Don’t Make These Health Mistakes, Get Tested!
Some of the unfortunate common health assumptions are possibly the sources of treatable early conditions, when not treated can have terrible consequences. This is one of the many reasons to get yearly check ups, whether you need a pap smear this year or not!
1. Don’t make the mistake of assuming you do not have an STD just because you have no symptoms.
2. Don’t assume bowel symptoms are not an STD, they actually could be.
3. Don’t assume that an HPV vaccine permanently protects you against cervical cancer.
4. Don’t think a prior chlamyida or gonorrhea infection makes you immune to repeat infections.
5. Don’t assume that STDs have no link to cancers, a new study showed those with prior chlamyida have almost double the risk of ovarian cancer at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 2018 Annual Meeting.Britton Trabert, PhD, from the at the National Cancer Institute, explained to Medscape “that pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), which is caused when bacteria infect the uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries, is associated with increased risk for ovarian cancer.”
6. PID is also hard to diagnose, and if untreated can cause infertility, tubal pregnancies, chronic pain or even increase risk of ovarian cancer.
7. Many STDs (or those that are have sexual transmission as one way to catch the condition) have subtle symptoms, can actually lead to chronic liver conditions including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, Epstein-Barr virus, and cytomegalovirus.
8. Negative genetic testing doesn’t mean you have no risk, for instance over 80% of breast cancers are not caused by one of the common genetic defects we can test for. That means more cancers will occur in women without risk, so keep getting your mammograms and come for appointments!
