Found an embarrassing little blister in a private part of your Anatomy? Perhaps you have a strange age that needs more than a little scratch or perhaps you woke up with a curious stranger and have little memory of what exactly happened the night before. If so, don’t beat yourself up over it as you are simply one of the millions of people who contract STDs each year.
Some STDs are perfectly curable while others tend to hang around.Some are even deadly but before you start maniacally googling or booking that appointment at the free clinic. Let’s see what your chances are of catching something potentially awkward?
How likely are you to get an STD perhaps? The most worrying and embarrassing of problems we face is that of contracting a sexually transmitted disease and there’s nothing more terrifying than awaiting the results that will tell you if you have contracted a life-threatening condition that will affect you for the rest of your life. Many of us have been there and yes it bad.
But just how likely is it that you’ve caught a sexual disease?
Well, there are factors at play here, where you live? who is your sexual partner? and whether you’ve used a condom? So before you freak out and start googling frantically and rushing to the clinic to exhibit your suspected condition to a medical health professional. Let’s look at the possibilities of catching one of these bothersome conditions. In the first place, most STD education is totally terrifying. At schools because our teachers and educators don’t want to be dealing with unwanted pregnancy and what we see in the media is scary because well terrifying news self-media stories fear is a base emotion along with happiness sadness. Anger, surprise and disgust fear is the way we are taught to approach STDs.We should be more scared of crossing the road as 1 in 1,800 people are diagnosed with syphilis each year but you have a 1 and 645 chance of dying in a car accident.
Syphilis can remain undetected in the human body for years, before a simple shot of antibiotics can cure it. Traffic accidents can have much more devastating consequences
Lets take a look at the most common STD’s and weigh up our realistic chances of contracting one of these. Author Mark Manson piled an article and raw score for each STD, delisted this score. Gives you a rough idea of how many times you would have to have unprotected sex in order to contract that particular condition. This figure was achieved by taking the estimated number of cases of that condition and factoring the number of single sexually active individuals in the USA.
Chlamydia
First, up chlamydia, it is a bacterial infection usually contracted through sexual intercourse. For guys, it is uncomfortable but generally harmless. For women, if left untreated for a long time it could lead to pregnancy complications or even infertility. You’d probably have to sleep with 36 people unprotected to have a 50% chance of catching chlamydia.
The symptoms result in aching testicles in men and pee that burns like the fires of hell. 70 percent of women don’t have any symptoms and 25 percent of men don’t have symptoms. So this STD can be a bit of a sleeping giant. You should get checked out for chlamydia in the nearby STD clinic once every year. If you’re reaching over 30 partners per annum which to be fair is a pretty impressive batting average.
Gonorrhea
Gonorrhea is also curable but not with as particularly pleasant experience. You would have to sleep with about 180 partners unprotected to have a 50% chance of catching.
It is totally protected by using the simple method of slipping on a rubber condom. Unlike chlamydia, gonorrhea can be transferred by pretty much any orifice including the mouth. Symptoms of gonorrhea are similar to her smaller sister chlamydia which includes burning urination and swelling of testicles and to top it all off a gross pus like fluid drips languidly from your infected urethra.
Gonorrhea treatment is usually just a simple, a course of antibiotics but recently antibiotic-resistant strains have been doing the rounds and medical professionals are deeply concerned about a super gonorrhea bug becoming a serious issue in the near future. This super gonorrhea has been a popular news story in our fear harboring media.
Syphilis
Of late, syphilis was a real problem in the days before antibiotics. The bugs didn’t discriminate. You could be a pirate, a poet, a philosopher or the President and still be syphilitic. Nowadays it is perfectly treatable in the early stages with a large shot of antibiotics.
Its symptoms consist in the early stages of a blister that appears and then disappears and then appears again. This is followed by itchy palms and feet.
This second stage can last years before the third deadly stage kicks in.
From then on you’re pretty much toast stage 3 syphilis kicks in and your internal organs are in a way motor functions are lost and you will probably go insane wandering the streets in somebody else’s clothes and talking to buildings. You want to avoid this last stage by getting tested infection rates of the pox are rare.
There are around 55 thousand new cases each year in the United States. You would have to sleep with about 1841 bed fellows to have a chance of catching it. Which means unless you’re on a world tour with the world’s biggest rock group you’re probably okay. A condom doesn’t necessarily protect against this but if you have that rash or itchy palms get it checked out.
HPV
IThere are over 100 different strains of HPV and almost 80 million people are infected with 14 million new infections each year. It isn’t curable but it typically just leaves of its own accord, after a few years there is now a vaccine for both men and women.
You would only have to sleep with 4 unprotected partners to have a 50% chance of catching it. A condom won’t necessarily protect you, as it spreads by skin-to-skin contact. While it is true that most sexually active men and women will get HPV at some point in their lives and some strains do cause cancer, most people never have any symptoms at all and don’t even know they have it. They can cause genital warts, but there are a number of treatments to clear that up. The HPV vaccine is called Gardasil and protects against the high-risk strains of HPV that cause cancer and the low-risk wart causing strains. To eliminate your chances of catching HPV be sure to get the vaccine.
Genital Herpes or HSV-2
Genital herpes is also quite common with already 24.1 million Americans infected and you would only need to have intercourse. Chances of contracting with the Genital Herpes is that you got to have13 partners to have a 50% chance of contracting it.
Millions of people have herpes, but don’t show any symptoms and are not infected to the point that they are able to pass it on. So there’s a good chance you might have herpes already but you don’t have the viral load required for it to show up in any blood test if you’ve ever had a cold sore or a fever blister around the mouth you have in fact had herpes
There are types HSV-1 is the type that occurs upstairs anHSV-2 is the type that happens downstairs. There’s no cure for herpes and it never goes away. If you do get a breakout of the condition there’s medication to take care.
HIV
HIV, on the other hand, is an incurable sexually transmitted disease that affects 1.2 million people in the USA. You would have to have unprotected sex with around 1250 partners to have a 50% risk of catching it. The chances go up, if you engage in anal sex or if you already have one of the aforementioned STDs. Condoms help mitigate the risk and HIV is not the death sentence it once was.
You would live reasonably well with the condition but medical expenses may prove expensive. Intravenous drug users and homosexuals are more likely to become infected with over 80% of cases involving gay sex or the sharing of dirty needles.
When it comes to vaginal sex there is a very remote chance for men to catch it unless there is some other open infection such as herpes in the genital region.
The symptoms of HIV generally begin as a really bad cold or flu for two weeks. From there, the immune system becomes progressively weaker 0ver a period of years. Many people carry HIV for years without realizing it. The good news is there are a lot of drugs out there to keep HIV under control and most people who contract it can live a relatively normal life.
But to be safe use a condom, starting a new relationship and having to explain to your potential sweetheart that you have HIV could well be a deal-breaker. We wish you stay safe out there and try not to let yourself get exposed.