Years ago the generally very health-conscious, and healthy, women of Marin County, California, had a very nasty scare. Compared to most parts of the country there was a higher rate of breast cancers, especially among younger women. Worse, even though people in the county took steps to increase awareness and mitigate possible causes the rate of new cases actually increased.
After quite a bit of study epidemiologists worked out that it wasn’t that Marin County posed higher-than-average risk factors for breast cancer, it’s that the relatively affluent health-conscious citizenry was more diligent about screening with the result that more cancers were detected, and detected earlier. And of course as word spread more women came in for screening with the result that more cancers were found. But while there’s still concern resonating in that community what’s important was that a lot of cancers that might have been missed, or missed till it was too late, were instead detected when there might be something to do about it.
Incidentally I don’t bring that up in a “oh those whacky Californians” kind of way. If 15 years ago even one link in a chain of coincidences (one being that I heard about all those early detections in Marin County) had broken I wouldn’t have gotten a “well, you’re too young but let’s take a look anyway” colonoscopy, and consequently today, 15 years later, what were then still-benign polyps would by now have almost certainly morphed into colon cancer!
I mention this because Dr. Kate of Gynotalk mentions a similar possibility about STIs
The CDC just released its annual report discussing trends in sexually transmitted diseases in the US (summary here). The upshot: chlamydia and syphilis are on the rise. And gonorrhea is stable (yay?) but at still-high rates. The CDC doesn’t track HPV or herpes in the same way, so we don’t know if these too are increasing.
Why in the world might this be a good thing? The increased rates of STDs may mean higher rates of infection…but it may represent better screening of these diseases. The scariest part of the STD crisis is just how many people have an infection, and don’t know about it. I’ve had patients of all ages tell me they’re too frightened to get tested, because they “really don’t want to know.” But the consequences of an undiagnosed STD can be devastating. Not only might you unsuspectingly pass chlamydia to a partner, for example, but the infection can cause irreversible damage to your fallopian tubes – leading to tubal pregnancy, chronic pelvic pain or infertility.
Knowing you have an STD may suck, but not knowing is worse.
What Kate said: Knowing may suck. Not knowing? Definitely worse.
(Actually I appreciate most of Kate’s posts. if I don’t get around to a separate post about it her answer about partners with lower libidos is just dead on.)
