Single, sex and STDs
November 20, 2011
BY CARMEN M. HUBBARD
After three decades of a tumultuous marriage rooted in manipulation and deceit, Marlene got the divorce she needed to be free. The mother of two adult children mustered the courage to find her voice and rediscover herself while getting acclimated to the dating scene. So much had changed. The last time Marlene was single she was 22 in the 1980s. Now at 52 years old, Marlene wanted to find the love of her dreams even though she took home a boy toy or two along the way.
Being menopausal, Marlene no longer feared getting pregnant while enjoying her “friends with benefits.” Then it happened. A routine visit to the doctor diagnosed Marlene with herpes. What? How? When? Marlene went through a flurry of emotions: from puzzled to confused to realization to frustration to disappointment.
“I’ve seen HIV patients in their late 50s and early 60s who tell me they had gone to their doctors several times over many months before they were finally tested for HIV,” said psychologist Timothy Heckman.
Heckman co-authored an Ohio University study that found about 27 percent of HIV-infected men and 35 percent of HIV-infected women over 50 sometimes have sex without using condoms.
Although it’s not considered an epidemic, figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2005:
• 16 percent of new U.S. HIV/AIDS cases are among those age 50 and older;
• 25 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS are over 50 — 17 percent increase since 2001;
• 35 percent of all deaths of persons with AIDS are over 50.
Researchers believe some doctors unwillingness to broach the topic of STDs might be partly to blame.
“Older women think doctors should ask them about it but won’t initiate the discussion themselves,” said researcher Stacy Lindau, who wrote a study for the University of Chicago. Its findings included nearly half of the respondents didn’t talk to their doctors about their sex life.
It’s that kind of dismissal due to embarrassment that sex educator and sex coach Katherine Forsythe wants to address. She hosts “Sex on the Porch” an open forum for women 50 and older to discuss their sexuality. Forsythe, who lives in San Francisco, urges women to ask their partners to prove they’ve been tested for a sexually transmitted infection or STI.
“Many of them say, ‘I can’t ask that,’” she said. “I ask them how they’ll feel telling every sexual partner for the rest of your life you have HIV. These women have to realize it’s a matter of protecting their most precious possession — their bodies.”
Dr. Anthony Japour is a specialist in infectious diseases at Jackson North Medical Center and an adjunct professor at the department of Molecular Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at Florida International University’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine.
He cited two reasons why people in their 50s are living with AIDS.
“One of them is the success achieved with medications. Individuals last longer than before. They can be infected with HIV in their 30s or 40s and still live longer than 50 or 60 years,” Japour said. “In 2001, there were only 15 percent of 50-plus people with HIV, and in the study we did in 2007 it went up to 25 percent. To have HIV nowadays doesn’t mean a sure death. Virus patients are dying from other causes such as heart problems, dementia or cancer, among other diseases.”
In addition, Dr. Giorgio Tarchini of the Cleveland Clinic Department of Infectious Diseases said genital herpes is the most common of infectious diseases. Of the STIs, that with the largest increase in recent years is syphilis.
“The biggest challenge of all STDs is genital herpes and HIV, because they are incurable,” Tarchini said.
Tarchini explained why these diseases are growing among people 55 and older.
• This age group has a more active sexual life thanks to medications treating erectile dysfunction.
• People are living longer and are healthier.
• People tend to not protect themselves because they do not pay attention to STDs;
• After menopause, women no longer worry about getting pregnant and stop using condoms for birth control.
Forsythe drills the same message she taught teenagers in sex ed classes: “If you’re going to play grown-up games, you have to play by grown-up rules. Today, that means a condom until you see the paperwork and have been monogamous for three months. No papers, no naked penis.”