Want to send us a message? Practicing safe sex may not be something you have done for awhile but if you are starting out in the swinger lifestyle, or are little rusty on your facts, this is definitely the podcast to listen to. We are covering STIs, HIV, oral sex, and testing. Swingers tend to be big on testing and we are going to break that down for you too.Show NotesSafe Sex In The Swinger LifestyleIs Oral Sex Safer?STI Types TimelinesHIV Testing How It WorksHow Do You Know If You Are Really Safe?ResourcesResourcesSTIs Types, Timelines, and Symptoms:Chlamydia: 1-3 weeks, 50% Men 70% women = no symptoms.Genital Herpes: 4-7 days, most people don t have any symptoms when first infected.Genital Warts: 2-3 months, most people with the virus don t develop obvious warts.Gonorrhea: 10 days, 10% Men 50% Women = no symptoms.Pubic Lice Scabies: 5 days - 5 weeksSyphilis: 2-3 weeks, symptoms not obvious and may come and go.Trichomoniasis: 4 weeks, 50% Men Women = no symptoms.HIV: 2-6 weeks, some get symptoms, some don’t.VIP Testing Serviceshttps://viptestingservices.com/services/std-testing-services/How soon can I take an HIV test?http://i-base.info/guides/testing/how-soon-can-i-take-a-testThe Aids Institute https://www.theaidsinstitute.org/education/aids-101/how-do-hiv-tests-work-0CDC Fact Sheetshttps://www.cdc.gov/std/healthcomm/fact_sheets.htmSEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASE SURVEILLANCE 2017https://www.cdc.gov/std/stats17/default.htmHOW DO HIV TESTS WORK? https://www.theaidsinstitute.org/education/aids-101/how-do-hiv-tests-work-0HOW SOON CAN I TAKE AN HIV TEST?http://i-base.info/guides/testin Support the showWant More?👀 Watch on YouTube: YouTube ShowFull video versions and interactive live episodes!Bonus episodes, exclusive content, and 🌶️Extras: https://www.patreon.com/SwingerUniversity 🛳️🎉Looking for lifestyle events in your area? T4P is the go-to directory for clubs, parties, and resort events. Browse now at Ticket4Play.com Custom SU T-shirts and gear: Our Amazon StoreSwingerLinks.com - live schedule, special offers*, and our 🌶️links!Our Website - Leave us a message, articles, and sexy products3 Ways to get your question on our show:RECORD it on our website at: https://swingeruniversity.com/contact/EMAIL a recorded voice note to: [email protected]: (916) 538-0482 and leave a voicemail.* We get a commission if you decide to purchase through our links, at no cost to you.
Transcript
We have to talk about something we've been genuinely excited about for months, and our patrons actually got a preview of this already. Jamaica! Yes, we are going back, and actually, we have a great offer for you guys. Yeah, it's Swingcation. It's October 11th through the 18th at Hedonism 2. And if you don't know what Swingcation is, it's pretty easy. Swinger plus kink plus vacation. It's a hosted group with real structure, workshops, lectures, real conversations with experts who are passionate about bringing and bridging that gap between the swinger world and the kink world.
And we're not just going as attendees. we're going as featured presenters, which is exciting. We'll be leading sessions. So if you come, we actually get to hang out with you. Which brings up something we should mention. When you use our code, yes, we got a code, you're not just getting a discount, you're getting the signature swing experience, which means $100 off per person, up to $200 per room, but it also means that we make time for you. An exclusive breakfast, lunch, cocktail hour, or one-hour and one time with us directly, plus more surprise benefits.
Here's something that's really unique. You could actually contribute by hosting a discussion or running a Skillshare. I know it's scary, but if you have something that you want to contribute, that's a big part of why this event is so special. Everyone there has something to bring to the table. All right, details. If you book before April 25th, you save $400. Plus, they gave us that special code that gets you an additional $200, and the special code is SWINGERU-VIP. So book through TicketForPlay.com forward slash Swinkie. That's T-I-C-K-E-T, the number four, play.com forward slash S-W-I-N-K-Y.
