Healthy Sex and You

1. Decide what you want to do about sex at a time when you feel clear-headed, sober, and good about yourself. If you have a partner, decide together at a time when you feel close to each other but not sexual. For example, try talking while you take a walk and hold hands.
2. Decide in advance what sexual activities you will say “yes” to and discuss these with your partner.
3. Tell your partner, very clearly and in advance—not at the last minute—what activities you will not do.
4. Avoid high-pressure sexual situations; do not get drunk or high.
5. If you say “no,” say it so it is clear that you mean it.
6. Learn more about your body and how to keep it healthy.
7. Learn about contraception and safer sex, so you will be ready if you change your mind. Always keep condoms on hand.
8. Refrain from intercourse if you do not have a contraceptive method available. Learn about Emergency Contraception in case you have intercourse when you did not expect it. Whether you are a female and need it or if you are a male and want it for your partner, you can ask for it over-the-counter from a pharmacist. If you need information about EC, call 1-888-NOT-2-LATE or visit http://www.go2planb.com/index.aspx .

Adapted from Kowal, D. (2007). Abstinence and the Range of Sexual Expression. Contraceptive Technology, 85-86.

1. Who runs the Web site?

Any good health Web site should make it easy to learn who is responsible for the site and its information. On the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Web site, for example, the FDA is clearly noted on every major page, along with a link to the site’s home (main) page, www.fda.gov.

Information about who runs the site can often be found in an “About Us” or “About This Web Site” section, and there’s usually a link to that section on the site’s home page.

2. What is the purpose of the Web site?

Is the purpose of the site to inform? Is it to sell a product? Is it to raise money? If you can tell who runs and pays for the site, this will help you evaluate its purpose. Be cautious about sites trying to sell a product or service.

Quackery abounds on the Web. Look for these warning signs and remember the adage “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

• Does the site promise quick, dramatic, miraculous results? Is this the only site making these claims?
• Beware of claims that one remedy will cure a variety of illnesses, that it is a “breakthrough,” or that it relies on a “secret ingredient.”
• Use caution if the site uses a sensational writing style (lots of exclamation points, for example.)
• A health Web site for consumers should use simple language, not technical jargon. Get a second opinion. Check more than one site.

3. What is the original source of the information on the Web site?

Always pay close attention to where the information on the site comes from. Many health and medical Web sites post information collected from other Web sites or sources. If the person or organization in charge of the site did not write the material, the original source should be clearly identified. Be careful of sites that don’t say where the information comes from.

Good sources of health information include:

• Sites that end in “.gov,” sponsored by the federal government, like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (www.hhs.gov), the FDA (www.fda.gov), the National Institutes of Health (www.nih.gov), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov), and the National Library of Medicine (www.nlm.nih.gov)
• .edu sites, which are run by universities or medical schools, such as Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the University of California at Berkeley Hospital, health system, and other health care facility sites, like the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic
• .org sites maintained by not-for-profit groups whose focus is research and teaching the public about specific diseases or conditions, such as the American Diabetes Association, the American Cancer Society, and the American Heart Association
• Medical and scientific journals, such as The New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, although these aren’t written for consumers and could be hard to understand.
• Sites whose addresses end in .com are usually commercial sites and are often selling products.

4. How is the information on the Web site documented?

In addition to identifying the original source of the material, the site should identify the evidence on which the material is based. Medical facts and figures should have references (such as citations of articles in medical journals). Also, opinions or advice should be clearly set apart from information that is “evidence-based” (that is, based on research results).

5. How is information reviewed before it is posted on the Web site?

Health-related Web sites should give information about the medical credentials of the people who prepare or review the material on the Web site.

6. How current is the information on the Web site?

Web sites should be reviewed and updated on a regular basis. It is particularly important that medical information be current, and that the most recent update or review date be clearly posted. These dates are usually found at the bottom of the page. Even if the information has not changed, it is helpful to know that the site owners have reviewed it recently to ensure that the information is still valid. Click on a few links on the site. If there are a lot of broken links, the site may not be kept up-to-date.

