Health Archives - Youth Guide

Your Diet May Not Be As Healthy As You Think

In your rush to shrink down to a slimmer size and to eliminate your risk for heart disease, diabetes, and other health conditions you’ve started making changes to the way you eat. Whether you consider yourself to be actively dieting or not, you’ve started to lose some weight and feel better in the process. Before you start bragging to all of your family and friends about yourself, use these suggestions to double check your diet.

Fatigue and Insomnia

If you still find yourself waking up, feeling tired and fatigued, chances are you are either staying up and partying too late the night before or your evening and bedtime habits need some tweaking. If you are not much of a partier, then the latter is probably more accurate to assume. To improve the quality and amount of sleep you get at night, you need to establish a routine. You need to start the winding down process at least two hours before you plan to go to sleep. Avoid exercising, eating heavy meals, and drinking large amounts of liquids.

Try not to consume any alcohol or smoke either. If you must exercise, try to do so no more than five to six hours before you hit the sheets. The closer it gets to bedtime, soothe your mind by listening to some relaxing music or by relaxing in the tub.

Greasy Complexion and Digestion Issues

If you notice that your skin is starting to look greasy and you have blemishes appearing all over no matter what you use to keep a clear complexion, you may want to take a look at your digestive system. Everything you consume can affect your outward appearance. If you are eating foods that are hard for your body to digest or are maintaining a diet that is high in certain nutrients and void of others, you’ll need to work on improving your digestive system’s health to improve nutrient absorption to help clear up your skin. Drink lots of water to help your kidneys to flush toxins from your body and make sure you are getting enough fiber and probiotics to help your digestive system to process foods and nutrients properly and to prevent constipation. [Read more…]

Dealing with Addiction: What Addicts Should Do

By Webmaster

Addiction is a very serious problem in the United States. Right now, millions of people are suffering from an addiction that they are not sure they can overcome. While you might feel trapped, you’re not alone, and you don’t have to remain a drug addict for the rest of your life.

The problem is, if you’re like most addicts, you’re not quite sure where to start. For the most part, quitting cold turkey is simply not an option. In fact, you’ve probably tried and failed at that before.

Knowing that you want to get on the road to recovery is an excellent start. If you’re there, take a moment to recognize that you want to get better. That’s important.

Keep reading to learn more about how you can begin to get clean and live a sober, productive life. The process may take some time and hard work, but it is well within your reach.

Recognize Your Demons

Trying to recover from drug addiction isn’t something that’s going to beeasy. To begin with, you need to sit down and take the time to realize what you’re really battling. Believe it or not, most addicts simply don’t do this because it’s too painful. [Read more…]

When To Get Tested for STDs

By Webmaster

One of the top things that should be on your mind right now is getting tested for STDs. Even if you feel that you’re in a committed relationship and there’s no need to test, you should still test anyway. The truth is that we don’t always know what another person is up to. In addition, STDs can also take months, even years to manifest fully. That means that if you’re in a very new committed relationship, your partner could have contracted something before you two got together. It doesn’t have to be a matter of infidelity.

Obviously, if you are choosing to have risk aware sex with someone that has an STD and you’re using protection, you want to make sure that you get tested regularly just to see whether or not the infection has spread to you. When done properly, the risks can be reduced greatly.

It might feel a little frightening talking to a doctor about this, especially when you haven’t told them that you’re gay. You might worry that they’re going to judge you. However, the doctor’s job is to give you quality medical care. That doesn’t take into account your sexual orientation. You will also want to make sure that you’re checking with other clinics that cater to people form a broader range of lifestyles. Just because a doctor may hold personal views that are different from yours doesn’t mean that he wants to see you be harmed just because of those views.

Getting tested regularly is also just peace of mind. You don’t want to settle for just STD testing. Make sure that you’re really getting all of the other medical things tested. You want to be sure that you’re looking at getting your blood work done to ensure that you are truly as healthy as you can be.

The thing is that health is something that we have to fight very hard for in order to still have. If you aren’t careful, you could find that you contracted something that you just cannot get rid of very easily. Early detection and even early prevention methods could really save your life!

