Across the border in my home country of Canada, rates of STDs have rapidly been increasing since 2000. Syphilis cases have increased 10 times over, while chlamydia rates have increased 66 percent. Public-health experts are saying that this can partially be attributed to the popularity of online dating.

The problem is that people get to know each other in advance, so by the time they meet there are already increased levels of intimacy. Because of this felt intimacy, people are less likely to have a conversation about safe sex. Add this to the decrease in condom use among female college students, and it’s definitely something we should be talking about.

Public health agency statistics indicate that the more the HIV epidemic appears to become a thing of the past, the less people focus on a message of safe sex. There are, of course, other factors than just online dating, but the response should be the same. Communicate with your partners, practice safe sex, and get tested. Read More »

Two days ago, I went to my university’s health center. Now, usually I completely disregard any information I get at the health center on the grounds of either A) I have heard that every year since I first took sex ed in 7th grade, or B) Those ‘doctors’ are full of ish.

But this time, by the luck of the draw, I happened to get a check-up from someone that (gasp!) actually knew what they were talking about. I’m not saying you should listen to this doctor (nurse practitioner, if you want to get technical) instead of your own, but these are a few little known facts I picked up that I thought I would share.

Beware, as these tidbits may scare you away from sex for life (or at least for the night).

1. In order for your birth control to be 99.7% effective, you must take it every day within 30 minutes of the same time.
Apparently, the hormones that make you temporarily infertile only work for 24 straight hours. According to Susan (the nurse practitioner), you should be okay if you miss the time by 1 to 2 hours. If you miss more than that, however, you should use condoms for at least a week. Read More »

My first boyfriend was uncircumcised. At the young, inexperienced age of fourteen, I realized this only because one day while chilling on the futon in the den having a post BJ-sesh chat, he informed me that some of the girls he had been with (because as a sixteen-year-old senior, he was far more sexually experienced than my freshman self) were initially freaked out by the au natural state of his Scottish-born ween. Huh, I remember thinking. He’s not circumcised. So THAT’s what that looks like.

It’s not like I was totally ignorant. I had been reading Seventeen and YM since I was nine. I knew all about hymens and G-spots and that you couldn’t get pregnant from a boy shooting his load into the open waters of a hot tub, so I certainly knew that some gents had foreskins and some did not; I just wasn’t really sure what that meant, anatomically.

I didn’t actually fully experience the difference between the two until about ten months later when my boyfriend and I were “on a break” and I hooked up with another boy, birthed in the good old U.S. of A. and fully shorn to prove it. As we sweatily made out on the couch, I jammed my hand in to his shorts, confidently grabbed a hold of his manparts, and…proceeded to give him the rawest handjob in the history of the earth. Read More »

Today, December 1, is World AIDS Day – a day to take action towards informing yourself about how to protect yourself and others from HIV while reducing the prejudice of those infected. AIDS may seem like a problem only in the developing world, but it’s not. Over 1.1 million people in the USA have HIV. There remains a stigma around AIDS that can reduced the more we talk about it.

This year, some of your most-loved (or love-to-hate) celebs are giving up their digital life until their fans donate 1 million dollars by “buying life.” But you don’t have to be a celebrity with 5 million Twitter followers to make a difference.

As you sit in your dorm room (or lecture hall – we know you’re reading this in class!), you might be questioning what you can possibly do to make a difference – after all you are only one person. But, if everyone takes action, then collectively we can make some major strides. Even from that teeny, tiny room you call home.

Print out and put a poster on your door
I’m sure a lot of people walk by your room each day and chances are if there’s something different up on your door, they might take a second to stop and think about what the poster means, and maybe even generate a conversation with you about the topic.

Do your research
Read up on World AIDS Day. The best protection is knowledge. Spread what you know by talking to friends, or the random person who stops by your room after seeing your poster. Read More »

Sarah woke up one Sunday with an aching pain in her throat. The night before, she had felt a bit sick after a week of intense studying and paper-writing. But, deciding her sanity was more important than her health, she threw back a few shots of Jose and hit the town with her girlfriends.

Rubbing her eyes the following morning, she was greeted by a lightly snoring Derek at her side. Crap, she thought, Colin is going to be so pissed.

Disheveled, Sarah grabbed her scattered clothes and headed to the bathroom to put herself together before enduring the never pleasant walk of shame.

“Ohmigodd!” she practically shouted. Her neck was as thick as her head and her eyelids so swollen she might as well have just lost in the ring against Mike Tyson. Splashing some cold water on her face, Sarah ignored the absolute atrocity that was her appearance and briskly walked back to her house.

Loading up on DayQuill, NyQuill, and hot tea galore, she spent the day nursing her moral and physical hangover — as well as her cold. Hours later, still feeling lousy, Sarah went to the student health center and got a strep and a blood test. The result: She had mono.