7. How does the Web site choose links to other sites?

Reliable Web sites usually have a policy about how they establish links to other sites. Some medical Web sites take a conservative approach and do not link to any other sites; some link to any site that asks or pays for a link; others link only to sites that have met certain criteria. Look for the Web site’s linking policy, often found in a section titled “About This Web Site.”

8. What information about its visitors does the Web site collect, and why?

Web sites routinely track the path visitors take through their sites to determine what pages are being used. However, many health-related Web sites ask the visitor to “subscribe” or “become a member.” In some cases, this may be done so they can collect a fee or select relevant information for the visitor. In all cases, the subscription or membership will allow the Web site owners to collect personal information about their visitors.

Many commercial sites sell “aggregate” data about their visitors to other companies—what percent are women with breast cancer, for example. In some cases, they may collect and reuse information that is personally identifiable, such as a visitor’s ZIP code, gender, and birth date.

Any Web site asking users for personal information should explain exactly what the site will and will not do with the information. The FDA Web site, for example, spells this out in its Privacy Statement. Be sure to read and understand any privacy policy or similar language on the site, and don’t sign up for anything you don’t fully understand.
 

Adapted from: http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/evalhealthinfo.html

Look, I come with only a few commencement-like messages for you Class of 2012 graduates.

Number one, and it relates to what Chancellor Gates was saying a while ago: Be civil; be fair. One of the most serious losses we as a society have suffered in recent years, in my opinion at least, is that of civil discourse. We are a civilized people; we should disagree in a civilized manner. We should acknowledge the right of other people to disagree with us. We should acknowledge the possibility that, sometimes—yes, maybe rare times, but sometimes—we might even be wrong. Strange as it may seem, also, we might learn more from listening, at times, than from talking—and more from talking than from shouting….

And I would also urge each of you graduates to also serve…I mean no matter what you decide to do with your life, also find a way serve. Serve your neighborhood, your town, your city, your state and our country. Serve a common purpose beyond yourself and your immediate family and/or interests.

And one way to do that open to us all is to stay informed — by expressing, forming opinions. By questioning the opinions of others, particularly those others who hold public office or who otherwise exercise public office, including those who write and edit the newspapers and magazines, report on and produce the radio and television programs you listen to and watch, or websites and blogs you read.

Complain about things you do not like. Praise those you do. Ask questions about matters you do not understand. Be part of the dialogue, in other words — the debate, the decision-making in our democracy. They are decisions that could literally set the course for our nation and our society for years, if not centuries to come. They are too important to be left to the experts as smart as most of them are, and too important to be left to our public officials, as dedicated and honest as most of them are.

We must all serve, with our minds and our voices and our hearts….And now, let me tell you what I tell all graduates of every college or university I have or have had the pleasure of addressing. Again, I think you may be way ahead of me on this, but, again, for the record: Please don’t mistake what is happening here today. The fact that you are receiving a diploma from one of America’s finest institutions of higher learning does not mean you are educated.

Some of the dumbest people I know received diplomas from esteemed institutions of higher learning.

They took that diploma in their hot little hands and never read another book, never considered another fresh or new idea, and — most tragically for their society and country — never again paid attention to much of anything other than themselves, much of anything that wasn’t happening around them or to others.

Please, please, please do not do that.

-Jim Lehrer, http://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2012/jim-lehrers-2012-commencement-remarks123.php 

Hope everyone is enjoying their Memorial Day Weekend! Sleeping in is just the best, right? God, I miss being a kid.

Well this news got sent right to my email by a good friend and I did a little dance in my head when I read it. I’m 100% in favor of a male contraceptive, just to take the heat off of us for once. I mean jeez, why not? Having both parties responsible, not just the woman to remember to take precautions? That sounds like a dream. Granted, we’re still a LONG ways away from getting there, but isolating the gene that explains why some sperm survive and others don’t, WITHOUT causing any lasting damage is really an amazing scientific feat. Because that’s essentially how it works for the female; contraceptives stop the egg from being released and cause no lasting damage to female fertility.

I say we NEED this to happen, and we need it fast! Because without this, it’s somehow always the female’s fault if the contraceptive fails. Nope, sorry, that’s not how it should be because if your penis was intercoursing, then your penis is also responsible for whatever happens as a result. Don’t do the deed if you can’t fulfill the need…to take care of the consequences (I tried to make an amazing rhyme but that’s the best I can do when I have a day off tomorrow).

