Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - You’re Not Alone: Talking About STIs and Staying Connected

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

In this episode of "Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex with Dr. Sue & Charlie," we tackle the topic of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) with a focus on support and open communication. Dr. Sue and Charlie discuss how STIs impact different age groups and the unique challenges each group faces, breaking down common fears and misconceptions. They emphasize that anyone can be affected and that no one should feel alone or without options. We discuss the importance of open and honest conversations about STIs with partners, and  removing the stigma that often surrounds these discussions. Dr. Sue talks about how common STIs are, and some of the reasons why people don’t take steps to reduce their risk, while Charlie helps to highlight the importance of staying informed and connected. Charlie and Dr. Sue emphasize that you are not alone in your reaction to the amount of information to consider surrounding STIs and individual risk. Tune in for a supportive, judgment-free conversation that reminds you that you’re never alone in your journey toward sexual health. If you have a topic or question for us please submit your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestions If you want to ask Dr Sue a sex question for the weekly Q&A you can submit it here: Ask a question

Hey everyone, welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. Together, we dive into the topics around sex and sexuality that you're curious about, but maybe too shy to talk about. No judgment in this space, real talk. So zip down and let's get candid. Hey, Dr. Sue. Hey, Charlie.

So this is our 11th episode. It is our 11th episode. Yeah, that's exciting. I think it's really fun to have what we've done out there so far. How are you feeling? I'm feeling good about it. So we, I think we want to take a quick second before we got into like who we are and our topic to just say thank you to those of you who've been listening.

We've gotten some interesting feedback, not bad. I hesitate over interesting because some of the, some of what we've been saying has been pissing people off in a good way of like, they didn't know this was happening or they didn't know this was an issue or they're angry that no one's taught them this before. And so there's been some, some really fascinating dialogue that I know I've been having with some listeners, people essentially that I know, but also some folks who've been sending in. We'll talk about this, I'm sure, at some point. But for folks who've never engaged with the show, we do have a website where you can send us questions or topics. And so we've been getting

some interesting stuff from folks. So really excited that people are listening and kind of responding and we appreciate it. Yeah, very much. So thank you, everyone who's listened so far and has recommended us keep it up we really appreciate it um and so without further ado dr sue yes would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself well now that we're the 11th episode can i start that i'm the co-host of this podcast yes you can um though i think that's a little redundant so um i i actually wear a lot of different hats on any given day um primarily i work in academia but i also work in the community. I do education around around sex and sexuality across the entire lifespan. So really kind of looking at how do we help fill in those gaps of information that people

didn't even realize they had. And joining us on this trip today is Charlie, our open-minded guide through the both intimate and often intriguing and often confusing world of sex relationships and everything in between. That's me. Say a little bit more about yourself now that we're in the 11th episode. Yeah. Um, so I am just, I'm someone, Dr. Sue and I have been friends for many years. We've had these kinds of conversations together. Um, and I am someone who, um, if you're tuning in for the first time, I enjoy challenging taboos and societal expectations of women and talking about sex in an, in a on unashamed way is one of those ways that I like to challenge society's expectations um so that's that's me in a little nutshell so today dr sue yes stis yeah yeah so

just transmitted infections to give you folks a little background when charlie and i sit down and we figure out kind of what we want to do for topics we we kind of saw those first 10 episodes that we were doing as a groundwork a little bit about the field of sexuality and sex education a little bit about kind of what we know our problems exist and so when we sat down to start planning out the next 10 we're like well we're not quite done with the with the groundwork stuff we realized we'd never talked about stis which probably impacts at some point every human being who's listening to the show. So we wanted to kind of take it there. Yeah. So for those of you unfamiliar with the term, and it's funny because I say STIs and people are like, oh, we know what

those are. So they're sexually transmitted infections. They're infections that can be transmitted through sexual activity, but also infections that can come from other places that don't involve sex. We used to call them STDs, which are sexually transmitted diseases. And the CDC has kind of changed their language and I like to be up to date with some of the most common language, the most up-to-date language. My older folks that I work with still call them VD, which is venereal diseases. Oh, wow. Yeah. So there's a term I haven't heard in years. Yeah. And it was fascinating because I was working with a group of folks and they were all above 70 and they were talking about VD and they actually, especially those who'd served in

