are suffering from a bad case of medical whiplash.
 

Was the timing of the announcements anything more than coincidence? Are the changes a reflection of new science, attempts to influence the current raging health-care debate or just medical business as usual?
 
 The timing, by most accounts, was purely accidental.
 
 ”I think it’s a coincidence that this [the mammogram recommendation] came out when it did, right in the middle of the health-care reform discussion. It’s a good panel, one that was dedicated to getting the right answer to what should be done about this,” said Dr. Robert J. Barnet, senior scholar in residence at the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C.
  

Added Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology at Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La: “This is nothing new. Cancer screening guidelines have been changing as more scientific knowledge accumulates.”
 
 And much of the new knowledge does suggest that over-screening does happen, often resulting in false-positive results, which lead to more biopsies and more angst. This is true of breast, cervical, prostate and other forms of cancer, experts concur.
 
 ”There’s appropriate screening and there is the appropriate population that should be getting that screening, and there is the appropriate screening interval,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. “We can violate all of those things.”
 

Meanwhile, false-positive results from mammographies are more common in younger (age 40 to 49) women than in the upper age bracket. And the age cut-offs for screening may be artificial.
 
 ”We like to lump people into big decades of life, so the risk of a 40-year-old woman and the risk of a 49-year-old woman [for breast cancer] are different,” Brooks noted. “The risk at 40 is much less than the risk at 49.”
 
 ”Younger women are at higher rates of false-positives, which results in more biopsies, more procedures being done and women getting callbacks for extra mammograms,” he added. “This creates anxiety for something that’s not anything bad.”
 
 Also, there’s increasing evidence that some cancers will never turn into anything dangerous and, therefore, don’t warrant treatment.
 

“Our definition of cancer was given to us by German pathologists in the 1840s after they looked at biopsies from autopsy specimens,” Brawley explained. “Now, 170 years later, we’ve progressed in terms of imaging, in terms of medical diagnostics into what I call the genetic and molecular biologic age, but our ability to define cancer has not progressed beyond the light microscope. What we need to be able to do eventually is say that ‘this cancer is never going to progress,’ it is not going to spread and invade other organs in the body. But right now we don’t have the molecular tools to predict their behavior.”
 
 ”Not only do we need to find small tumors, we need to know more about the biology of those tumors,” added Dr. Michael V. Seiden, president and CEO of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.
 
 Until those tools are developed, imperfect screening is going to lead to over-diagnosis and unnecessary treatment.
 
 Still, there’s no question that the revisions do fit into a larger and rapidly changing health-care picture.
 

“Where I think the question was solely focused on ‘can you prevent cancer death?’ … 10 years ago or 20 years ago, I think there has been a much more open dialogue about the burden of screening, the cost burden, the anxiety burden, the false-positive burden,” Seiden said. “As screening techniques become more sensitive, you do a better and better job of capturing people with cancer but you also do a better job of capturing people with tumors they might not have died from. So, all of a sudden the incidence of pre-malignant breast disease, the incidence of low-grade prostate cancer, starts doubling and the death rate drops, but only very, very modestly.”
  

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Halloween Saftey Tips for Your Children

Keeping your child safe should always be a priority. Making sure that safety is first is the key to having a fun Halloween.  Here are a few tips that you and your child can follow in ensure a safe Halloween experience.  If your child is asking you to go trick-or-treating without an adult this year you may want to…

1. Consider the maturity level of your child, are they responsible enough to follow your rules?

2. If your child is going without an adult have them carry a cell phone.

3. Take your child to an up-scale neighborhood that they are familar with, and one that has a neighborhood watch program.

4. Have a set time of return for your child.  Give them a time limit for how long they can be out.

5. There are always alternatives to going from house to house for candy. Some churches hold events, shopping malls and recreational centers.

6. No matter what your child’s age is, make sure that they have on something that is reflective and can be seen by drivers.

7. Make sure they understand not to enter a stranger’s house.

8. Be sure to check all candy once you get home.

9. Try not to eat all of the candy in one night so that you,they won’t get a stomach ache.

10. Remember to brush your teeth before bed!

Breast Cancer Awareness

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A diet rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and low in sweets and processed meats, may help lower the risk of breast cancer in some African-American women.

In a study of more than 50,000 African-American women, researchers found that thinner and younger women who ate a generally “prudent” diet were less likely to develop breast cancer than their counterparts who maintained a more Western-style diet.

There was no evidence that healthier eating lowered the risk among overweight women, or those past menopause. However, the prudent diet was linked to a generally lower risk of estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer — an aggressive type of tumor that accounts for about one-third of breast cancers.  To read the rest of this article please click here. 

http://www.nbcam.org/

Check out our library’s catalog to find out more information on Breast Cancer

 

Stefen  sfennell@co.durham.nc.us

Vitamin D Combats the Flu

Research has been conducted to show that vitamin D deficiency is common in the winter, and activated vitamin D, 1,25(OH)₂D, a steroid hormone, has profound effects on human immunity. Vitamin D deficiency predisposes children to respiratory infections. Ultraviolet radiation (either from artificial sources or from sunlight) reduces the incidence of viral respiratory infections, as does cod liver oil (which contains vitamin D). An interventional study showed that vitamin D reduces the incidence of respiratory infections in children.

 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=529704

To learn more about the benefits of vitamins click to check out a book at our library.

Stepfen    sfennell@durham.co.nc.us

STRESS

Did you know that stress can kill you?  Stress can cause so many other illness to occur in your body.  You first need to recognize the stress symptoms  which include mental, social, and physical manifestations.  Added to these are exhaustion, loss of or increased appetite, headaches, crying, sleeplessness, and oversleeping.  Escape through alcohol, drugs, or other compulsive behavior are often indications. 

Things that can be done to manage stress.

1. First see if there really is something you can change or control in the situation.
2. Set realistic goals and reduce the number of events going on in your life.
3. Exercise
4. Remove yourself from the stressful situation
5. Don’t overwhelm yourself
6. Don’t sweat small stuff
7. Learn what relaxes you most
8. Get enough sleep
9. Avoid self-medication or escape
10. Try looking at the situation from a different point of view

Check out the materials here at the library on stress.http://catalog.durhamcountylibrary.org/ipac20/ipac.jsp?aspect=basic_search&menu=search&aspect=basic_search&npp=25&ipp=20&profile=bal&ri=&term=Stress&index=.GW#focus

 

Stefen  sfennell@co.durham.nc.us

Fall Prevention: 6 ways to reduce your falling risk

The odds of falling each year after age 65 in the United States are about one in three. Fortunately, most of these falls aren’t serious. Still, falls are the leading cause of injury and injury-related death among older adults. You’re more likely to fall as you get older because of common, age-related physical changes and medical conditions — and the medications you take to treat such conditions.

 

Donnie Johnson

dojohnson@durhamcountync.gov