Preventing Sexually Transmitted Diseases

If you want to take every possible step to prevent yourself from being infected by sexually transmitted diseases, your safest best is complete abstinence. Even that will not protect you 100 percent, since STDs like Hepatitis B and HIV can be transmitted through blood too. Bogey tattoo parlors, third-world country blood transfusions, and IV drug use will will bring you right back into the danger zone.

If you are in a new, monogamous relationship, use condoms to start off with. Once you both get tested for sexually transmitted diseases, you can quit using them. Once you stop using condoms, make sure you find another birth control method that works for you, unless you are trying to get pregnant.

If you are married or in a long-term committed relationship, make sure you get tested for sexually transmitted diseases every so often (annually, for example). The thought that your partner could cheat on you may be unbearable, but it does happen! Make STD testing a part of your routine medical care.

Are you a sexually active single? People of any sexual orientation who have sex with multiple partners should always use condoms. Condoms offer the best protection against infection, but they are hardly foolproof. You know that condoms can break, but were you also aware that some STDs can be passed on even while you are using condoms? Trichomoniasis and genital warts are examples of diseases condoms don't necessarily protect you from.

Are you poly? That's a tricky situation. Use your own judgment to determine whether the advice for long-term monogamous couples applies to you, or the advice for sexually active singles. If one of your partners is also in a relationship with someone else, you want to be very careful.

Finally, if you are a teenager, you have some serious thinking to do. You've made it this far through and have seen that a huge percentage of new STD cases strike your exact age group. Don't believe that you're safe from STDs because your boyfriend or girlfriend says they're a virgin, or just because you are still young. Use condoms if you have sex, and use an additional form of birth control to prevent pregnancy. If you are at all doubting whether you should be having sex at all at this point, stop. You may not be too young to have sex, but you're definitely too young to spend the rest of your life with an incurable sexually transmitted disease like HIV, or even HPV.

Don't Play With Your Health — Get Tested!

Hi, reader! Yes, you there. Have you been tested for sexually transmitted diseases recently? If the answer is no, I suggest that you grab the opportunity to make an appointment with your family doctor or family planning clinic now. Almost every individual should get tested for STDs occasionally. You can discuss the intervals with your healthcare provider.

You should get tested even when you think you can't possibly have a sexually transmitted disease, for two reasons. The first is that some STDs, including chlamydia, HPV, and HIV, can be “silent” (asymptomatic) for a long time. You can still have an STD if you don't have any symptoms — you or your partner may have picked it up during a previous relationship.

If you and your partner are found to have a sexually transmitted disease, that doesn't necessarily mean one of you cheated. But that is a possible scenario too, and it would make reason number two why every person should be tested for STDs regularly.

Most sexually transmittable diseases are treated easily. All patients benefit from early diagnosis, both because treatment or management may be more successful, and because you want to prevent passing your STD on to other people. Having a sexually transmitted disease may be scary, but having one without being aware of it is far most frightening in the long run.