FORUMS > Sexual Health Forum Rules

Just when you think the water is safe...Please be careful out there...http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/health/15infe.html?ref=health

Nearly 19,000 people died in the United States from MRSA infections in 2005 ...

"the bacteria seemed to be spread most easily through anal intercourse but also through casual skin-to-skin contact and touching contaminated surfaces."

Can't even get an enjoyable piece 'o ass with out getting something!!! You either catch something or get a penis whipped crazy!!!!

Another damn Curse.....Dam It!!!


There is a update on it .all they tell you is to keep
youself clean and cover your exercise equiptment with a towel when you use it after someone. THAT IS ALL.

That's it for me. I quit being gay starting now.

yea as long as you are safe and clean you will be fine...
I haven't had any sexual relations in well over 2 months...due to getting my wisdom teeth out towards end of november, and then tonsils out in middle of december, and then had to go back to ER two weeks after that for a complication with an artery in throat that wasnt cauterized well enough during the tonsillectomy. Three days ago I had this itch on my leg so I scratched it, and the next morning it looked like I had eczema with a lil bruising underneath, it wasnt until yesterday it started hurting, I thought again I bruised it somewhere and just forgotten, but tonight it was red, painful, and grew a bit...goin to doctors tomorrow morning, but went online found out more info..and though yes it calls out gay men as leading infectees, does not mean they are the only ones affected. If my results come back that I have MRSA or could just be a staph infection then I am a catch-22 I guess, cuz I am gay, but not through sexual contact. or physical contact for that matter... It can easily be picked up at hospital, and when overuse of antibiotics, and steroid prescriptions of which I have all three...Been in hospital twice for tonsillectomy, antibiotics for strep throat, then wisdom teeth and then for tonsillectomy, and then steroids for strep throat, and then for wisdom teeth....It urks me how society brings out a little piece out a big article and pinpoints gay men. Hope this wasnt too much info on whats happening in my life... But also with doing research, best thing to do is just keep washing hands...Normally Staph lives on the surface of the skin, it just finds a way to get inside is when it causes problems, for safety and precation wash your hands...seriously... and if u do have sexual relations with someone who you are not exclusive with take a shower and wash thoroughly this is found to prevent the staph from infecting ure body..all it takes is a scratch on your skin...in prob in my case an open cut in mouth from tonsillectomy and going to hospital where its easily penetratable with everyone being sick there......

we have a major problem in our hospitals wit MRSA, as I understand it from working in most of the hospitals most people carry MRSA anyway and it only causes a problem for a small percentage of the population normally when they have surgery if the wound gets infected with it

When are they gonna invented a all body condom?

Pretty damn scarey...which is why I wash my hands all the time, keep a bottle of germx, haven't had sex in 2 years, and try to stay away from the gays here. I think I'll be fine...but to those who don't do this...be careful out there, just another thing to take us gay men down.

Over the holidays I had a mole removed in my dermatologist's office and it slightly freaked me out that they don't take too many precautions when removing simple moles.

In fact, as my derm was cutting out the mole I mentioned that I could feel the knife pricking a bit. She had her assistant go and get another nurse to come in and prep another injection. This involved opening the door to the room, having another nurse come in, all while I'm lying there with my derm working on removing the mole.

All I could think was "MRSA... MRSA...MRSA..." So I just told the derm - No - just get me stitched up as soon as you can, and I just dealt with the discomfort.

The good thing is that I didn't get an infection, the mole came back "normal" and aside from sweating like crazy from being hyper-nervous, all's well.

But has anyone else had a bad experience with simple procedures at the dermatologist?

Sometimes I'm not sure they know what they're doing. Skin therapy seems like a lot of antibiotics and luck more so than real science. And unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I can't take a lot of the antibiotics because they give me C-Diff, and that's just nasty.

The other night, I heard a fundie nutter on shortwave radio ranting on and on how the gays/MRSA story is just more proof how sick/depraved/dangerous/etc we are.

I was hospitalized with MRSA from a leg wound about 4 years ago, and had two relapses that also put me in the hospital.

Nasty stuff. Really WIPED ME OUT physically.

The NYT article though is very misleading. Very poor journalism IMO.

paradox saidThe other night, I heard a fundie nutter on shortwave radio ranting on and on how the gays/MRSA story is just more proof how sick/depraved/dangerous/etc we are.

Yep, the Fundies are running rampant with this. Just go Google "MRSA gay men christian" and you'll get about 69,000 hits... everyone from the Christian News Wire to Rapture Ready... that latter one actually claims this is a "last days event" and means the Rapture is upon us.

