How Malden Is Targeting HIV

February 25th, 2010   Add Comment

With HIV on the rise in Malden and Everett, Massachusetts, public officials have come up with an interesting new strategy on how to deal with the problem in their community.  It comes in a form that is probably familiar to you if you are, for example, on a tiny little social networking site called Facebook.

An online survey!

The goal is to get 500 people in the community to take it and use this information to better the serve the community and receive a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  As the Boston Globe describes in their story, the grant money would help get new, more far-reaching surveys off the ground.

This is a really good idea and like Malden Public Health Dept. we want more people to get tested!  Lady Gaga provides a great reason why…a not so obvious one:

Gaga tells MarieClaire.com, “I had an HIV test two days ago – and it’s not because I’m taking off my clothes every night with a different man. When I’m on the road, I forget about taking care of my body.

“I don’t go to the doctor as regularly as if I were in one place all the time. So I woke up and thought, ‘Oh, I’m home in New York. I’m going to see my gyno and I’m getting an HIV test.’”

The message?  Getting tested is part of your general health.  It’s not only for unprotected sex or something like shared needles.

So make sure you know your status!  You can do so with a home HIV test kit, sold by us.

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Are You Ready for the Olympics?

February 11th, 2010   Add Comment

It’s hard not to enjoy the Olympics.  There’s always some aspect to get your attention – the variety of people attending, sports you never heard of, flags you’ve never seen, new things to learn.  We have learned something new already today – do you know Ross Rebagliati?

Ross won the first gold medal ever for snowboarding at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan.  After this great accomplishment, the International Olympic Committee rewarded him by stepping in – and taking his medal.  Why?

Because he failed a drug test.

Ross tested positive for marijuana and the medal was taken from him, although not for long.  Interestingly enough, at the time the International Olympic Committee did not have a set policy with regard to marijuana as a banned substance, at least where it concerned snowboarders and skiers and others monitored by the International Ski Foundation.  The medal was given back when it was determined that the International Olympic Committee, for the reason given above, had no right to take the medal.  You can read more details about this at the National Drug Strategy Network’s site.

Imagine losing a gold medal to a drug test!  It’s happened to a lot of people – CBC, the big Canadian news outlet, has an interesting rundown of all the different ways people have cheated in the Olympics.

It’s now all the harder for athletes to pass a drug test with the invention of the hair drug test.  When you can collect a drug history of 90 days on someone, it is hard to keep a secret, and the hair follicle test is also very difficult to cheat.  The hair follicle drug test tests the drugs inside the hair, breaking down the hair once it reaches the lab in order to get to what’s inside that’s hard to reach with shampoos or any other method.

It’s hard to beat your competitors in the Olympics, but it’s also hard to beat a drug test.  Stay clean and remember what an important tool a hair drug test can be for finding out drug use amongst you, your family, and friends.

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Promoting HIV Awareness With Lady Gaga

February 11th, 2010   Add Comment

It’s not everyday you have something in common with Lady Gaga, no?  Yet this week we found ourselves in that position, as pop stars Lady Gaga and Cyndi Lauper took to the airwaves to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS, especially the degree to which it effects women.

Their campaign is part of an effort to support the M-A-C AIDS fund.  With cosmetics company M-A-C they have created a line of lipsticks, 100% of the profits of which will go to the AIDS fund.

But why lipstick you ask?  Because they are trying to reach out to a younger generation of women who may go out with friends and not think about the importance of safe sex.  Instead of worrying about HIV/AIDS after the fact, keep it in mind at all times.  Too many segments of the population don’t think as much as they should about it, as often the disease is thought of as a disease affecting needle users, gay men, and African-Americans “only.”  But you don’t have to be in a high-risk group to be at risk.

It is important to make sure you are not at risk of spreading HIV/AIDS if you have had unprotected sex by HIV testing.  The CDC recommends that everyone gets tested annually regardless of risk.  You can get results quickly and anonymously from an FDA Approved Home HIV Test.

The campaign of Lady Gaga and Cyndi Lauper comes at a great time.  Hopefully it will also give a boost to the efforts of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (link is to our blog about that event) as well.

It’s good to be in such good company on this very serious issue.  You can check out an interview with Cyndi Lauper and Lady Gaga here at ABC News.

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National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day – Make Feb 7th Your Time To Get Tested

February 4th, 2010   1 Comment

February 7th falls on a Sunday this year and marks National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.  This is a very important day for all Americans regardless of race to keep in mind, as people may not be aware that HIV/AIDS disproportionately strikes African-Americans of all ages in this country.

The statistics are quite staggering.  According to the CDC’s National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day page, an estimated 1.1 million people live with HIV infection, and 46% of those are African-American.  Yet blacks only represent 12% of the United States population.

