CDC Suggests HIV Prevention Pill Be Approved For At-Risk Heterosexuals [Health]

Aug 11, 2012 2:15 PM  

A pill previously limited to "high-risk" gay and bisexual men, which has been on the market since 2004, may soon be prescribed to heterosexual people as well after health professionals at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that it was worth considering. There are an estimated 140,000 heterosexual couples in which one party is infected, said the CDC representative who headed up this new data, and "that's not a portion of the epidemic we want to ignore."

While the pill would not be recommended for all heretosexual individuals, or those whose partner is HIV-infected (condom use is generally effective protection, says the CDC), it would be immensely beneficial to one such couple who was trying to conceive and was found to be useful as a preventative measure—first for at-risk men, discovered last year, and later for both heterosexual men and women.

As expected, Truvada is expensive: Medicaid and private insurance have covered it, but it runs between $6,000 to $12,000 a year.

'Truvada: HIV Prevention Pill For Heterosexuals At Risk, Too' [HuffPo]

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Parents Eat More Saturated Fat Than People With No Kids, Says Study [Health]

A study from the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, one of the first to examine the eating habits of adults at different stages of parenthood, has found that the first seven years are the most difficult for parents to remain conscious of establishing nutritional boundaries and staples for themselves and their child. The reasons for this are pretty intuitive: every day is suddenly more chaotic, according to one mother interviewed. She had maintained a healthy diet and exercise plan before she had a child, but slipped after her daughter arrived, saying "Admittedly, I just wanted to hang out with [her.]"

Additionally, harried new parents are more likely to bring into the house what the study's author, Dr. Helena Laroche, refers to as "convenience foods," high in saturated fat. She says that her study's results clearly indicate that a little time needs to be taken to plan a healthy eating regimen. "Parenting is the great teachable moment when you can make sure the whole family eats well, because kids do want to eat what you eat," says Laroche.

For her part, the mother cited at the beginning downloaded an app that adds only nutritional staples to her grocery list in an attempt to avoid junk food and now shops at a farmer's market. But for parents to whom neither apps or farmers markets are readily available, it's somewhat more difficult to come by these easy solutions—something that may be worth its own study.

'New parent? Watch the saturated fat' [CNN]

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A Hairless Vag May Be Hazardous For Your Health [Grooming]

The concept of pubic landscaping is ubiquitous at this point — even men are getting (gag) "boyzillians" — but there are also signs that au naturel pubes are coming back in fashion. Maybe that's because the fear that others won't be sexually attracted to you if your vagina doesn't look like a twelve-year-old's kind of dissipated after the Sex and the City finale.

Still, if some douche/Real Housewife gives you shit for choosing not to wax or shave, drop some gross quotes from Dr. Emily Gibson's recent piece about why going hairless is bad for your health. Some excerpts:

Pubic hair removal naturally irritates and inflames the hair follicles left behind, leaving microscopic open wounds.  Rather than suffering a comparison to a bristle brush, frequent hair removal is necessary to stay smooth, causing regular irritation of the shaved or waxed area.  When that irritation is combined with the warm moist environment of the genitals, it becomes a happy culture media for some of the nastiest of bacterial pathogens, namely group A streptococcus, staphylococcus aureus and its recently mutated cousin methicillin resistant staph aureus (MRSA).   There is an increase in staph boils and abscesses, necessitating incisions to drain the infection, resulting in scarring that can be significant.   It is not at all unusual to find pustules and other hair follicle inflammation papules on shaved genitals.

Not traumatizing enough for you? Gibson also notes that she's "seen cellulitis (soft tissue bacterial infection without abscess) of the scrotum, labia and penis from spread of bacteria from shaving or from sexual contact with strep or staph bacteria from a partner's skin." Lovely. Also, "Some clinicians are finding that freshly shaved pubic areas and genitals are also more vulnerable to herpes infections due to the microscopic wounds being exposed to virus carried by mouth or genitals." Hear that, Samantha Jones?

Of course, some women enjoy the feel of being waxed/shaved/whatever. Is that so bad? Nah — but Caitlin Moran brought up some good points on that subject in a recent Hairpin interview. "I feel that anything that's normal that involves pain and costs a lot of money that boys aren't doing is something that I would really urgently want to have some kind of massive fucking inquest into," she said. When the site asked her about women who use public hair "as a sort of chasity belt," Moran shared some more waxing wisdom:

But would you really not, though?? Any rule I've ever made in my life, if I had two drinks and was quite turned on, I would just - if I had written the word "tit" on my tits in a black mark pen, and by taking my top off that word would be revealed, I would still have sex, because the thing is that men just don't care. You know, as I put in the book, there are men having sex with bicycles. There's American Pie, the highly grossing film about the eternal truth that men would fuck a pie. I don't think we need to worry about doing it for the men. There used to be the idea that women have to be persuaded. The idea that we've kind of flipped this whole thing the other way around so that women feel like they've got to persuade men to have sex with them by enduring incredibly costly cosmetic things is just nuts.

So let's not worry about doing it for the men, or cultural expectations, or thongs, or anything/anyone else. Let's worry about doing it because of abscesses and staph bacteria! Wooo, Friday night!

