Tattoos And Body Piercings
- There are no known cases in the United States of anyone getting HIV this way.
- However, it is possible to get HIV from tattooing or body piercing if the equipment used for these procedures has someone elses blood in it or if the ink is shared. This is more likely to happen when the person doing the procedure is unlicensed because of the potential for unsanitary practices such as sharing needles or ink.
- If you get a tattoo or a body piercing, be sure that the person doing the procedure is properly licensed and that they use only new or sterilized needles, ink, and other supplies.
How Do You Get Or Transmit Hiv
You can only get HIV by coming into direct contact with certain body fluids from a person with HIV who has a detectable viral load. These fluids are:
- Blood
- Semen and pre-seminal fluid
- Rectal fluids
- Vaginal fluids
- Breast milk
For transmission to occur, the HIV in these fluids must get into the bloodstream of an HIV-negative person through a mucous membrane open cuts or sores or by direct injection.
People with HIV who take HIV medicine daily as prescribed and get and keep an undetectable viral load have effectively no risk of sexually transmitting HIV to their HIV-negative partners.
Can Herbal Medicine Cure Hiv
No. Some people choose to take alternative forms of medicine, such as herbal medicines, as a natural way of treating HIV. However, herbal remedies do not work.
Taking herbal medicines can be dangerous as they will not protect your immune system from infection. They may also interact poorly with antiretrovirals if you are taking them alongside treatment. The only way you can stay healthy when living with HIV is to take antiretroviral treatment as prescribed by your doctor or healthcare professional, and to attend viral load monitoring appointments to make sure your treatment is working.
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Really Nasty Illnesses You Can Catch From A Porta
Summertime is around the corner, which means the season for outdoor concerts, food markets and festivals is also imminent. The quixotic and carefree activity of hanging outside with your friends and openly imbibing under the blazing sun usually comes to a sobering halt once one of you needs to use the bathroom.
Long lines aside, you normally avoid the porta-potty because they are unsanitary, they smell awful and they are quite literally filled with shit. But there are other things lurking in a porta-potty that might make you rethink your drinking pace and eating habits at these outdoor events â or vomit for a reason other than overindulgence.
What Is The Risk From Needlestick Injuries In Healthcare Settings
The risk of transmission from a needlestick involving HIV-containing blood has been estimated at 0.23%, or just over one in 500. However, the reviews of transmission probability upon which this calculation is based date predominantly from the 1980s and 1990s, before the wide-scale introduction of antiretroviral therapy. Due to the effectiveness of HIV treatment, the blood of someone living with HIV in the UK could well have no detectable virus , lowering that risk even further. In UK guidelines, PEP is therefore no longer recommended following occupational exposure to a source with an undetectable viral load.
The greatest risk to healthcare workers of acquiring HIV is following a skin puncture injury involving a hollow needle that has been in the vein or artery of an HIV-positive person who has late-stage disease and a high viral load. The European Union Sharps Directive of 2013 stipulates measures to protect healthcare personnel.
The risks of acquiring other blood-borne viruses from a contaminated needle are considerably higher than for HIV . For this reason, healthcare workers are recommended to have the hepatitis B vaccination, although no vaccine is available for hepatitis C.
occupational exposure
Exposure to HIV as a result of work activities. Exposure may include accidental exposure to HIV-infected blood following a needlestick injury or cut from a surgical instrument
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Stage : Chronic Hiv Infection
After the acute phase, HIV continues to reproduce at very low levels in the body, and it continues to damage the immune cells. People typically do not experience symptoms or get sick from the virus during this stage.
This stage is also known as asymptomatic HIV infection or clinical latency.
Without medication, the chronic stage of an HIV infection can last for a decade or more. People can still transmit the virus to others during this time.
Antiretroviral therapy slows or stops the progression of HIV. People who take antiretroviral drugs as prescribed may remain in the chronic HIV stage for life and never develop stage 3 HIV.
What Else Can You Do For A More Hygienic Smoking Session
Unfortunately, theres not a lot you can do to minimize the potential of catching or spreading diseases with others, except not share your joints, blunts, or other smoking materials .
The only advice we can give you is this: choose wisely when and with whom you share your smoke. If you notice that one of your friends is a bit sniffly or has a cold sore, remember that those bacteria are inevitably going to make it onto the joint.
The same goes for you. If you notice you’re coming down with something, make sure to let your friends know and sit out on the next session. Instead, roll yourself a joint or smoke from a bong or pipe. Just make sure to wipe it down with an antibacterial wipe afterward.
We often underestimate just how tough germs and bacteria can be. While our bodies are meant to naturally fight off pathogens that pose a threat, even the toughest of immune systems can be beaten after sharing a joint with more than 1 or 2 people.
