Jill Grimes, MD, is a board-certified family practice physician in Austin, TX. She is an associate editor for the 5-Minute Clinical Consult textbook, and clinical instructor at UMASS Medical School.  Her book, Seductive Delusions: How Everyday People Catch STDs, proves how serious STDs are for all of us – yes, even you! We had a chance to speak with Jill and she had this to share with everyone at CollegeCandy:

Okay, ladies, it’s time for a sneak peak behind closed exam-room doors. Outside, we are bombarded with the constant message that sex is all about fun, excitement, and personal empowerment – our bodies, our choice. Inside, however, we see a disconnect between these choices and unexpected consequences. People like “us”- whether that’s preppy Greeks, computer geeks, scholarship athletes, nurturing elementary ed majors, intense pre-law or pre-med majors, or any other student – these aren’t the kind of people who would be at risk of carrying a sexually transmitted disease, right?

WRONG!

As a private practice family physician located near a major university, I’m here to give you the REAL scoop about the STDs we diagnose every day, in women just like you.

The majority of my patients have had fewer sexual partners than they can count on one hand, and yet my colleagues and I diagnose genital herpes, chlamydia, and HPV (either obvious genital warts or abnormal Pap smears) like crazy! To be honest, one of the most common things we hear when we diagnose someone with genital herpes is “but there’s NO WAY I can have herpes, because I haven’t even had sex yet!” Of course, they’ve had oral sex, but they didn’t realize that cold sores = Herpes and cold sores in the mouth + genitals = Herpes down low. Read More »

For the two of you still reading past that headline, I’m sorry to say that the disturbing image is in fact a reality—as I unfortunately found out when my grandmother confided details of her sex life that confirmed that everyone is indeed having more sex than me.

Well, it seems that the elderly are having so much sex, that the New York City Health Department has been targeting the older age group for condom giveaways and free HIV testing. The City Council has even budgeted $1 million toward HIV education for older people—money well-spent, considering that a study by the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America projected that within the next decade, the majority of HIV-infected New Yorkers will be over 50. Read More »