So I received some horrible news yesterday about an old friend who recently took his life this week. I’m still trying to process it. I know he had a rough go of it since we were teenagers, and mixed in with some drug issues, it probably wasn’t easy for him to feel stable and healthy. I’m sorry for having to break the bad news to my friends since it was extremely shocking for me to hear and I know we’ve already lost too many friends. But I can’t let this opportunity go without reminding you that if you feel like you’re slipping, like you have no one to talk to, and that you just can’t take the overwhelming emotions you’re feeling, PLEASE TALK TO SOMEONE. It’s Mental Health Awareness Month, and I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t bring this up. I wish he had reached out to someone, to anyone, and got some help. It may or may not have made all the difference, but now we’ll never know.

Life can get better if you reach out. It doesn’t have to end so sadly. Call the suicide prevention hotline at 1-800-273-TALK, go to their website and chat, or tell your friends/family how you’re feeling.

Be safe, my readers and friends. Someone out there loves you and needs you to be healthy.

I would like to have seen a larger sample and the statistical significance of whether those small differences were actually significant…

but I’m not going to lie, this ish is hilarious. It just goes to show you, you should be well-rounded when it comes to reading and have some sort of media literacy. Because if you’re tuning into Fox They’reMyOpinions IDon’tListenToReason ILikeToCreateHysteria News (or MSNBC) only, then you’re not really understanding what’s going on in the world. I wouldn’t listen to a word (or blatant biased opinion) about health or sexual education from those asshats if my life depended on it —actually, if I did, my life probably would depend on it considering they don’t ever know what they’re talking about in the first place.

This piece from the NY Times just made me sick. Many of you may know (or not) about the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (the one that Joe Biden worked on when he was in Congress) and the issues that are happening around getting it reauthorized. The House Republicans (yet again) are seeing problems with expanding the reach of tribal judiciary bodies into prosecuting non-Native Americans who commit sexual violence against Native Americans (NA), so they put forth a different version than the one the Senate passed. I guess something about big government, blah blah blah, I can’t even keep track of their crap anymore. What do they care if NA women are CONSTANTLY being raped and sexually assaulted? It’s totally normal for them, so why worry, right?

The stats are horrific:

• One in three American Indian women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape.
• Their rate of sexual assault is more than twice the national average.
• The rate of sexual violence in rural villages is as much as 12 times the national rate.
• There is a shortage of sexual assault kits at Indian Health Service hospitals, where there is also a lack of access to birth control and sexually transmitted disease testing.
• There are also too few nurses trained to perform rape examinations, which are generally necessary to bring cases to trial.
• In the Navajo Nation, which encompasses parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, 329 rape cases were reported in 2007 among a population of about 180,000. Five years later, there have been only 17 arrests.

I mean, how are we not doing anything to help this situation?? How has this been allowed to continue? NAs already have a difficult time, healthwise, in this country, with the highest alcoholism rates, the highest suicide rates, the highest heart disease rates, the highest diabetes rates…I mean, it’s exhausting to think what life must be like in a NA area, much less one that is highly secluded and far away from anything and everything.

It’s heinous to think of the crimes that have been committed against NA tribes by this country. We have a DUTY to help and protect their way of life, and NO ONE should live expecting to get raped. The NY Times states

We should never have a woman come into the office saying, ‘I need to learn more about Plan B for when my daughter gets raped,’ ” said Charon Asetoyer, a women’s health advocate on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, referring to the morning-after pill. “That’s what’s so frightening — that it’s more expected than unexpected. It has become a norm for young women.”

If that’s not one of the worst things I’ve heard of…to prepare yourself for being raped? Because you know it’s coming, sooner as opposed to later? Horrible.

One of the main things we lack as a country is a focus on prevention (I nauseate myself with the repetition). Advocates for NA women say that NAs in general need more education on preventing sexual violence, but I disagree. Sexual perpetrators don’t operate from a place where sex takes place in a vacuum. There are a whole host of reasons why sexual offenders view sex as a weapon of power and women as mere objects who get no say in their sexual experiences. Unbelievably enough, those reasons mostly have nothing to do with sexual education. It’s how you grew up, it’s the relationship model you saw (which for most people, the important one is your parents), it’s the social connections you made, it’s the way you were made to feel about your body and sexual pleasures, it’s your level of belonging to your community, it’s your self confidence and awareness of others’ rights.