Remember, this doesnt mean you need to be paranoid. Unless the people youre smoking with are actually sick with a virus or bug, chances are, they wont get you sick. Just keep in mind that the larger the session, the greater the chances you might be smoking with someone who is sick.
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Doubts Persist Even When Risk Is Statistically Zero
Despite increased public awareness about HIV, there remains a lot of confusion about how you can get infected and how you cannot. For example, even though people understand that you can’t get HIV from utensils, there are many who will experience a twinge of concern if they learned that the chef of their favorite restaurant has HIV.
HIV has a way of spurring anxieties in even the best of us and, with it, our sense of reason. Relieving those anxieties often requires us to do more than just lay out the rules. Instead, we need to understand what conditions are required for an infection to take place and why things like hugging, touching, sneezing, or kissing simply do not satisfy those conditions.
How Hiv Cannot Be Spread
From both a biological and epidemiological evidence, HIV cannot and has never been shown to be passed from one person to the next by the following means:
- Touching, hugging, kissing or shaking hands
- Touching an object an HIV-positive person has touched
- Sharing utensils or cups
- Eating food prepared by an HIV-positive person
- Sharing grooming items, even toothbrushes or razors
- Getting spit on by an HIV-positive person
- Getting bitten by an HIV-positive person
- Touching semen or vaginal fluid
- Getting blood from an HIV-positive person on you
- Using public fountains, toilet seats, or showers
To date, there has not been a single documented case of transmission by any of these means.
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Hiv/aids And Palliative Care
HIV is a virus that is carried from person to person through body fluids such as blood, breast milk, semen or vaginal secretions. It damages the immune system and this can lead to illness and infection.
AIDS is an advanced stage of the HIV infection. The virus attacks white blood cells. So AIDS can lead to other infections such as certain types of cancer.
HIV/AIDS is now an acute illness rather than a chronic illness because of new medicines .
Sharing Drinks With Others: Can I Actually Catch A Disease
One thing that has become very clear over the last decade or so is how thirsty we’ve all become. It seems like everyone has a bottle of water or some other drink with them at all times. Which is probably good — the health benefits of water are well-known.
But all these bottles of water floating around lead to a lot of sharing drinks with others. Probably because it’s so easy to do . Plus, you have the age-old “ooh that looks good, can I have a sip of that?” to try someone else’s drink.
So this leads to the question — is sharing drinks healthy? Can you catch diseases or other sicknesses from sharing drinks?
The answer is a resounding “yes” — some diseases/sicknesses, anyway. Since there’s almost certain to be saliva involved in any sharing of drinks, salivary transfer of germs/viruses/etc. is going to happen. The most common are the ones you’d expect . We’re talking strep throat, the common cold, and mumps being the big three. There’s also the rarer meningitis.
Those are the main ones that can be transmitted via saliva. There are a few more I’d like to mention — I’ve gone on extensively about cold sores here in my blog posts, which can be transmitted via saliva and kissing, so we can safely add that one to the list as well. And there’s also mononucleosis, which is sometimes called the “kissing disease” — that can go on the list, too.
You know what that says to me? That says don’t share forks with someone who has hepatitis B.
Until next time, keep smiling!
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Its Easy To Tell The Symptoms Of Hiv
The symptoms of HIV can differ from person-to-person and some people may not get any symptoms at all. Without treatment, the virus will get worse over time and damage your immune system over time. There are three stages of HIV infection with different possible effects.
Also, you also cant tell by looking at someone whether they have HIV or not. Many people don’t show signs of any symptoms. And, for people living with HIV who are on effective treatment, they are just as likely to be as healthy as everyone else.
Hiv/aids Symptoms And Treatment How Palliative Care Can Help
Palliative care is specialized medical care for people facing a serious illness like HIV/AIDS. The goal is to improve quality of life. You can have palliative care at any age and any stage of your illness, and you can have it with all other treatments.
A team of doctors, nurses and other specialists provides palliative care. They work in partnership with your other doctors to provide an extra layer of support.
If youre living with HIV/AIDS, palliative care can help by managing your symptoms and treatment side effects. These include pain, fatigue, shortness of breath, depression, anxiety, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
The palliative care team will spend time with you and your family to help you match your treatment choices to your personal goals.
Palliative care teams dont help just you. They support your family too. Palliative care will help you and your family achieve quality of life.
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How Do I Protect Myself From Hiv
There are a number of ways you can protect yourself from HIV, including:
- using a condom every time you have vaginal, anal or oral sex
- in some countries PrEP is available. This is a course of HIV drugs which if taken consistently as advised by your healthcare professional prevents HIV infection through sex
- avoiding sharing needles, syringes and other injecting equipment
- taking HIV treatment if you are a new or expectant mother living with HIV, as this will dramatically reduce the risk of passing HIV to your baby during pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding
- asking your healthcare professional if the blood product you are receiving has been tested for HIV
- taking precautions if you are a healthcare worker, such as wearing protection , washing hands after contact with blood and other bodily fluids, and safely disposing of sharp equipment
- if you think you have been exposed to HIV you may be able to access PEP, a 4-week course of ARV drugs taken after possible HIV exposure to prevent HIV infection. You must start PEP within 72 hours of possible exposure to be effective.
