Detecting and Dealing with Symptoms of Genital Herpes

Genital herpes is a common Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) that can be detected, diagnosed and treated effectively by possessing the necessary information about it. Having the proper knowledge for genital herpes prevents you from acquiring it, therefore, living a healthy and safe proactive life.

Sexually active individuals with multiple partners are threatened with different kinds of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI). One of which is genital herpes. Most people are unaware of such diseases that easily spread among them due to lack of knowledge or not bothering to know more of the disease at all.

Detecting and treating genital herpes can be made simple if you give it enough thought.

You can get genital herpes by having sexual contact (vaginal, oral or anal) with someone shedding the herpes virus during an outbreak or an asymptomatic (no symptoms) period.

Since this disease is caused by a type 2 Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV), it remains in certain nerve cells of your body and is incurable. Once you become infected with the virus, the symptoms called outbreaks come back from time to time.

The first outbreak appears within 2 weeks after you become infected and can last for several days. These outbreaks develop near the area where the virus has entered your body. They start as small, reddish bumps that become blisters and eventually turn to itchy, painful sores that occasionally evolve into a crust and more often than not heal without leaving a scar.

These sores can also appear on body parts where the virus has entered through broken skin. They can also appear inside the vagina and on the cervix (opening to the womb) in women, or in the urinary passages of men and women.

When the virus is triggered and becomes active again, termed as Recurrence, it travels along the nerves of the skin and makes more virus and new sores near the site of the first outbreak, although milder.

Genital herpes infections usually do not cause serious health problems in healthy adults. In some people whose immune systems do not work properly, however, genital herpes outbreaks can be unusually severe and long lasting.

Health Care Providers can directly diagnose genital herpes by looking at the sores. Tests conducted also help in further specifying the type and gravity of the infection. Examples of these tests are a laboratory test called a Culture and a blood test called type-specific test.

The test result from the type-specific test, including the position of the sores in the body, will help your physician in diagnosing whether or not you have genital infection.

As genital herpes is incurable, treatments given by your doctor will only help in preventing future outbreaks and in decreasing the risk of passing herpes to sexual partners.

Genital herpes may be a common infection but it can be easily prevented once you possess the proper information to equip and prepare yourself. When you are knowledgeable, you can then have a proactive life that you can control and that you know is safe.