Speak openly with partners about safer sex techniques and HIV status.
If you don't know your status, get an HIV test to protect yourself and others.
Get tested with your partner as a way of saying "you care and want both of you to stay healthy."
Often people who are newly HIV infected have few or no symptoms. Other times, symptoms of HIV are confused with other illnesses such as the flu. If a person were to have symptoms they would include:
With nearly 1 million Americans infected with HIV, AIDS prevention is more important than ever before. Most HIV infection is a result of sexual transmission. That combined with an estimated 15 million cases of other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) occurring each year effective strategies for preventing these diseases are critical. AIDS prevention is not the only reason for condom use. STD prevention as well as AIDS prevention are important reasons for condom use. Refraining from having unprotected sexual intercourse with an infected partner is the best way to achieve AIDS prevention and other STD prevention. Latex condoms are highly effective when used consistently and correctly. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) offers the following recommendation with regard to STD and AIDS prevention:
. Integrate the regimen into your daily life.
Fit the meds into your life instead of structuring your life around your meds.
Contrary to public perception, you can't get HIV infected by drinking from a water fountain, sitting on a toilet seat, hugging or touching an HIV infected person, or by eating off plates and utensils. The following are ways HIV can be transmitted from one person to another:
Simply put, to prevent reinfection, safer sex should be the rule with each and every sexual encounter. Be honest with your partner. Insist on condoms each time and explain why. While some feel condoms "kill the mood" or "don't feel as good" as sex without condoms, it is possible to have a very fulfilling sex life that includes condoms.
With your partner, introduce condoms into your intimacy. While it will feel different it can be very pleasurable. Also, continue to take your medications as prescribed without missing any doses. Share your concerns about reinfection with your physician and make him aware that you have had an unprotected encounter with another positive person. With this information, your doctor can be in tune to therapy failures is they occur and possible reasons for that failure. He or she may even feel a genotype resistance test could be helpful.
Have you had unprotected sex without knowing for sure that your partner was not HIV infected?
Have you had unprotected sex with someone you know has HIV or AIDS?
As you may already know there are several strains of HIV. In addition, when exposed to medications, HIV changes or mutates over time. If a person is reinfected with a strain of HIV that is different from the strains already present or if a mutated HIV type is introduced into the body through unsafe sex, treatment will be much more complex and potentially ineffective. For example, I am being treated for HIV and my medications are working well...my viral load is undetectable. Then I have unprotected sex with another person living with HIV and get reinfected with their strain...one that is resistant to most medications. Over time, that new strain will flourish in my body, rendering my once successful treatment useless. Eventually my viral load skyrockets and my immune system pays the price.