the military had almost better sex education because they were taught to like use a condom here's a condom carry it use it yeah so in some ways they were actually getting better sex education than their counterparts who weren't in the military but we are going to use the term sti because it is just the most accurate term that we're using right now so uh dr sue how do you how do you broach this subject um in in your classroom or you know just what's your experience with teaching around this particular around stis getting information out there um because i imagine if someone if if you're a first-time listener and this term is how you found our podcast and this episode, you might be worried about something and a little scared. So it's interesting because

how I approach it's going to be different for the population that I'm in. Like when I'm working with folks who are 70 and older, I am doing more like safer sex education than I've ever done before because that population of folks 65 and older, their STI rate is skyrocketing. And they never learned about it in the first place and they also thought that it wasn't an issue for them and and they're getting very different messages from their doctors like they're not getting the same risk messages that i'm i'm thinking that younger folks are getting though i'm not even sure they're getting those so a lot of times when i'm introducing the topic i really have to take a look at like what's going on in their brains and where are they coming from so i i don't approach

STIs the same way with every population. And I think that's really important because when we're talking about STI information, it doesn't impact everyone the exact same way. So I just want to throw that out there. What do you mean by that? So when you're younger, if you have an untreated bacterial STI like chlamydia or gonorrhea, it could lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, which could lead to scarring, which can make it difficult to get pregnant in the future. And so when I talk about it with my college students or teenagers in general, I talk about that there's long-term impact to some of these. My 70, 80-year-olds, they're not worried so much about the long-term impact. I hate to say it that

way, but they're not. They're just not as worried about it. And also pregnancy is not an option for them, for most of them at that age. I mean, if you're a man dating a significantly younger woman, it could be but um so i think it's important to to look at at how we're presenting the information for teenagers they are at a larger risk looking at the statistics so i know you and i we for those of you who don't know i mean there's no way you could know our show set up so we have a little like powwow at the beginning about um yeah i want to call it the fact that i just used that word sorry sorry my apologies i should not have used that word and i heard it and i didn't stop it so let me throw immediately listeners immediately you should have seen her face she immediately

caught it so my apologies for that so um charlie and i have a little a little conversation about what we want to talk about and what might we bring up and and so i'm not really big on statistics and the reason that i'm not really big on statistics is that statistics can be manipulated And they're not always so accurate. And especially with STIs, like it looked like our rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea were going down during COVID. And they weren't going down, but the clinics were closed. So people weren't getting tested. So so there was no data source. There was no data source. So so I'm always a little leery to give statistics. But when when Charlie and I were talking about doing this, the 15 to 24 year old population makes up somewhere around. And this is the other reason I don't love numbers. I make up a lot of them. I think it's somewhere around like 13, 14, 15 percent of the population of the U.S. population. I do not know the data from other countries. So 15 to 24 year olds make up somewhere.

Let's just make the number even and say 15, 15 percent of the population. And they represent about a quarter of the folks who are sexually active in the United States. But they make up about half of all STIs in any given year. so they have to be like there's a real different need to talk about how this is impacting them and their risk um not that the risk isn't there was as people move into their 20s 30s and 40s and definitely 60s and older which is a population we largely ignore when it comes to sex education but so a lot of what i do is really i i try to tailor what i'm saying to the risk that's in the room that i know about based on statistics but the two things i don't care who i'm talking to i don't

care if you're 75 i don't care if you're 25 i don't care if you're 18 the two things i try to drive home and the things i want you to take out of this if you're listening is that you are not the only one if you have recently been diagnosed with an sti if you have an sti like herpes that you're going to have for the rest of your life you are not the only one you are not dirty you are not disgusting you are not you should not feel ashamed because that's a lot of what i used to get when i was in clinic this our patients would come to us and be like i should have known better i'm you know i'm used now that was my least favorite like that would just make me oh wow yeah i'm used no one's gonna want me um that they were dirty or somehow none of that none of that

is true almost everyone in this country is going to deal with an sti at some point um so you're not alone there are treatment options there may be cures depending on what it is and it is possible to still have a happy healthy sex life regardless of whether or not you have an STI so those are the two things I try to drive home no matter what you're not alone you're not somehow you know you don't like slap a scarlet letter on you if you have if you have syphilis like it's you're not you're definitely not alone and there is no reason you can't have a happy healthy sex life it may require sorry that's okay i just wanted to also i just wanted to yes and it's treat whatever you may be contending with is treatable if you can get access to those