And use our code at checkout. And you guys, if you have any questions about the event, the resort, or what to expect, just reach out. I mean, we're here for you. We're happy to help. So once again, TicketForPlay.com forward slash Swinky, the code SwingerU-VIP. We really want to see you there. Welcome to Swinger University, your horizontal enrichment program, bringing you an educational podcast about swinging. Here are your hosts, Ed and Phoebe. Hello. Hey, everyone. Welcome back. That's Ed. I'm Phoebe. Hello. Hey, everyone. Welcome back. That's Ed. I'm Phoebe. This is Swinger University.
Today, we're talking about your sexual health. Getting into the lifestyle obviously means having sex with other partners. What? And even more than ever, your sexual safety is important for yourself and for your partner or partners. Right. Before Ed and I got started with this hobby, sexual safety was a big topic. We did a lot of research. We got tested and consulted with our family physician. Sexual safety is important as a single person and more important, it seems, when you're in a long-term committed relationship. Because your family security is at stake.
your sense of mortality is at the forefront because maybe you're older, you have an established family, and you have deeper and broader connections. And quite honestly, it feels like you have more to lose because you're more invested in people's lives. Now, we've consolidated this very large topic for you, but we encourage you to do your own research as well. Our intent is to educate, to stimulate conversation, and alleviate any possible fears. Feel free to look at our resources, which are provided in our notes and on our website.
We're going to start off with oral sex and what STIs can be passed orally. A common misconception is that oral sex is safer than vaginal or anal sex. all right so oral sex sex and STIs. Woo-hoo. I know it's such a sexy topic. I know. But it's a really fearful topic when you're getting in, you know, to the lifestyle. And sometimes it's misunderstood. A lot of people go in with a lot of preconceptions or misconceptions about sex and what can happen. Right. So which STIs can be passed on from oral sex? You've got your chlamydia, your gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes, HPV, HIV, and that one.
Trichomoniasis. Yeah. I don't know. Syphilis, herpes, HPV, HIV, and that one. Trichomoniasis. Yeah. I have no idea what that one is. I'd never heard of it until we'd run across it in our research. I like trichowita. Yeah. So many STIs can be spread through oral sex. and it's partly because most people who have oral sex also have vaginal or anal sex. Right. Now, you may have heard that congenital syphilis has doubled in four years. 1,300 cases in 2018. 14% were women. 15% were men who have sex with women, 48% were men who have sex with men. Sounds scary, right?
Does that mean you should stop having sex with others? Well, we thought so when we heard this. And then we read the CDC's 2017 annual Report, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Surveillance, and the report states, The resurgence of syphilis, and particularly congenital syphilis, is not an arbitrary event, but rather a symptom of a deteriorating public health infrastructure and lack of access to health care. Being safe is first and foremost. So when you hear this information out there in social media from your friends, check it out. Back it up. I mean, it really scared us.
So we're like, okay, what's the truth behind this? Where this information come from is it legitimate how safe do i need to be what kind of precautions do i need to take because we wanted to be safe with ourselves and safe with others so checking your information is wise and like i said can alleviate some fears yeah when you hear numbers like it's doubled right i mean that sounds mean, that sounds huge. I know. We're like, oh, well, swinging's over.
Yeah, but going from 700 cases to 1,300 cases, you could kind of picture that happening as all across the United States, a couple people having more sex. And it's a pretty small number, so it's not surprising that it grew or shrank i mean it's right you have to always be really careful with your statistics yeah now genital herpes seems to be declining over the last 20 years and although it it's about 15% to 20% of the population that is still infected, and while there's no cure, there is medicine to reduce the symptoms and make it less likely to spread to partners.
Right, and the important thing is that you're communicating with your partners, all of your partners, if you have been diagnosed with something so that they're aware of it and they can make an informed decision about their choices. Exactly. All right. Moving on to HIV. We grew up in an era when HIV was the thing. I mean, it drastically changed society. I mean, it was everywhere in terms of being in the news, being in the movies, being in popular media. And it's kind of fallen off a little bit in terms of prominence in discussion, but staying on topic, can you contract HIV orally?
Well, the CDC states in extremely rare cases, HIV has been transmitted by oral sex. Studies have shown that the risk of getting HIV from oral sex with an infected partner, either giving or getting oral sex, is much lower than the risk of getting HIV from anal or vaginal sex with an infected partner. Good to know.