Here we go again...

It would be nice if newspapers and other news outlets would report the complete findings of such studies, rather than bits and pieces that can be sensationalized. Talk about dis-information and irresponsible journalism...

Wow this is scary, so this is not even sexually transmitted you can technically get this from cuddling? I don't understand. Why is this hitting gay men in particular?

Hippie, you shouldn't worry about anything that you can only contract through eating meat...........just kidding.....really.

Cheers,
Terry

hippie4lyfe saidWow this is scary, so this is not even sexually transmitted you can technically get this from cuddling? I don't understand. Why is this hitting gay men in particular?

I wish people would read the report. Scroll up to what Noah878 posted please

Nearly everyone has a touch of a MRSA strain colonized somewhere on their body. MRSA in and of itself is not a frightening death sentence. The normal human body can normally keep it in check all on it's own. Those who have compromised immune systems are at significant risk.

Like all bacterial infections, there is a method by which it can enter your body. Membranes such as anal tissue are extremely weak defenders against viral and bacterial migration. As is skin tissue with a break in it. Healthy skin is a very strong defensive wall.

My best recommendation is to wash your hands with plain soap and warm water before touching membrane areas, eating, etc. And please don't use Purell sanitizer like it's going out of style. That's how things like MRSA get created.

do you think antibacterial soap is better or just regular natural soap with warm water for like 25-30 seconds?

lilmaninsc saidPretty damn scarey...which is why I wash my hands all the time, keep a bottle of germx, haven't had sex in 2 years, and try to stay away from the gays here. I think I'll be fine...but to those who don't do this...be careful out there, just another thing to take us gay men down.

Unless you are immune compromised, please don't A few points:

a) Your body needs to come in contact with foreign bacteria all the time so it adapts to new threats.

b) When you use germ-x, purell, etc, you kill a huge swath of bacteria on your body. This includes the good bacteria on your skin surface too.

c) Bacteria are normally very territorial. When you kill off all that bacteria, something else is going to start growing there almost immediately and it'll be one of something floating by in the air, something you brush against, or something you transfer onto it after touching an object.

d) You don't kill all the bacteria when you use such products, as such some survive and begin evolving to be immune to the product. This is how MRSA strains are created. The reason why soap and warm water is best is because it unbonds particles and physically rinses them away.

hippie4lyfe saiddo you think antibacterial soap is better or just regular natural soap with warm water for like 25-30 seconds?

Nope. Just regular soap and warm water. Google should return a lot of results for why anti-bacterial products actually do more harm than good in the long run.

Soap and warm water is a physical method of decontaminating versus a medical method which the bacteria (and viruses) can evolve and adapt to.

The article cited is misleading on a number of points, but it's no big surprise that microbes spread easily among people who have skin-skin contact with many different people.

Some of this other discussion isn't quite right. The press makes too big a deal out of antibiotic resistance. Although it wasn't widely recognized in the first few decades of antibiotic use, it's just part of the microbial landscape that has to be managed.

For the most part, antibiotic resistance doesn't evolve on the spot when you use a drug or a sanitizer. Most of the resistance genes are quite sophisticated and have evolved over billions of years, along with the antibiotics themselves. When you apply the selective pressure, these genes spread rapidly through both vertical and horizontal genetic transfer. However, they also have a high metabolic cost, and are lost rapidly when the selective pressure is removed.

Microbes can and do adapt to physical as well as chemical stresses. For example, most of the bacteria that live on the human body (both pathogens and normal biota) have specific mechanisms for attaching to the specific tissues on which they live. They are less likely to be removed from your skin by washing than are the vast majority of microbes that you might encounter from soil or water.

Staphylococcus, for another example is adapted to grow in the very dry and salty environment of the skin. In fact, that's how you isolate them from a specimen. Almost nothing else (from the human body) can grow in agar with skin-concentrations of salt.

As other posters have said, there is usually no need to use anything beyond soap (or liquid detergent) and water for daily washing up. However, if you have any kind of open wound or abrasion, even a small one, antimicrobial washes are a good idea. This is a direct breach in the body's defenses, and allows ordinarily harmless bacteria to become pathogens. Antimicrobials are also a good idea if your skin has become unusually contaminated. This might arguably include physical contact with persons outside your family group.

If you use antimicrobial products, a good way to manage resistance is to alternate between two or three different active ingredients. You have to read the labels. Don't use the same thing all the time. This is getting harder because most consumer products are getting more and more alike. For example, although I may be an extreme case (because I do this for a living) I have three spray bottles with different products for wiping down my sterile work benches. I rotate through them and use a different one each day.