those medications and and access to treatment yeah i mean we may not be able to cure everything but we can definitely treat symptoms and outbreaks as they're happening yeah yeah but that's a whole lot of thing about access then and i know you and i talked a little bit about that too future episode as we like to point out in these in our chats um but but this idea that um that you can't have a sex life after a diagnosis is just not that's just not accurate you can absolutely have a happy healthy sex life it just may require you having different conversations with your partners to make sure you're keeping them as safe as possible and may require maybe not engaging in certain behaviors while you're having outbreaks depending on what it is

but there's no reason this is the end of your sex life. Yeah. I think that's, I really appreciate you pointing that out because there is so much stigma around, especially around certain STIs more than others. And then there are others that we thought had largely been, I don't know, suppressed or remission in society that are making a comeback. Yeah. So-called a comeback been here for years I was already here yeah sorry we didn't mean to rip off the song but yeah I think that's it's really important to especially if you're some again if you're someone that came to our show specifically for this episode you might be a little scared it might feel uncertain but you're not alone it's it's treatable again with the caveat you

have access asterisks um and there there are resources out there so that you can um so that you can feel less alone and less shame around it because to dr sue's point the majority of the population has been exposed to an sti and i think the point you made earlier in this at the top of this episode is that, um, that you don't always get those infections from sex. They're just in the category, the CDC category of STIs, right? Yeah. So the, well, there's a couple I talk about when that happens. Yes. So yes. And, um, the big one I always talk about is, um, are yeast infections. So yeast infections can appear in people who have vaginas. There's always yeast kind of living in there. But what happens is sometimes the pH balance changes. And that could

be because of medications that you're on. It could be because of what you're wearing. Very tight underwear can kind of change the flora and fauna that's happening in the vagina. But some women get a vaginal, excuse me, a yeast infection every single month with their cycle just because of the hormone changes. And so I've worked with women who do get a yeast infection literally every month. I mean, technically it would be an STI. The concern for me is one, how do we help you manage it? And then also how do we stop you from transmitting it? So I've had students who tell me that they got herpes from their parents. I mean, from their mom, they were born with it. And so there are times where we see that happen. I also think if we could just get rid of the shame and stigma, I mean, this is never going to happen in the U.S., but if we could just get rid of the shame and stigma around the word STI, then people who are getting them different ways are not going to be as embarrassed.

you know or hesitant hesitant right because it is that shame and stigma that i think contributes to this this this increase again in some of what we're seeing for certain ones yeah like syphilis is that what you're thinking you're thinking syphilis i know you're thinking front of mind absolutely well because because i know i was giving you some of the data before we kind of started this this is one of the ones where i tend to be a little more data heavy um just because we do have some data on some STIs and the numbers are quite terrifying. I do just want to go back to something I said, because I get this question a lot. Like my partner told me they got chlamydia from a toilet seat. When I said that you may not get it from sex, that it may be other ways that

you're getting STIs, you're not getting STIs from a toilet seat. That's if someone's telling you that they're lying to you. Yeah, there was a comedy show that I watched who it was basically kind of debunking certain myths that people hold on to and want to and they did an episode on public toilet seats. And they pointed out the fact that the material that those seats are made out of are non porous. So they're not necessarily absorbing anything. Now, that's not to say, you know liquid sitting on top of the toilet seat is yeah i still wouldn't recommend sitting on that like yeah yeah like clean it up but but yeah to your point the toilet seat isn't absorbing waiting to like jump out and get you yeah like you would have to have someone i mean it's not really easily

spread through urine so like you would have to have someone basically rubbing their genitals on the toilet seat you would need to be outside of that stall like pants around your ankles like runner sprint start like ready to go they pop out you pop in you rub your genitals like this is not yeah that'd be a funny sketch though right there um but i do and i'm i don't like to tell people they're lying but if if a partner says to you that they got chlamydia or gonorrhea from something like a toilet seat they are lying to you so i just want to be careful when i say things like you can get it from other places that they're not like tanning beds doorknobs i had that question once i think that's really that's another thing to uh an important thing to point out in this