Rather than worrying about the state of her body, or (more importantly) her liver, she immediately worried about her hookups. She had both Colin and Derek on a cycle, wasn’t serious with either of them, but had swapped enough saliva with both to infect their bodies with the pesky virus she now endured.

Do I tell them? she pondered, Or just risk it and hope they both get lucky? Read More »

Use these.

Well, it’s back to school time again. Along with new teachers, new classes, and new assloads of work, we’re also going to be finding ourselves in a sea of new faces – which means one thing: fresh meat.

Whether you’re a freshman or a senior, college campuses everywhere will be packed with new people to party with, new people to study with, and yes, new people to have sex with. We all know the first few months of school are typically when the hormones of many kick in (this goes back to the “fresh meat” thing), and people everywhere are gettin’ busy. A lot.

So before we all pack up our stuff, say goodbye to free food and laundry and head back to school, here are a few STI facts to keep in mind when checking out all those new sexual prospects come September. Read More »

Foreskin may be the only uncharted territory Americans have no desire to conquer. In our country, circumcision is common enough that a foreskin-free penis is the expectation, but elsewhere, that’s hardly the case. Though it remains the most common elective operation globally, the majority of men in the world don’t undergo it. Surprised? Dismayed? Completely alarmed that you can no longer take a European lover?

Don’t be.

The ever-proper Charlotte York may have once compared an uncut penis to a shar pei, but there’s no reason why you should be repulsed by foreskin.

Countless girlfriends of mine cringe at the thought of penises au natural, but my own varied sexual experiences have familiarized me with the lesser known peen and I’m on a mission to demystify it. Here’s some good news to start: uncut penises are pretty much the same as their counterparts. And yet, Americans and those with less colorful sexual pasts continue to treat foreskin as something of an anomaly and even a defect. I’ve isolated foreskinphobia into a few easily identifiable (and refutable) myths: Read More »

Talking sex with your doctor isn’t always easy. Whether you are afraid she or he will judge you,  you just don’t feel comfortable sharing the intimate details of your life between the sheets, or you can’t think straight with a speculum between your legs, many people get tight lipped in the doctor’s office. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have questions.

We took the embarrassment (and speculum!) factor out of the equation and asked you, the CollegeCandy readers, to submit the questions you had regarding STDs and sexual health to our new pal, OB/GYN Dr. Lissa Rankin. Check out the first batch of questions she answered and get the rest of the info below:

1. If you have a high risk strain of HPV and so does your current partner, will my chances of it progressing to cervical cancer increase if we do not use a condom, and just use birth control? I am positive he is also monogamous.

Bummer about the HPV, but rest assured, you’re so not alone. As many as 80% of sexually active young people will test positive for HPV, even in the absence of symptoms.  If you and your partner already have a high risk strain of HPV and you’re both completely monogamous, using a condom probably won’t help you unless there are other strains of HPV or other STDs that the two of you have not already transmitted to each other.  Whether or not your high risk HPV leads to precancerous changes of the cervix, or worse, cervical cancer, has much more to do with how well your immune system functions.  The best thing you can do to avoid cervical cancer once you have high risk HPV is to eat a whole foods, healthy diet, exercise regularly, get enough sleep, take a multivitamin, manage your stress in healthy ways, and generally take good care of your body – all things that strengthen your immune system.  If you have access to an integrative medicine physician or a naturopathic doctor, there are herbal formulas that can help your body naturally fight the HPV.  Read More »

[The following post is courtesy of Vanessa Cullins, M.D., Vice President of Medical Affairs at Planned Parenthood. If anyone knows anything about the importance of testing and sexual health, it is Dr. Cullins.]

Here’s a disturbing tidbit:  A U.S. government study found that an average of 14 percent of college women become infected with a human papilloma virus (HPV) each year. At the end of a three-year study, 43 percent of college women were infected.  Why should you care?  Because in some cases HPV can lead to cancer. To avoid HPV infection, girls and women should be vaccinated with Gardasil, which prevents infection of the types of HPV that cause 70 percent of the cases of cervical cancer in the U.S.

Here’s another: An estimated 19 million Americans are infected with a new sexually transmitted disease (STD) each year and, by the age of 25, half of all sexually active young people will contract an STD. In fact, at least one in four teenage girls already has an STD.

Read More »

Do you have that burning, itching, inflamed, oozey feeling south of the border? Maybe you don’t see or feel anything obvious but you just have that nagging suspicion that last week’s man-whore frat-guy gave you more than his number. Either way, it’s time you got checked out.

Even if you don’t suspect any foul play but just want to be on the safe side, you should set up an appointment. Not sure where to start? Here’s everything you need to know before you put on the paper gown. Read More »