Safer Sex Guidelines
By Blue Rose on Monday, 6 of April , 2009 at 7:11 pm
These days’ doctors tend to say there is no safe sex, only safer sex. Here are the basics for protecting yourself from AIDS while you continue to enjoy the pleasures of a healthy sex life.
Avoid sex practices that involve sharing body fluids. Nearly all safer sex guidelines come down to this, the most important single bit advice. That’s because HIV is spread when blood, semen or vaginal secretions from somebody who’s infected come into direct contact with the blood or bodily fluids of somebody who’s not infected.
HIV concentrations are highest in semen, breast milk and blood, including menstrual blood. HIV has also been found, in much lower concentrations, in women’s genital secretions. It sometimes found in saliva, in very low concentrations. And it has not been found at all in urine, sweat or feces.
Always use condoms. The best choice: lubricated latex condoms that are impregnated with spermicide nonoxynol-9. Lambskin condoms may feel good, but they don’t protect against HIV because they’re perforated with microscopic holes large enough to allow HIV to pass through. When a condom is lubricated, it’s protected against rips and tears and doesn’t break as easily as an unlubricated one. And nonoxyol-9 has been shown – at least under laboratory conditions – to kill HIV on contact. Women now have another option, the female condom, marketed under the brand name Reality and available in drugstore for about $2 apiece. But whatever kind of condoms you use, it’s important to use then consistently, even time you make love, not just when you feel like it.
this is an example of latex condom
this an example of female condom
If you use lubricant, make sure it’s water-based product, not an oil-based one. Oil-based lubricants cause latex to rapidly disintegrate into a gummy mess that offers no protection against AIDS (or pregnancy, for that matter). Contact with petroleum products destroys condoms. Don’t use: Crisco, baby oil, cold cream, Vaseline or certain vaginal creams like Monistat, Premarin or Vagisil. Do use; K-Y Jelly, saliva, spermicidal creams or commercial lubricants like Astroglide, Lubraseptic or Lubafax.
this is the Astroglide commercial lubricants
When is it to stop using condoms in a relationship? That’s the 100,000 dollar question.
If you’ve been in a monogamous relationship for six months, and you’ve both tested and certain you’re HIV negative, I’d say it’s probably okay to stop using condoms. Of course, you still can’t be absolutely certain you’re safe.
Two possibilities why you can’t be absolutely sure you’re safe in such a relationship: The body develops antibodies HIV (which is what the test measures) usually somewhere between two weeks and three months after exposure. You could have been tested after you were infected but before antibodies appeared (which means the test would have been negative). Or else one of you picked up the virus from somebody else after both of you were tested.
In this advance time we are very much prone to different kinds of sickness, there is a proverb saying “it’s better to prevent than to cure.” I still have the 2nd issue for safer sex guidelines, wait for it.
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Category: Featured Entries, Health and Sex
Tags: condom, HIV, infection, lubricant, relationship, sex
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