So transmission does go down in terms of oral transmission with HIV, which is good because a lot of these can be treated but uh that one can't really be probably because we have so much nasty bacteria in our mouth well it's hard it's it's hard to get it into the bloodstream in the mouth i know i wouldn't have thought so though because you got so many blood vessels and all that yeah you got a canker sore you've got a little infected uh taste bud or something maybe that but the mouth heals so quickly that That's true. It's amazing.
Like you can bite your cheek and, of course, you keep biting it for the next three days. I know because it swells up. Which is horrible. The worst thing. But your mouth heals quickly because you have to be able to eat. And if you can't eat, then you die. So your body heals quickly. Same thing for your genitals, by the way, they heal quickly as well. That's true. So if you do get an STI from oral sex, it could be due to factors like poor oral health, sores in the mouth, pre-ejaculate or ejaculate from an infected partner, contact with menstrual blood in the presence of other STIs.
So, you know, you just want to make sure you're taking care of your stuff. Yeah. And when your doctor tells you that you have pockets and you should floss more. Oh, God. That's because your gums are inflamed and... Bleeding. Bleeding. Okay. So there you go. There's the reason to floss. All right, so everyone, don't fuck anyone with bad teeth. Floss so you don't get an orally transmitted STI. Oh, golly. I mean, heck, that might convince me. If my dentist, my oral hygienist, the lady who cleans my teeth, is telling me, you know, it's safer for oral sex if you floss. Did she say that? No.
But I'd floss a lot more if she had. Really? Tell me more. Maybe we should educate our dentists. I'm sorry. dad really tell me more maybe we should educate our dentists public service there you go all right so what if this all really freaks you out and you're a germaphobe well you can lower your chances of giving or getting stis during oral sex by using a condom. You can use a dental dam or another barrier method each and every time you have oral sex. And, of course, you could abstain, but then what's the point of swinging? Okay, can we talk about October for a second?
Oh my god yeah i've been waiting for this we were invited to be guest speakers for two engagements on a six-star crystal cruise ship with 310 lifestyle couples and it sails from montreal to boston during the peak foliage season i'm super excited and honestly i'm really nervous yeah it's kind of a version of like a swinger ted talk that we're gonna have to do oh my god i know and more importantly if you know the brand it's llv luxury lifestyle vacations you may have seen them and they're sexy playmakers with their fun red hats. This ship, the Crystal Symphony, is classy.
Butler service for every single room, Michelin rated restaurants, full spa, clothing optional, sensual playrooms, like everything. Theme nights and international DJ.
So it's luxury and nudity oh man this is gonna be great the bottom line is we want you there with us it's 310 couples and like all their vacations they book up fast they really do their vacations are extremely popular so please come with us and in order to find it all you have to do is go to our swingerlinks.com and look for the llv sensual voyage we hope you'll join us yeah kind of defeats the purpose all right so you've had unprotected sex and you're freaking out or something's off with your sexual health oh my god how fast does an sti symptom occur it varies it could be anywhere from days to months depending on the.
Right. So the next morning, you're probably just hungover. It's probably not an STI. So within a few weeks, a few days, however, sometimes not for months or years, for some of these, they'll show show up so we provided you a quick timeline for some of them and we'll put more details in the show notes but we're gonna rip through some of the yeah dates don't want to bore you too much with the heavy heavy stuff it's lots of statistics it's great so chlamydia one to three weeks genital herpes four to seven days Let's do this.
what's up chlamydia one to three weeks genital herpes four to seven days although most people don't have any symptoms when first infected right so you're asymptomatic even though you may have been infected and it takes a while for it to show up yes general warts two to three months and again most people don't develop obvious warts that have the virus so you may not even know right gonorrhea 10 days pubic lice and scabies five days to five weeks yeah syphilis two to three weeks symptoms may and may or not be obvious they kind of come and go right and your favorite one which i can't pronounce trichomoniasis four weeks and then you have your hiv which is two to six weeks yeah and some get symptoms some don't yeah like so most viral infections you can be asymptomatic so a lot of these are either bacteriologic or viral and we're right now in the middle of the COVID epidemic.
I know you're getting there. Yeah. There are a lot of people who are asymptomatic. They don't even realize that they had it. Right. So these aren't any different than any other virus other than what their effects are on your body. They act the same. You're aware of it. You're not aware of it. It takes some time. Your body develops antibodies for it. You never know. That's why we have testing. You get tested. You get tested for HIV and your STIs. And we're going to talk about the HIV test, which is what a lot of people typically get tested for, along with STI tests.