Just talking about sexual violence doesn’t stop people from doing it. We need to be taught from the very beginning about healthy relationships, about the rights of BOTH partners, how sex is a shared experience between two consenting adults — but until we stop seeing children as angelic, non-sexual beings who could be tainted by the mere mention of sex, we will never get to the root of sexual violence, which is a misled, non-whole individual who doesn’t or can’t understand healthy relationships and healthy sex. By starting at the verrrrrry beginning, we can hopefully prevent it from ever happening in the first place.

I could not be happier about this news. Conversion therapy is the ridiculous notion that someone who is gay can be turned straight through intense therapy, shame, and guilt. Therapists who stand by conversion therapy use their “credentials” to pull science into the argument, but it’s not science. It’s not medicine. It’s religion masquerading as science, and that is more dangerous than anything on this earth. If you work in health, even if you’re not a physician, your number one goal is to not cause harm. Making someone believe that their own natural tendencies to love someone of the same sex is something to be ashamed of is just another form of those strict Catholic nuns in schools; slapping a student on the knuckles with a ruler and paddling are meant to “change” bad behavior but really, it’s freaking abuse.

Anyone with any amount of common sense understands that sexuality is inherent, meaning you don’t have to “do” anything to be a sexual being who is interested in another human being. Straight people don’t “think” or “choose” to be straight; they just are. Gay people are (duh) the exact same way, as is any other type of sexual orientation variation. It’s a beautiful thing that everyone can be loved in any way they want to be loved. It’s ludicrous to believe that you could change something about someone that is so ingrained, that is there when you’re born until the day you die. You can’t convert someone who has blue eyes to make them brown. It’s just a natural part of that person. The fact that a national (actually global) organization, the Pan American Health Organization (which is the regional office of the Americas of the World Health Organization), just denounced conversion therapies is MONUMENTAL in the history of human sexuality and health, as far as I’m concerned. The organization states:

“There have been no scientific studies that have demonstrated any ability to change an individual’s sexual orientation. On the other hand, there have been numerous testimonies about the serious harm to the mental and physical health of individuals that such so-called therapies can cause, stated the PAHO in a release.”

And I’m bolding, underlining, italicizing, shouting from the rooftops this next sentence:

Homosexuality is a natural variation of human sexuality and is not caused by mental disease, according to the PAHO.

Our job (I feel like I say this at least once a day, if not to someone, then I say it in my head) is to ensure that our children grow up understanding healthy relationships and how their own bodies and minds work. IT IS IMPERATIVE that we teach them not to learn about sex and relationships through mistakes and trial and error but through example and actual instruction. We’re not taught these things when we’re young and why not?? What are we so scared of? That our children will make better decisions than we did because THEY ACTUALLY KNEW BETTER? Why is that so terrible??

As a society, our greatness is measured by how we take care of those who are less fortunate and less educated because it makes everyone richer in the end. If we took care of our children better and actually made our children better by active education and preventive information, we could truly make a difference. And that would start by letting children know that their sexual orientation is nothing to be ashamed of, it’s nothing that needs to be changed, and that they should learn more about how to create healthy relationships and what healthy in general looks like. Kudos to PAHO for saying the truth: queer is here, and it’s here to stay, bitches.

Be creative and enter to win!!

The girls of “Girls” are asking, and so is everyone else: What does it mean to be infected with HPV?

I couldn’t have asked for a more clear and well-written piece about the dangers of having primetime t.v. give us health advice, or even talk about health at all. Unless you are employing medical professionals behind the scenes to ensure that you aren’t outright lying about symptoms and causes, don’t pretend that your show couldn’t possibly serve as a source of information for the public. That they shouldn’t trust you because you’re “fiction”. That’s a dumb excuse and you know it, mainly because I know the producers and writers remember the things they learned about sex and their bodies when they were growing up from movies and t.v. shows.

You do have a responsibility to the public, whether you admit it or not, to provide factual information, even if the main characters are confused or don’t understand their own health.