The National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day official page offers more sobering facts.  For example, “Blacks accounted for 51% of the 42,655 (including children) new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in 34 states with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting.”  This is definitely not a crisis on the wane, and there is a lot to be done.

Extremely important for all, but especially the black community, is to make sure you are HIV negative by getting tested regularly.  This can have a huge impact on the problem.  It’s one of the reasons a main strategy employed on this day is a massive HIV testing push.  If people can get in the habit of testing themselves annually or bi-annually, some of the stigma of testing will vanish, and healthier communities and individuals will result.

If you are hesitant to go to a community clinic for any reason, you can always get tested by ordering a home HIV test kit online.  The test is strictly anonymous and you are only identified by a code that comes with your kit and that you use to receive your results by phone.  The kits we sell are FDA Approved blood tests, so there should be no concern over the “does this really work” line of questioning – they are also 99.9% accurate, as reliable as those used by doctors and hospitals.

The home AIDS test allows you to test yourself at any time, in any place.  We hope you will make February 7th your day to test in order to raise awareness of one of the most devastating HIV/AIDS crises in the country.

Vicodin – The (Almost) Illegal Drug

February 2nd, 2010   1 Comment

Vicodin is a trademarked pain reliever, popular and fairly well-known in America. Its component parts are hydrocodone and paracetamol (aka acetaminophen) [interesting fact: acetaminophen increases the effect of the hydrocodone. You might think it would be the other way around, since acetaminophen is best known to us as Tylenol, but that is not the case]. Anyway, Vicodin is not your average pain-reliever; unlike ibuprofen, which is an unscheduled drug, Vicodin is a Schedule III drug, meaning it could cause moderate or low physical dependence, or a high psychological dependence if abused.

We knew this already – but did you know that the FDA voted this past summer to recommend that Vicodin should be eliminated? The advisory panel that made this decision also singled out Percocet (a combination of oxycodone and acetaminophen). As the CNN article on the subject notes, these are just recommendations from an advisory panel – but typically, the FDA follows them.

It’s certainly a controversial matter considering how much press prescription drugs in general, and Vicodin in particular, have received in the past few years.  The FDA made its recommendation based on the risk of overdose and severe liver injury, but they could have as easily made the recommendation based on drug abuse, as 9.7% of 12th graders said they tried Vicodin in 2008 (see the National Institute on Drug Abuse for more).  Prescription drugs have become the new face of illicit drug use, and the string of tragic high-profile deaths drove that home last year.

So it is up to all of us to raise awareness about how a drug that can be so helpful can be misused to get high with disastrous effects:  addiction, drug trafficking, and overdose deaths.  You can fortunately test for many prescription painkillers in one swoop with a Vicodin Test / OxyContin Test.  Vicodin and OxyContin have hydocodone and oxycodone as the basis of their structure, respectively, and since both are opioids very similar in structure they can both be found with 98% accuracy in the same test.  Definitely something to know when you are thinking about prescription drugs like Vicodin – a drug dangerous enough to almost be considered illegal.

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Women’s Heart Week: Feb 1-7

February 2nd, 2010   Add Comment

Today is the second day of Women’s Heart Week, which is a week solely dedicated to raising awareness about women’s heart health issues.  I personally, no matter how many times I learn this fact, never say the right answer when asked “What is the number one killer of women?”  We may think of breast cancer, or lung disease, but the actual answer is heart disease.

There are a number of ways to raise awareness this week.  The Illinois Department of Public Health, for example, is asking people to wear red on Friday (Chicago Tribune).  This is an extension of what the American Heart Association has started, a year-long “Go Red for Women” campaign that draws attention to the issue in many different ways – head over to their site for a look.  The goal of the movement according to the site is a “25% reduction in coronary heart disease and stroke risk by the year 2010″ and the ending of the misconception that heart disease is a “men’s disease,” a perception all the more unfortunate because women actually make up more of heart disease deaths than men at 53%.

A big part of maintaining or improving your heart health is watching your diet, quitting smoking, and managing your risk factors.  Home Health Testing helps you do this by offering two types of home cholesterol test.  Cholesterol is a huge risk factor for heart disease.  Doing cholesterol testing at home is designed to make tracking your cholesterol levels easy.  Your excuses not to (don’t want to make a doctor’s appointment, can’t take time off work, too expensive) don’t really stand up to scrutiny when home testing is available.  You can track either your total cholesterol or choose a test that gives you a full lipid panel reading (total cholesterol, HDL, LDL & triglycerides).

This is the week to raise awareness and encourage people to take their heart health seriously!  For more information check out the Women’s Heart Foundation or the Women’s Heart Foundation’s cholesterol page.

Below, a video review of last year’s Go Red for Women efforts:

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