My recent Ex goes to the hospital almost monthly because of MRSA and it all really developed within the past 2 years. Scary stuff. If you have it the tiniest scrape it can get infected and cause an abscess if you don't clean it immediately.
From frequent visits to the hospital w/ him (once for a whole week for an emergency surgery!) I've learned that a lot people carry a form of MRSA that doesn't really do anything.
Then there's the more severe kind that's been getting lots of attention lately.
Recently here in Boston it made the late night news when a number of athletes from Northeastern University came down w/ the more severe form of it.-pretty sure they weren't all having sex w/ each other...but I guess you never know...
Also, slightly off topic, my recent ex is also an ex-marine who was deployed to Afghanistan right after 9/11 and then to Iraq in April '03 when the shit hit the fan over there... Point is, he thinks that his MRSA may be a result of something he may have been exposed to during his service.
Anyone know anything about this/have a similar experience???
Please message me if you do because I am trying to help him figure it all out.

mindgarden saidThe article cited is misleading on a number of points, but it's no big surprise that microbes spread easily among people who have skin-skin contact with many different people.

Great points and thank you for further elucidating.

If people were put off by the pics hippie4lyfe posted, they would probably have a heart attack if they could see everything squirming around on their skin. The phrase "billions of cooties" just doesn't come close.

DJBens77 said

~Ahahaha

This was a big forum topic on "AfterElton.com", in which I participated. The NY Times article is sensationist, but sexually active gay men who have a lot of partners should have some concern. One person on AfterElton suggested using soap with lye in it to kill the bacteria after sex.

so went to ER on Wednesday they cut open the swelling on my thigh, took a culture swab and then packed the incision with gauze..They prescribed me antibiotics(more than I have ever been on in my life, was on back in november for wisdom teeth gettin taken out, then 2 weeks later for tonsillectomy, and then 4 weeks later with this)... took warm bath, warm/moist compresses..then went back on Friday, they removed the packing(with no numbing, hurt like a bitch), then told me the results havent come back yet from culture, but it doesnt look like MRSA let alone a staph infection....
the media def hypes it all up, and that perezhilton.com site, which is ran by a gay guy, posted what the times wrote, saying that gay men in san fran, new york, miami beware new strain only going around gay men....

the doctors at hospital said just like everyone else, MRSA lives on the skin and if a cut or scrape is not cleaned right, it finds a way into the body..
one of my female straight friends, had MRSA starting a year ago..and finally now it is out of her system...so she proves that its not a "gay thing"...wish media and people weren't so negative about gay things..

One of the best things you can do if you have a cut is to use rubbing alcohol and/or hydrogen peroxide to disinfect a wound. I personally don't use antibiotic soap. bacteria are normal and we evolved in an environment full of them. We do ourselves a disservice by trying to sterilize everything around us.

There is an article in the times today about how this report was misreported in the media and how it isn't entirely gay-male specific.

You can read it here

kinetic: MRSA was created because of the overuse of antibiotics in the hospitals. When patients/doctors abuse/overuse broad spectrum antibiotics, naturally a resistant form of an organism is bound to arise.

MRSA is a rather broad term to describe an organism that is quite complex. In general, there are other drugs to treat MRSA rather than methicillin (which is what M stands for in MRSA), and infection by MRSA in immunocompromised hosts is actually rather common since MRSA is passed by skin contact (btw, in terms of the athletic dept, it was the use of shared towels). In fact, MRSA probably lives on most people's skin in the hospital with no detrimental effects. Now before you go wash every ounce of your body with antibacterial soap, please note that MRSA is really only a problem if it's also resistant to other drugs (highly unlikely), or if a patient is severely immunocompromised (think chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or organ transplant). Luckily, we haven't yet seen the superbug resistant to all drugs, and most people who are in the second situation are generally already at the hospital and are monitored for infection so that they can be started on antibiotics that their MRSA strain is sensitive to.

Also guys... this gives you a new reason to make sure you take a shower before and, most especially, after getting into a pool or going to the gym! You never know who's sweat you're soaking up.

About two years ago there was a big scare on my campus when three rugby players all came up with staph infections at the same time. Within a couple weeks, half the team was out with staph infections. The gym had their student workers wiping down the machines every 30 minutes with Lysol towels. More than a few stopped using the gym or brought their own towels/disinfectant things. One guy fought the infection for the rest of the year as it just moved around his body. (Felt bad for him, it was his senior year and he was a kick arse rugby player.)