episode as well again for those who aren't maybe listed this is the first episode you're listening to um because of the the title and the description is like what are some common um i don't know lies we'll just call it what they what it is some some different lies that that are top of mind are there any more that other than what you just mentioned um that you that we can that we can kind of debunk that you can't get an i an sti your first time having sex that you can tell by looking at the way someone is dressed okay yeah i've had that before well well they dress so nice i figured they had to be they had to be clean i also hate that language like clean implies the opposite is dirty yeah yeah uh so you can't get it you can't get something your first time um that you can

always tell by the way a person dresses i don't know what you're teaching me um that if you have one you don't have to worry about getting another so like oh i've already had chlamydia i don't have to worry about anything else yeah yeah i've i've worked with a couple parents when the so i'm i'm a little older than my college students so there's an age gap there um but when the hpv vaccine first came out uh i was working in clinics and i was talking to parents and they're like oh so now i don't have to have the safe sex talk with my kid because they can't get hpv and i'm like no no that's that's not that's not how that works yeah um and i've heard that from folks who are hiv positive like oh well i already have hiv i don't have to worry about anything else i'm like

but you do because one of the things you want to do is keep your immune system as strong as you can and that means protecting yourself from from other stis so so that you can't get an sti your first time that can always tell by looking at how someone's dressed if they have an sti that if you already have an sti you don't have to worry about other ones um that i want to be careful with this there's a little bit of truth to this that um that condoms are 100 effective at preventing sti transmission and they are absolutely not but they are better than nothing way better than nothing i think those are the ones that pop in i mean so that's that's about getting them yeah there's there's one more also that i'm trying to figure out how to phrase this because

there's this idea that like i'm trying to sorry i know there was dead air there and i'm trying so hard to know that's okay there's this idea that that sorry go ahead no there's this idea that like people know they have it and are willingly giving it to other people and and in some cases that might be true yeah but for things like gonorrhea and chlamydia most women especially never get any noticeable symptoms so they may be passing it on without having any clue that they're doing it so yeah those are the ones that pop to mind yeah and then just to reiterate some of the partner myths about how they gave their partner yeah so are they exposed their partner yeah uh that they

got it from a toilet seat that they got i did get a doorknob someone actually said can my my partner said that they are coming from a doorknob is that possible and the partner was male and i'm trying to figure out how that would even happen what were you doing with a doorknob um chafing chafing from masturbating yeah um uh that's usually where it is it's usually this idea that it's from somewhere else now there are times that people have things like hpv and they don't have an outbreak for a while or syphilis i mean it could take up to 90 days to see primary syphilis show up so it could be that they they're not tracking that it it's not their current partner and they're not cheating and it may have come from somewhere else that's that is actually legitimate i have

i was working with a couple that was in a committed relationship and suddenly one of them was signing showing um they had hpv they were showing warts and they did have hpv and the partner swore up and down the ladder that they were they were um monogamous they were monogamous and that they hadn't cheated and it and it is possible because they had had a relationship like three years before with someone else and like you know out before they had even met and and that's possible and that can wreak havoc on a relationship because it is possible sometimes for stis to stay dormant not common with the bacterial ones but with things like herpes and worse it may be a long time before out between outbreaks gotcha so okay uh a listener um or

someone they know just got the information um that they that they have an sti so what are what are some ways so okay um communication around stis and exposure right um because and and you and i have talked about this in our planning for in our pre-episode conversation um you know there's a lot of times when we're talking about this we kind of center these these kinds of communication um subjects around committed relationships and so that so absolutely there's that side of the communication but sometimes you might be out you might find someone at the bar looks hot you know it's not going to be anything long term you just want to have some fun just want to just want to get off with a super hot person um but either you know

Or like, how can we start encouraging those casual connections to have these kinds of conversations to help people with their long-term health and, you know, public health, because that's on all of our shoulders, you know, not to make it a big thing. The feet of the world is on your shoulders. The feet of the public health. I think it's hard. I think it really is hard. And I'm glad you brought that up because I work a lot with college students and not necessarily my current college students. I don't actually know a lot about the hookup culture at the school, the school where I am right now. But a lot of my students and some of the young adults I work with in community settings, like they're really they're really sometimes in it for the hookup.