Doctor: Pubic Hair Exists for a Reason — Our Obsession With Hairless Genitals Must End! [Alternet]

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These Three Court Rulings on Women's Health Will Give You a Rage Headache [War On Women]

Happy Day After No Copay Day! Everyone hug your now-likely-much-cheaper birth control and jump around screaming like you just randomly ran into it at a bar! Dance together in a circle! Get all of your celebrating out now, because I've got some pretty sobering, not-awesome news: in the past week, three separate, terribly depressing court rulings have ignored science and put both abortion rights and birth control access at risk. Again.

The New York Times nicely sums up the trio of giant bummers happening at about the same time that health care becomes more affordable to millions of women. And while all of them can be appealed, none of them should be ignored.

First, let's take an imaginary trip to Arizona (because no one should ever take a real trip there). On Monday, a district judge there ruled that the state's ban on all abortions after 20 weeks with no exceptions for rape, incest, the health of the mother, or fetal abnormality can go into effect, even though it directly defies the Supreme Court ruling that states can't ban abortion before viability (before the fetus can survive on its own outside of a woman's body), which doesn't occur until about 24 weeks' gestation. The law's especially cruel considering the fact that many fetal abnormalities and health risks to the mother can't be determined until beyond that point in a pregnancy, and, as others have mentioned, the new law will condemn some couples to give birth to nonviable fetuses and basically watch them die. It also requires women whose pregnancies are risks to their own health to either leave the state or deal with a debilitating pregnancy Arizona mandates they carry to term. Judge James Teilborg, a Bill Clinton appointee (!!!) characterized the ban not as a "ban," but as a "regulation," which is constitutional. Teilborg also acquiesced to flimsy, unaccepted scientific evidence that fetuses, at 20 weeks, can feel pain (most doctors who didn't get their medical degree from It Says Right There In The Bible! University agree that they can't). But what about women, you may ask, can they feel pain? The answer is no. No, women cannot feel pain. Shhh. Thankfully, yesterday a 9th Circuit judge showed some damn sense and issued an emergency injunction blocking the law.

The next stop on our Tour de Ugh lands us in South Dakota (which, unlike Arizona, is a terribly underrated state that everyone should visit, if only for the Mitchell Corn Palace), which currently has a law on the books requiring doctors to lie to women by telling them that having abortions puts them at higher risk of suicide than women who just go on ahead with 9 months of a pregnancy they do not want. Last Tuesday, the Eighth Circuit Court in St. Louis ruled that this is just fine; doctors don't have free speech rights that can be trampled upon, because it's totally within the purview of elected state legislators to use their positions to practice medicine on women they don't know and have never met. You read that right — it's just fine for states to require doctors to lie to patients. This could be read as bad news, or it could be read as excellent news, because I guess that means that now I can push for that law that requires doctors to tell dudes that if they hog, like, three seats on the subway by sitting with their lets too ridiculously wide open, it will cause their dicks to shrink. What's real is what is most comforting to my existing world view!

And, finally, let's not forget about a secular Colorado heating and air conditioning business (because — duh — there's no such thing as a churchy heating and air conditioning business, unless we're talking about that giant heating business located far below ground, the one that Satan uses to bake naughty people) that was granted the right to deny its female employees birth control coverage on the grounds that the owner of the business finds it icky. Religious freedom means freedom of oppression. It means the freedom to make other people's choices for them. In the Colorado case, thankfully, the judge specified that his injunction allows Hercules Industries to refuse to follow Obamacare's guidelines, but it doesn't stop the administration from enforcing them on anyone else. Like anyone adamantly against whore pills will listen to that.

So enjoy the free birth control while it lasts, and don't take it for granted. There are entire teams of jerks working feverishly to take it away from you, and they won't stop until everyone's either pregnant or chaste.

[NYT]

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Sexual Dissatisfaction Found to Be Common in Diabetic Women [Health]

Poor Paula Deen might be mourning more than just the loss of butter. :(((

A group of over 2,000 ethnically-diverse women between the ages of 40 and 20 were studied by the University of California at San Francisco's Women's Health Clinical Research Center, comprised by insulin-treated diabetics, non-insulin-treated diabetics and non-diabetics.

Researchers discovered that an outstanding number of the diabetics, particularly the 139 receiving insulin treatment, cited lubrication issues and were 80% more likely (FUUU) to report difficulty achieving orgasm during sex, culminating with a low overall satisfaction rate that's twice as high in insulin-treated women and 40% higher in non-insulin-treated diabetic women than the rate of non-diabetic women. The sexual desire rate, meanwhile, remained equal for all of the women.

Lead researcher Kelli Copeland released the data along with a statement:

Based on this research, clinicians may want to consider assessing diabetic women for sexual problems, particularly among those taking insulin, and counsel them that prevention of end-organ complications may be important in preserving sexual function.

The study didn't distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, but researchers say that the kind of insulin being taken by many of the subjects suggests that a fair amount of Type 2 women were in the fold.

'Diabetes May Cause Sexual Dissatisfaction in Women' [Medical Daily]

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