There were jokes that on quiet nights you could hear the staph screeching out on the rugby field just waiting for new victims.

hippie4lyfe saidWow this is scary, so this is not even sexually transmitted you can technically get this from cuddling? I don't understand. Why is this hitting gay men in particular?

I wonder how much of it is spread by shirtless men dancing at clubs, all that close sweaty contact.

This is more serious then I thought. Please educated me more. I mean, I have a lot of sex partner. I practice safe sex as far as AIDS is concern but with this new disease I have no ideas how to protect myself. You mean it can be spread thru sweat and touching and 19000 people have die in USA. First I thought it just some new controllable disease but it sound something that could be worst then AIDS.

Considering the originating bacterial organism, Staphyllococcus aureus, used to be treatable with penicillin, it has mutated alot thanks to horrible disease management skills of today's practitioners. You can also blame it on people who are discharged from hospitals after an extended stay that are given antibiotics that are taken properly and the patient gives the organism to an elderly or younger family member who is immunocompromised.

FYI....

In order to combat viruses and other pathogens you need to arm your self against their harmful and destructive effects. I have studied for many years holistic cures and remedies. I do not believe in the traditional medical practices...to me you go in to get cured and end up with something else.

A simple remedy to assist you in your outings that are filled with germs and bacterium.........

Go get a bottle of GSE or grapefruit seed extract by nutribiotic. Drop 20 to 30 drops into some juice and shake it up and swig it down fast. It's bitter, but it works and it flushes the body of bad things and keeps the good ones in place. I have other suggestions...however, this works well for me. Take it prior to travel and when you go on an air plane and or train or any place public....you will stay healthy and happy!!
SOME READS:

http://www.nutriteam.com/gse.htm

http://morgellonsgroup.proboards23.com/index.cgi?board=remedies&action=print&thread=1538

Hey BeachBalls,

What do you think about organic apple cider vinegar? I've recently been turned on to it and have read some good things about it. I currently supplement my diet with it.

A $.01 for your thoughts.

Azstreaker saidFYI....



Go get a bottle of GSE or grapefruit seed extract by nutribiotic. Drop 20 to 30 drops into some juice and shake it up and swig it down fast. It's bitter, but it works and it flushes the body of bad things and keeps the good ones in place. I have other suggestions...however, this works well for me. Take it prior to travel and when you go on an air plane and or train or any place public....you will stay healthy and happy!!
SOME READS:

http://www.nutriteam.com/gse.htm

http://morgellonsgroup.proboards23.com/index.cgi?board=remedies&action=print&thread=1538

Thanks for the grape seed extract comment. I have it and just forgot to keep taking it. I should get back to taking it.

bfg1 saidwe have a major problem in our hospitals wit MRSA, as I understand it from working in most of the hospitals most people carry MRSA anyway and it only causes a problem for a small percentage of the population normally when they have surgery if the wound gets infected with it

Spot on. Old hospitals, it's ingrained into the walls, not that new ones are any safer. We have it in out nostrils too. So don't pick then flick.

Many excellent points about MRSA. Every patient at my hospital are screened for MRSA and VRE and now ESBL.
Nostrils and rectum are swabbed and if there are any open wounds.

the bugs colonize in those places. at one time we used to swab in the inguinal folds.

fecal oral transmission. hands to mouth.

don't think it completely gets removed on terminal patient room cleaning.

clean your gym mats before you use them especially if you have an open scratch. preventative.

i remember back when people were saying that SARS was something to be worried about, and then it was Birdflu/Avian flu, remember how scared people were about Y2K? thats just a big joke now. and now i haven't heard of any of those since. i wonder if this is just something that people are making a much bigger deal out of than it really is.

i don't mean to offend anybody who actually suffers from MRSA! i just mean to say that its too early to start boarding up your house.

lilmaninsc saidPretty damn scarey...which is why I wash my hands all the time, keep a bottle of germx, haven't had sex in 2 years, and try to stay away from the gays here. I think I'll be fine...but to those who don't do this...be careful out there, just another thing to take us gay men down.

Two years? I'd go crazy. If that ever happens, just shot me.

PS.
I hope you were kidding when you said that

It's the same MRSA that's in hospitals. Nothing new about "flesh eating" bacteria. A lot of strains of staph produce enzymes that eat the collogen in your body. The only reason it affects "gay men" cus we have more body contact with people often (mainly men i hope).

Don't use antibiotics if you dont need to, don't shower every single day ( need "normal flora/probiotics on your skin, they limit the growth of MRSA in the first place!!!!!!)