And there's they're not going to have the conversation. And they've told me that they're like, there is no way I am bringing up their sexual history because I don't like I don't even want them to talk sometimes. I just like that's not what they're there for at that moment. They're there for me to bang and that's it. Right. I have friends who do hookups and they will literally they have like a prepared elevator speech of like, here's what I will do. Here's what I won't do. Here's when I was last tested. Here's what I have. But not every we don't test for every STI. And a that's a lot of information. That's a flood of information at one point. and depending on how it's being given like if you've already moved into a quieter area of a bar or you've gone outside you're in a car you're in an alley wherever you're doing this you may not feel like you can leave someone's like here's all this information and i used to have this and it may be very hard to be like all right peace out like i don't want to do this anymore um so i i would love if people had that conversation i mean i'd love if we could like show

records like hold on let me print and there are apps where you can like show your medical history. But again, we don't test for everything. So I feel like it's harder in those situations with with hookups. And so what I would encourage folks to do, if you feel like you want to have a conversation, go for it. If it's going to kill the mood and you don't really care at that moment. And I think that's important. We kind of assume everyone cares. Like that's the primary thing is keep my body safe but really sometimes that's not the primary motivation yeah um and so i feel like in those situations if you feel like you can have the conversation great if you don't i absolutely understand it but making sure that you're using condoms to help reduce your risk and making sure

that you are getting tested and you're doing that on a relatively regular basis i think one other thing to point out is um oral sex and protection yes yes um how do you how do you um so i mean anytime we it's funny i joke i don't use the term safe sex because there is no from a sti risk there is no such thing as safe sex there's always going to be a risk of something that's not sex reduced reduced risk sex i call it safer like that r at the end kind of yeah that's where the reduced stress comes from the safer sex and i joke with i joke with folks when they're either at a live event or when i'm in class like um you know if really safer sex means you're never having skin to skin contact so like you're holding hands with latex gloves on and that's never happening

and actually masturbating right right there's never you know if you're kissing there's a barrier like that's just not it's just not realistic um and so so i think that's one of the problems i have with some of the sex educators that I know and I think you're all doing a lovely job but I think we have this idea that we're like yes you shouldn't have protected oral sex everyone's going to think oh yes protected oral sex I will do that and and most people aren't doing it in the real world the people I find are who are actually better at having protected oral sex are where they know that's one of the couple has something and so they're trying to protect each other from spreading it so if you're going down on someone who's got a penis you can use just a

regular external condom we used to call them male condoms we don't gender condoms anymore so when i say condom what most of you are thinking of is traditionally a male condom we now call them external condoms so you can just use that to protect if you're doing oral sex on a penis if you are using a condom that is designed to extend sex play so the ones that are like last longer kind of condoms you know what i'm yeah yeah with like the numbing agent a little bit yes if you are to have if you were going down on someone and you were using that condom your mouth will go numb because it has a numbing gel in it so please be prepared for that um i've heard some very funny stories from folks who like did not know that was a thing um if you're going down

on someone who has a vulva um they have this thing called dental dams any of you who've ever had like root canal work i don't want to think about that root canal work way to bring root canals to sex conversation good job dr sue fun stuff let's try to not have that on my bingo card um when you're having worked on like root canal there there's there are these squares of latex that they put in to kind of keep things out of the way and stop like i don't know like bone and blood I assume there's no blood spurting during it's obviously a very traumatic thing for me this visual is amazing by the way so they're latex squares um that you can buy um you can't actually find them usually not in stores you can find them online um you can find them online

places that sell condoms will often sell dental dams but they're they're a little expensive for a piece of latex um and some folks are latex sensitive or latex allergic same for condoms there are options that are non-latex. So polyurethane kind of had a heyday for a little bit and then those are gone. Now we see ones that are made of polyisoprene. I think you'll be seeing more and more of those soon. But anyway, so for pouring oral sex on someone who's got a vulva, you can just take a regular condom and cut it open. And so you just want to pull that a little tight, put it over whatever it is you're licking or sucking and go to town. It does make it difficult if you're also trying to use hands at the same time though um you can also use non

microwavable saran wrap for my students who may be listening you are now getting the answer to the exam question um you can use non-microwavable saran wrap because um microwavable saran wrap has pores in it that's how to let the heat escape during microwaving there's some fascinating hand gestures i'm doing right now to simulate i'm listeners if you could see this with me and you just be eating popcorn making the information in maybe for our 100th episode or release a blooper reel there we go um so so it has to be non-microwavable so it doesn't have those pores but you can use that and that's a whole lot cheaper usually than getting dental dams um so yeah but but the truth is that most folks aren't doing that that's just yeah that's