For more detailed information on how to prevent HIV infection visit the relevant page from the listed below:
Risk By Sexual Activity
When discussing HIV risk, people often try to ascertain which “type” of sex is riskier vaginal, anal, or oral. From a purely statistical standpoint, anal sex is considered the highest risk activity with an almost 18-fold greater risk of infection compared to vaginal sex.
But this assessment is somewhat misleading, at least from an individual perspective. While vaginal sex may pose a lower risk comparatively, the figures neither take into account the way in which the disease is distributed between men and women nor the vulnerabilities which place some individuals at extremely high risk of infection.
Women are three to four times more likely to get HIV from men than the other way around. A young woman is more likely to get HIV from her first sexual encounter than her male partner.
There are some men who are far more likely to get HIV than others. Studies have shown, for example, that uncircumcised men are more than twice as likely to get HIV after vaginal sex than circumcised men.
Vulnerabilities vary by individual, so assessing the real risk of vaginal sex requires a better understanding of the factors that place some women and men at greater risk than others.
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How Can You Get Hiv
HIV is found in the following bodily fluids of someone living with the virus:
- blood
- vaginal fluids
- breastmilk.
For you to get HIV, these bodily fluids need to get into your blood through a mucous membrane , via shared injecting equipment, or through broken skin .
There is not enough HIV virus in other bodily fluids, like saliva, sweat or urine, to transmit it from one person to another.
Someone living with HIV who has an undetectable viral load, meaning effective treatment has lowered the amount of virus in their blood to levels where it cannot be detected by a normal blood test, cannot pass on HIV.
A person living with HIV with a detectable viral load can pass the virus to others whether they have symptoms or not.
HIV is most infectious in the first few weeks after infection. At this time many people are unaware of their status.
The main ways you can get HIV are:
Symptoms Of Hiv Infection
Most people experience a short flu-like illness 2 to 6 weeks after HIV infection, which lasts for a week or 2.
After these symptoms disappear, HIV may not cause any symptoms for many years, although the virus continues to damage your immune system.
This means many people with HIV do not know they’re infected.
Anyone who thinks they could have HIV should get tested.
Some people are advised to have regular tests as they’re at particularly high risk.
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Hiv Treatment & Undetectable
Todays HIV treatments, called antiretroviral therapy or ART, are extremely effective. Some treatments are a single tablet. Long-acting injectable medications are likely to be approved and available soon. Medicine has come a long way since the first HIV treatment options became available in the 1990s.
There is still no functional cure for HIV, but ART can help people live long, healthy lives. Todays medications are provided in combinations that reduce a persons viral load to levels so low its undetectable. People who become undetectable cannot transmit the virus to others.
Viral load is a term that describes how much virus a person living with HIV has in their body.
Without HIV medications, the virus replicates which causes the amount of virus in the body to increase.
HIV medications prevent HIV from making copies of itself. Then, the amount of HIV in the body goes down.
To see how well HIV treatments are working, doctors and other providers measure the amount of virus in the blood and report a measurement called your viral load. Its simply a measurement of how many copies of the virus are in a single unit of blood.
A very low amount of virus may even be undetectable by viral load tests . A common undetectable level is < 20 copies per milliliter of blood. Low viral loads are those that are less than 200 copies per milliliter. Very high viral loads can be over 500,000 copies per milliliter.
What Is The Hiv Risk From Discarded Needles
When people who use drugs or others leave used needles or syringes in public places, this can often lead to anxieties and concerns about the risk of HIV transmission. In parks, play areas, beaches, public toilets or streets, people may step on discarded needles or children may handle them. Waste workers are also at risk of coming into contact with discarded needles.
Thanks to needle exchange programmes, there is a very low level of HIV among people who inject drugs in the UK. While HIV transmission from a discarded needle is theoretically possible, needles found in the community are much less likely to result in infection than those in healthcare settings as they have been exposed to the environment and the injuries are usually superficial. HIV is a fragile virus that cannot survive when it is dried out. The virus is more likely to survive when there are lower temperatures, greater volumes of blood and within larger syringes.
In 2015, a review of the 1500 reported global cases of needlestick injuries found only five cases of resulting blood-borne viral infections, all of which were hepatitis B or C.
“There are no documented cases of HIV infection through contact with a needle or syringe discarded in a public place.”
There are no documented cases of HIV infection through contact with a needle or syringe discarded in a public place.
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