Source: africanexponent.com
HIV is a virus that infects humans. It attacks your immune system causing it to malfunction and makes you very ill. HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus, the virus that causes AIDS.
AIDS is a serious medical condition comprising of a variety of diseases that occur because HIV interferes with your body’s ability to fight off other infections. AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.
How HIV affects your body ?
A virus is a small infectious organism that can only replicate inside living cells of other organisms; in HIV’s case, human immune cells. In order to understand how HIV and AIDS are connected, we need to take a closer look at how the immune system works. Your immune system is a complex network of organs, tissues, and cells, called white blood cells. The white blood cells are made in the bone marrow, migrate to other parts of the immune system such as the lymph nodes, spleen, and thymus and float around in the bloodstream. The components of your immune system work together to prevent germs from entering, growing, and multiplying inside your body.
How do you get HIV?
The most common way to get HIV is by having sex with an HIV infected person.
HIV spreads from one person to another when certain body fluids (blood, semen, vaginal secretions, rectal fluids, and breast milk) from an HIV infected person come into contact with a mucous membrane in the nose, mouth, rectum, vagina, or penis of an uninfected person. Vaginal, anal, and oral sex all set the scene for HIV to spread from one person to another.
The 2nd most common way to get HIV is by injecting HIV directly into your body.
This most commonly happens when HIV contaminated needles or syringes, or other drug injecting equipment is shared by injection drug users.
How to avoid getting infected with HIV
To avoid getting HIV, you must prevent any contaminated body fluids from entering your body through your nose or mouth, vagina, anus, penis, or breaks in your skin. This can be done by practicing safe sex and safe drug use, which means:
Always use a condom
Get tested regularly – this is a must if you are having sex with someone you know has HIV, or if you are worried you might have been exposed to HIV, and
Never share intravenous needles, syringes, cookers, cotton, cocaine spoons, or eye droppers if you use drugs.
There are other ways you can catch HIV, although it very rarely happens. It is possible to become infected through a needle stick injury or blood transfusion, or by getting bitten by an HIV infected person. HIV can also be passed on from an infected mother to a baby during pregnancy, labor, and birth or via breast milk, but with proper medical treatment during pregnancy, this is also rare.
How do you treat HIV/AIDS?
Antiretroviral therapy or ART is the medicine used to treat HIV infection. It is a combination of three different medicines that are often taken as a single tablet and must be taken every day to be of maximum benefit. ART is recommended for everyone infected with HIV. Although it is not a cure, if you have HIV, it lets you live a longer, healthier life, and reduces the chances you will spread the virus to someone else.
HIV medicines work by preventing HIV from multiplying, which lowers the amount of virus in your bloodstream (viral load). Although the medicine does not get rid of HIV entirely, it gives your CD4 cells a chance to recover so that they can fight off opportunistic infections and cancers. If you don’t take ART, you are likely to die within 12 years from the time you first got infected. On the other hand, if you do take ART, you can have a life expectancy equal to or even higher than the general population.
HIV is managed with prescription viral suppression medications called Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART). Taking Viraday has become much easier over the past few years. New treatments include two or three medicines combined in one pill. Many people living with HIV are treated with just one or two pills a day.
If you test positive for HIV infection, your doctor will take a medical history, conduct a physical exam, and order some more tests to find out how HIV is affecting your immune system. There are more than 20 HIV medicines available like Tenvir EM, Tenvir L Tablet, Tenvir and several different ART combinations that may be suitable, depending on your individual needs. Three important tests that help your doctor decide which medicines will work best for you are:
CD4 tests that measure your CD4 cell count.
Viral load tests that measure the number of viruses in your bloodstream, and Drug resistance tests that find out whether or not the HIV you are infected with is resistant to any of the anti-HIV medicines that are available.
As HIV medicines are known to interact badly with some other medicines, the choice of therapy will also depend on what else you are taking. Later, your HIV medicine may need to be changed if you have unpleasant side effects, or if your HIV becomes resistant to the medicine. Prep pill is not for everyone. Doctors guide PrEP for some sufferers who have a very high risk of getting in touch with HIV by not using a condom when they have sex with a personality who has HIV infection.
Consider the following:
You might be one of the millions of people who use a lubricant during sex. If you are using latex condoms, you can have safer sex if you use a water-based lubricant rather than an oil-based lubricant. Why would that be? Oil-based lubricants like Vaseline can weaken latex, making it more likely to break. So, only choose an oil-based lubricant if you are using polyurethane condoms.
You might think that forgetting to take your HIV medicine now and then is not a big deal, but it is! Why would that be? HIV can multiply very quickly, and sometimes it mutates, meaning it evolves into a new form. Forgetting to take your HIV medicine increases the chances that your HIV will multiply and mutate into a drug-resistant form. If this happens, your HIV medicine will no longer work very well, and HIV will do more damage to your immune system.