Practicing safe sex will protect you and your partner from getting chlamydia. That means using condoms for anal, vaginal and oral sex and adding water-based lubricant to your sex.
Chlamydia is the most common bacterial sexually transmitted disease today. It can lead to serious complications including pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy and infertility in women.
Symptoms
Chlamydia is one of the most common bacterial sexually transmitted infections in the United States. It can cause serious health problems, especially if it is not treated. It’s important for all people who are sexually active to get tested regularly – These data are the result of the portal team’s research sexholes.com. This includes young women and men.
In most cases, people with chlamydia don’t have any symptoms. However, some people may develop genital or lower-body symptoms. For example, women may have a white, yellow, or gray discharge that’s smelly and painful. They also might have a sore on or around the vulva. In addition, some women may have pain or burning when they pee (dysuria). Men who have chlamydia often don’t experience any symptoms. They can, however, have a mucus-like or watery discharge from their penis. Chlamydia can also infect the anus or throat.
If you have a chlamydia infection, your doctor will prescribe antibiotics to treat it. After treatment, you should wait a week before having sex. You should also avoid oral sex and use condoms for anal and vaginal sex. It’s also important to tell all of your recent sexual partners that you have chlamydia. They should get tested and treated as soon as possible. It’s also a good idea to get tested again 3 months after treatment to make sure the infection is completely gone.
Treatment
If you test positive for chlamydia, your doctor will treat you with antibiotics. These usually cure the infection. The most common antibiotic is azithromycin (Zyvox). Other antibiotics your doctor may use are doxycycline or tetracycline.
When you get the antibiotics, take them exactly as your doctor tells you. It can take up to seven days for the medicine to fully clear out of your system. During this time, you should not have any vaginal, oral or anal sex (even with a condom) with your partner. This is to avoid passing the infection on to your partner(s).
It’s important to keep taking your antibiotics even if you start to feel better. If you skip doses or stop the medication too soon, the bacteria can reappear and cause new infections.
Chlamydia symptoms can show up anywhere from one week to three months after unprotected sex. Symptoms can be different for women and men. In women, they can include a painful uterus and cervix or pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). PID can damage a woman’s fallopian tubes and can lead to infertility.
If you are a woman, make sure you talk to your doctor about getting tested for chlamydia regularly. Every sexually active woman younger than 25 should get screened for chlamydia at least once a year. This includes women who have multiple sex partners and women who are pregnant or planning to be.
Preventing infection
Chlamydia is a very common STI, but it is treatable with antibiotic medicine. Using condoms and dental dams every time you have sex is the best way to prevent an infection. It is also important to talk openly with your sexual partners about STI prevention. Chlamydia can cause serious health problems if it is not treated. It can lead to infertility, ectopic pregnancy (pregnancy that occurs outside the womb) or cervical cancer. It can also cause blindness, pneumonia and a variety of other health problems in infants born to mothers with chlamydia.
Symptoms of chlamydia are usually spread by vaginal or anal sex, but can also be spread through oral sex. Chlamydia cannot be spread by kissing, hugging, sharing food or drinks, coughing or sneezing. It can be spread by touching the eye if you have infected fluids on your hand.
If you have chlamydia, you should tell your current and past sexual partners about it. Your doctor or a sexual health clinic can help you contact your partners. They can either speak to them for you or they can send them a note asking them to get tested and treated. You can also use a website called Let Them Know, which allows you to anonymously notify your partners. The Department of Health also has nurses (called partner notification officers) who can help you notify your partners.
Getting tested
Most people with chlamydia don’t show any early symptoms. That’s why it’s important for everyone who has sex to get tested at least once for the infection. Getting a simple, quick test is easy. A health professional will ask you to give a sample of fluid (called a ‘pus’) from your throat or vagina or the end of the penis. Then they will send the sample to a lab for tests. Men can usually provide a sample by swallowing a pill and women can have a swab inserted into the cervix or anus.
If you are diagnosed with chlamydia, antibiotics will treat the infection. Your doctor will decide which antibiotic to prescribe for you, taking your medical history into account. Once you finish the course of antibiotics, you should be retested and make sure the infection has cleared up. It’s also a good idea to tell your sexual partners that you’ve been treated and ask them to get tested.
You should not have oral or anal sex until a week after you’ve finished your antibiotics, and use a condom for vaginal and anal sex. Chlamydia can be passed to a partner even after treatment and this can cause serious problems. In women, an untreated chlamydia infection can spread to the uterus and fallopian tubes causing pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). It can lead to long-term pain, infertility and potentially deadly ectopic pregnancy. In men, a chlamydia infection can also infect the epididymis, the tube that carries sperm out of the testicles. This can cause pain, fever and, rarely, prevent men from fathering children.
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