just the honest truth when we talk about safer sex most people are thinking pregnancy how do i stop pregnancy um they're not thinking stis and i think that's a another important point about this episode is is just like we we all know that stis are out there but we need to be realistic about people's um acceptance um proactiveness avoidance all of those things everybody is on on some level has done one of all of those things when it comes to the subject of STIs. And so I think that also, you know, we did kind of put out there the, you're not alone for those who are worried or infected, but you're also not alone if you have been avoidant, you know, not, and you're not alone if you've been proactive, you know, like all of those things, we have all had to interact with

this information and cope with it come up with a way to cope with it in our day-to-day if we're looking for a partner if we enjoy hooking up there are things because we're all human and there is there is a oh what do I want to say there is an ideal way to to interact with this information But realistically, depending on the mood, where we're at, where our head's at, where how we're meeting somebody, it just it's a fluid it's a fluid process. So I'm smiling. So what you can't see, dear listeners, is that I am I am smiling and laughing as as Charlie saying this, because when COVID hit and public health people were like, why can't we take people like why can't we take people and get them to do the things that they need to do, like wear a mask and stay far apart? All the sex educators were like, welcome to our world. Yeah, exactly.

We have been trying for decades to get people to do these things to help protect them. Welcome to what we deal with on a daily basis. so it was it was it was it was a little frustrating but also amusing for a lot of us who work in sex education like why can't we get people to take care of themselves we're like we've been humans yeah humans yeah and we've been telling you this has been happening for a long time that like just because we know it doesn't mean people are going to do it we've also assumed that people are in situations where they can yeah if you bring up the use of a condom your partner may beat you i mean we we do have folks who are in on really not healthy relationships when it

comes to power dynamics and abuse and um yes condoms are cheap but we're assuming that you get your hands on them so there's a lot of assumptions that are going on there but yeah during covet a lot of us were like welcome to our world how affirming right sex educators but also not frustrating um but can i go to the access thing for a second yeah absolutely please please do so it's it's funny that we're talking about access to things and a lot of times you talk about um inner city places where clinics have closed down um one of the things that covid did do was shine a light on the racism that exists that we all knew was kind of out there um this is also around the time the cdc actually declared racism as a public health issue

But the clinics that closed first, well, all the clinics closed during COVID, but the last clinics to open and some of them never opened were the ones where people had limited access to care. Like the concierge doctors opened and they would come to you, but the clinics that people were using were usually the last to open and some never did. But one of the groups that really, really struggle sometimes with access are older folks who are living in facilities where they don't do their own shopping. You know, when you say it explicitly like that, that makes so much sense. Yeah. And it was something I had never thought of because when I first started working with the older population, I didn't realize the barriers that existed for them. but for some of them some of them do still do their own shopping but for some of them they make a grocery list and someone does their shopping for them and this was before like now i know we can have people get our groceries and kind of deliver it was it was before that

like an anonymous person almost right right and and and but it was usually someone who was hired by the place where they were living and they would tell me like i'm not i'm never putting condoms on that list i'm not i'm just there's no way i'm gonna put that on my shopping list right because they i mean that's a person that they're gonna see every day you know and yeah yeah and when i started talking to them about all the different kind of lube that exists and all the different types of condoms that exist they had never gotten that education and they felt overwhelmed and they a lot of times they shut down that's what people do when they get too much information they tend to shut down um so one person was like i would love to buy a condom

i don't know what you're talking about when you say non-latex and so we had conversations about that um there's so many options on the market that it can seem really overwhelming and then when you're talking about using lube with that especially for older women who are experiencing vaginal dryness and their ph of their vagina is changing like their lube needs are going to change but how if they've never researched it how are they going to tell someone what to buy and they may not feel comfortable going online especially if they're sharing computers with other folks and being like what do i need at 70 there's a shame and stigma piece to that so um and most of the places where i've gone in to speak for older folks don't have condoms

available i would love to see that they just don't have condoms available so when you're when you're thinking about access it's it really is for some folks a lifetime access issue and i i think we need to remind people that it's people not using condoms or not it's not just about sometimes they don't want to though sometimes they don't want to sometimes they can't get their hands on them and they yeah or they can't convince a partner to use them and so i just want to call that out yeah and i think just to kind of build on that um that you know the older folks that demographic it almost becomes a punch line when in the news in the news the headline comes out sti rates are rising in you know in assisted living facility or nursing homes um and then