Is the Gay Community Really At Higher Risk for STDs

By Webmaster

One area that seems to cause a lot of debate within the gay community is along the subject of STDs. We really don’t want to admit that our community has STDs running rampant, even though this isn’t necessarily a criticism that can only be made amongst gay youth. Straight teens are just as much at risk for STDs as anyone else.

So what you need to do right now is strip out the politics, the health studies, and the media and think about how STDs think about your life. You want to ensure that you are taking care of your body, because it’s the only one that you have. You don’t want to get caught up in a web of lies that can take away your health.

First and foremost, if you are sexually active, you should be getting tested — period. Don’t think that just because you can’t see anything on your partner doesn’t mean that you can’t be passed something. The reality is that some STDs can take weeks, months, or even years before it manifests in a person. You have to ensure that you are staying safe. If you feel that you might be at greater risk for passing along an STD due to a direct contact with someone that has an active infection, you need to be honest with anyone else that comes along.

One of the worst breaches of trust that you can think of is when you have someone that has an STD but doesn’t tell anyone. This is actually how STDs spread like crazy. You wake up to find that so many people have a disease that they can give you, and that’s not anything to laugh about. Would you really want someone to treat you that way?

If we want to reach for equality, then it starts at home. We need to make sure that we’re treating each other with respect. Hiding an STD out of fear is understandable, but it’s still not acceptable. If you really want to ensure that everything is taken care of, then you definitely need to start thinking about getting checked regularly.

There are many planned parenthoods and sliding scale clinics that offer STD testing. You can also check out GLAAD’s resources on the matter — a quick Google search reveals all of these points and more.

The bottom line is that we can’t just pretend like STDs aren’t an issue. In fact, if we treat them faster, we may be able to prevent more people from getting exposed.

It’s equally important to make sure that you’re not only disclosing, but you’re practicing in risk aware sexual safety practices. Safe sex is a bit of a misnomer — you’re never fully safe, but you are at least risk aware of what’s going on. You are aware of what can go wrong. You are using protection.

For gay teens today, this means that you want to use condoms. You can also use dental dams for oral sex. If you are using sex toys in the bedroom, they need to be used with condoms as well. There are non-latex condoms if you have a latex sensitivity.

Be sure that you are really taking this seriously. It’s your body and it’s your life — live it the way you were meant to live it!

Do You Really Have To Admit You’re Gay to Your Doctor

By Webmaster

As you begin accepting the fact that gay life is part of YOUR life, there are a lot of different questions that come up. However one of the top questions that you might be wondering right now is simple: who needs to know? If you’re not comfortable with coming out to everyone, that’s fine. In time, you’ll be more comfortable. You can come out and stand proud as a gay teen. But there are some people that you will need to come out to first, in order to protect your health.

One of the top people that you need to talk with before anyone else would definitely have to be a doctor. Your doctor will need to know about your sexual orientation for many reasons. Let’s cover a few of those reasons.

The biggest thing that you have to realize is that your doctor cannot give you proper health care if they don’t know anything about your lifestyle. The advice that they give someone that isn’t gay may be different than what they give for you. They may be interested in running more tests if you’re sexually active, because STDs can and still do happen in the gay community. You want to always make sure that you’re protected when you engage in sexual activity.

The doctor does need to know, and they also need to know how many partners you’ve had in the past, as well as any partner or partners that you’re having right now. These aren’t questions that are meant to embarrass you in any way shape or form.

You have to think about it from their perspective. The doctor has a job to do, and that job is to protect your health. To be honest, you are probably not the only gay teen that they know about.

If you haven’t come out to your parents, you don’t have to worry about the doctor telling your parents that you’re gay. As long as you are engaging in sexual activity with people your own age (to avoid any type of conflict with someone that is an adult when you’re not), you will not have to worry about your privacy being violated.

What is said between you and your doctor is actually protected, and your doctor can get in trouble for saying anything to anyone — including your parents. If it’s an issue, you may want to discuss this with your doctor as well. They will go out of their way to make sure that your parents don’t harm you just because they find out something different about you.

Everyone tends to come out in their own time. But coming out to your doctor is something that you need to do for your health — nothing more and nothing less than that!