Should you get tested for Chlamydia? Yes, definitely!
Tags: Health, Healthcare, Self, Sex, Sexuality

“Life is a sexually transmitted disease — and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.” — R.D. Laing

When studying for my gynecology exam, I came across this quote by R.D. Laing, which I think is quite amusing once you think about it.

R.D. Laing was a popular psychiatrist in the 1980s who emphasized the need for assisted living for psychologically sick patients suffering from chronic progress of their disease.

He even moved into a shared living space himself, assisting his schizophrenic patients and preventing them from being put in locked-ward psychiatry. Now, R.D. Laing probably saw a lot of very ill patients and had to deal with sorrow and pain. Maybe that’s why he compared life to being a deadly disease which eventually started with two people having sexual intercourse.

In the end, the psychiatrist died at the age of 71 of a heart attack while playing tennis in Saint Tropez — I guess there are worse ways to die, right?

Life is not the only STD

Next to the sarcastic illness of being alive, there are hundreds of diseases that actually do get transmitted by sex. Some are presented to us on a regular basis by Hollywood movies, like the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).

Yet, it is the sexual diseases nobody talks about that have shown a dramatic uprising prevalence throughout the world during the last fifteen years. There are different explanations for this phenomenon.

Safer sex was especially advertised during the 1980s when lots of people were scared to be infected with the HIV virus causing AIDS.

Back in the days, there was no treatment at all for the brutally progressing immune deficiency caused by the small virus, which invades human cells and will forever integrate its own DNA into our genome.

In 2020, the virus can still not be cured — but it can be controlled quite efficiently if the patient takes his medications regularly and doesn’t miss his check-up appointments. With treatment, the RNA-copies in a patient’s plasma can drop very low — which would even make a transmission during unprotected sex very unlikely. Moreover, there are pre-expositional medications somebody can take before planned unprotected sex to prevent the disease from spreading.

This is of course a major success of our modern science and biomedical laboratories. On the other hand, it has caused a decreasing level of scariness and people are way less worried to catch the disease. But even though HIV rates might be dropping in some countries and care has greatly improved, the virus is still out there, causing horrible complications and deaths.

There is more than HIV to worry about during unprotected sex

With 1.5 million cases reported each year in the U.S., infections with Chlamydia is another widespread STD. Once contracted, it can cause terrible symptoms and may also affect a person’s life tremendously.

In most women, the bacterial infection does not cause any symptoms at all — so the actual number of infected people is probably way higher than “just” 1.5 million.

Once it is diagnosed, it can be cured with simple antibiotics — easy, right?

If left untreated due to not experiencing any symptoms and feeling healthy, it can lead to complications with will potentially lead to infertility. The bacteria will infect the fallopian tubes, causing them to stick together. At the beginning of a pregnancy, the fertilized egg gets stuck and cannot make its way to the uterus.

This can cause extrauterine pregnancies which are extremely dangerous for the mother and will always end in abortion.

1/10 women test positive for chlamydia

It is estimated that as many as one in ten sexually active women test positive for chlamydia. Once somebody has been tested positive for the infection, it is more than important to treat all of her or his sexual partners for the disease as well.

If partners are left untreated, the so-called “Ping-Pong-Effect” will come into play, meaning that partners keep re-infecting one another. To avoid the prolongation of treatment and risking severe complications, it is absolutely crucial, to be honest with your doctors about your sexual partners.

You’re 25 of age or younger? Get tested!

It is recommended for all women age 25 and under to get annual testing for chlamydia infection.

For older women, it strongly depends on the sexual partners — if you have multiple partners or your partner is having sex with other people, you should also get checked.

Better safe than sorry?

The best thing would be to prevent the disease from being transmitted in the first place — obviously, right? A condom will decrease the risk a lot, and so will a reduced number of sexual partners. Yet, if that has not been the case for you lately, it is not at all a shame to just get tested.

Now, the sexually transmitted disease called life might be 100% deathly. Chlamydia doesn’t need to be. It can be diagnosed easily and it can be cured. Keep making responsible choices, stay healthy, and inform yourself today.