it becomes a punch line so then add that layer of stigma onto it so so it just it comes from it comes from every angle it really does and i know we were talking about that that was from the other the numbers that i had been we had been chatting about that um the older population i think the last number i had seen since somewhere and again i'm these are numbers based off my memory these are rough numbers um but that the population 65 and older i think accounted for something like 23 of all stis and they do not account for 23 of the population yeah so oh i think this may need to be our next episode i think so yeah aging yeah that might have to be sex and aging sex and aging yeah um but yeah i just i think that's always a good group to talk about

because it just it shows you that the access may be an issue like my college students right now they can literally get condoms delivered to their their res halls so like access for them is not an issue um but for some folks it is and if you're living paycheck to paycheck you may not have the couple of bucks that it can it takes to buy condoms if you are living in some of the major cities being a new yorker new york city had an app where you could put in your location it would tell you where to get free condoms but those don't exist in every city and they definitely don't exist in the rural areas so we need to we need to get better at getting information out but then also people need to get better at using them well yeah i mean you know information leading the horse

to water versus getting the horse to drink right um the the joy the joy of the challenge of the human behavior oh is that what it is it's a joy it's a joy of the challenge ironically thanks for reminding me um so before we wrap up because i i feel like we're getting to that wrap-up stage i do anyone who's been listening if you were just diagnosed with an sti take a breath you're gonna be okay um whether it's hiv or herpes or warts or syphilis is i mean the syphilis rates i can't even give the numbers on those but the syphilis rates come into whatever it may be take a breath you're going to be okay. You're not going to be alone forever, especially for herpes. I get a lot of questions for the Q&A about herpes. There are actual support groups online if you want to talk

to other folks about how they're dealing with dating with herpes. There was actually an app at one time that was only for people who had herpes and were dating, which was fascinating. I remember I was going to bring that up. Yeah, I don't know if it's still out there. So you're not alone. If it is something that's going to require some medication, I would encourage you to talk to your doctor to make sure you have a plan about how often, make sure you know what you have to do, make sure you're taking your medication as you're supposed to. But you're not alone. You're not dirty.

You're not damaged. You're not disgusting. You're not broken. You're not any of those things. You can still have a happy, healthy sex life. You may just need to have some conversations with current or future partners to make sure you're keeping them as safe as you can. Yeah, just talk.

right always comes down to that just talk just talk about it any any other wrap-up thoughts I think that was it I think that's I just want people to know that they're going to be okay yeah that you're that you're going to be okay that we all interact with this information because it can be overwhelming it can be scary it can be mood killing and and we are the joy of being human, you know, is, is the ways that we, that we need to figure out how to navigate living day to day. So we don't, we don't crush under the pressure of everything else that goes on in our world and in the world. Um, so you're listening to this. If you've been recently diagnosed, if you're worried, if you don't always have these conversations,

all of these things are normal yeah and if you have more specific questions you can either submit them to the show website or you can always submit them to me i'm still doing my anonymous q a did get that question if i was going to stop doing that because of the podcast there there are no plans to stop doing the anonymous q a so if you've got questions and you want to ask me or you want to bring them up for me and charlie we'll have the links to those websites in the description but if you if you need to feel like you're not alone and you need to feel that now i would encourage you to do a basic google search of where can i find support there is there's a lot of support available out there you are absolutely not the only one yeah well all right thanks everyone

for joining us on this episode of unzipping taboos candid conversations about sex we hope today's episode sparked new thoughts and maybe opens up new dialogues, uh, around, uh, around this subject and the subject of sex. Remember that your curiosity is the key to breaking down barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships. If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear this. If you've got a question, as Dr. Sue said, uh, or a topic that you want us to dive into, reach out to us via the link in the episode description. I also want to take a moment to give a shout out, a very special shout out to our friend Allie O'Brien for our incredible theme

music. Thank you so much, Allie. We know that a lot of heart and soul went into that and we truly, truly appreciate it. It's taken our, it will take our episodes to the next level. So thank you, Allie. So until next time, keep the conversation going and keep on zipping those taboos. Take care, everyone.