[Rhodes22-list] Glove the Love

[Brad Haslett]

Oh boy!  Here's a news story I didn't need.  It never ends!  Brad

         URL:
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/health_and_fitness/article/0,1406,KNS_310_5337708,00.htmlSeniors
need sex-ed

*By LEE BOWMAN, Scripps Howard News Service*
*February 9, 2007*

In some neighborhoods, prostitutes know that one of their busier times of
the month will be the first few days after Social Security checks arrive.

At a growing number of nursing homes and assisted living centers, staff have
arranged for one or more rooms to be set aside for senior couples to enjoy
some intimate time alone.

Across the country, people 50 and over make up the fastest-growing sector of
online dating services. Around senior communities, older men who still drive
and maybe dance seldom want for companionship.

Not everyone is canoodling, to be sure, but sexuality in midlife and beyond
is increasingly a fact of older American life. A 2003 AARP survey of nearly
3,000 people 45 and older found that a third of all respondents, and 70
percent of those with regular sexual partners (and two thirds said they had
a spouse or partner), reported having sex at least once or twice a month,
although frequency did decline with age.

"Sex is a part of life. People are sexual from the time they're born until
they die. People can be orgasmic into their 90s," said Sallie Foley, a sex
therapist who works with seniors at the University of Michigan's Sexual
Health Counseling Services in Ann Arbor, and writes a regular column on love
and sexuality for AARP's magazine.

But there's a dangerous downside to sex in the golden years. Many sexually
active seniors don't realize that they may be at risk for sexually
transmitted diseases, and even more may not know how to protect themselves.

"The hormone therapies and Viagra can keep sex going even into the 80s and
90s for some people," said Dr. John Morley, a geriatric sex counselor at St.
Louis University School of Medicine. "But a lot of the patients I see are
not having sex with their life partner, or are also active with someone
else, and those partners may not realize they need protection."

Several recent studies of women 50 and older found huge gaps in awareness
about HIV transmission and risks, with as many as two thirds mistakenly
thinking the virus could be exchanged by kissing, and less than 20 percent
aware that condoms were effective at prevention.

Among older seniors, birth control and STDS were a whispered discussion of
their youth, at best, and among baby boomers who came of age in an era of
free love and birth control pills, "there's this false assumption that just
because you don't need to worry about contraception anymore, you don't need
to worry about protection," Foley said.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an
estimated 23 percent of new diagnosis of HIV between 2000 and 2003 was among
people 45 and older.

There have also been increases in other STDS in older people. Gonorrhea
incidence among those 45 and older rose 27 percent just between 1995 and
1999, while it rose only 5 percent in the general population.

"We're definitely seeing more older people with syphilis, gonorrhea, HPV,"
said Dr. Jane Schwebke, an infectious disease specialist at the University
of Alabama-Birmingham who also works in a local public health clinic. "I had
one senior gentleman a while back with gonorrhea and I asked him if he had
had the symptoms before and he said, 'well, yes, back when I was about 16.'
"

Jane Fowler, founder of HIV Wisdom for Older Women in Kansas City, Mo., a
71-year-old who became infected in her late 40s, says it's important to
reach out to a generation "that didn't talk about sex. Now, I tell women you
can never know the sexual history of anybody else. Men, if you can get it
up, cover it up!"

Jeanine Reilly, executive director of Broadway House, New Jersey's only
long-term care facility for HIV/AIDS patients, recently told the Senate
Aging Committee: "Every senior knows 'If you experience an erection for more
than four hours, seek immediate medical attention.' But the message about
the threat of AIDS is not there. To ask about HIV status and insist on a
condom is difficult at any age, but especially for elders."

Getting the message out to seniors is hampered, too, because the nation's
public health apparatus has been geared toward preventing sexually risky
behavior in teens and young adults.

Nancy Orel, a gerontologist at Bowling Green State University in Bowling
Green, Ohio, recently analyzed sexual health brochures from all 50 states
and found that only about a third offered material that was particularly
relevant to older adults. "Everything from the young couples on the covers
to the size of the (type) font was daunting in most of them," she said.

She and colleagues are working on some new educational materials that are
more "age appropriate" but along with others said it's even more important
for doctors who regularly care for seniors to put sex on the agenda.

"I hear from older adults all the time that they have lots of questions for
their doctors about sex, but they' re afraid to broach the subject with
them," Foley said. "And it does take some training to get doctors to ask
"how's your sex life" of patients the age of their parents or grandparents.

"But my sense is, the primary care physicians are getting a little better
about bringing it up respectfully and letting the older patient run with
it."