But in the lifestyle, we hear people talk a lot about, well, I had my HIV test. I'm tested. I'm clean. I had my HIV test. Okay, well, great.
That's good but we started to look into that yeah it it's interesting because that doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means exactly so put on your thinking cap we're gonna we're gonna get a little technical and then we'll summarize it all up at the end yeah we're going to put up some gantt charts and we're going to show you timelines and some long poles for the project but no okay so the most commonly used hiv test is to detect the hiv antibody there are also tests that look for genetic material or proteins right so talk to your doctor figure out which one you want to do you can do some research on the web there are tests out there that you can have mailed to your home and i put those links i will put those on the website and you can go to those websites and order those tests and get tested at home.
All right, so here we go. Now, here's our timeline. Most people develop antibodies, detectable antibodies, with most commonly used tests in the United States within two to eight weeks. Now, the average is 25 days. so from infection to detectable antibodies about 25 days about 25 days so almost a month 97 of the people will develop detectable antibodies in the first three months. So there's 3% that won't fall in that range. Right.
So even if you've gone and gotten tested, if you're in that 3%, obviously 3% is a small percentage, but there's no guarantee even if you've been tested that you aren't in that 3%, so your antibodies haven't shown up. So you could have a false negative. False negative. Yeah, which we'll get into. We'll summarize this for you. Even so, there is a small chance that some individuals will take even longer to develop detectable antibodies. Losing their system longer, their body is slower to fight it, takes a long time.
So a person should consider a follow-up test more than three months after their potential exposure to HIV. So. And rare, extremely rare cases. It could be six months. Right. So there's all your facts. Yeah. So there's your timeline. Anywhere from a month to three months to six months, you can detect it. So we're starting to form a timeline here, right? 30 days, three months, six months. Yep. All right.
And so you've got this timeline, as Ed said, where your immune system is producing enough antibodies to be detected and the likelihood of you transmitting the virus through sex could be really high if you know you're you're fighting an infection yeah you're infected okay it's basically no different than the stupid COVID-19 right yeah so you're out there tooling around you're having a good time you don't show symptoms like other people do. It's all the stuff that you're hearing, right? Some people show symptoms right away. Some people don't. Sometimes you get really, really sick.
Sometimes you don't. Right. So you just don't know. You don't know. So here's the kicker. So you've gone, you've had tests. Maybe it was within that six month period. You go and have unprotected sex because you're like, I'm in the clear. It's all good. Yep. Your timeline starts over. Yes. Right at that moment, because you don't know where that person had sex last, what they've been tested. Are they within their three-month window or their six-month window? Are they asymptomatic? You don't know.
So even though they've got a test in their hand and you've got a test in your hand you may have false negatives yes so as soon as you have unprotected sex you need to wait whether you were tested or not you need to wait another average of 25 days before the antibodies actually show up in order for you to test in order to be detected by the test to show whether you're clean or not right so here you go if you had unprotected sex every 30 days you'd have to get tested every 30 days and the person in between right you may or may not have been safe because you were still in your window exactly so so getting tested all the time but still having unprotected sex means that you are constantly riding that rail of maybe I'm safe and maybe I'm not.
Right. And the tests are basically a waste of money because you don't know where you are in the window of antibodies showing up to be tested. Yeah. Well, I know. And what this tells me is unprotected sex whether you get tested or not is exactly that it's unprotected sex yeah it's you're taking a risk you're taking a higher risk because of the testing window, because of the frequency that some people have sex. You don't know where your partner's been. And I'll say this. We've known married couples who didn't know that their spouses were cheating on them. Yep.
safe except the extramarital affair that no one knew about because we're all consensual non-monogamists was going on in the background that nobody knew about and that's an opportunity for infection for everybody right so so if you want to have bareback sex with another swinger it requires an extensive interview process for us oh yeah and it requires a lot of trust and just because you trust them doesn't mean that they're that they're not going to change their priorities or their right it's it's just too complicated we don't do it it's just too complicated because then what are they supposed to call you up hey we're going to go have sex, unprotected sex with another swinger couple.
Is that okay? Well, like who wants to ask permission for the prior couple? I mean, this requires some exclusivity. Right. And we're not exclusive to any one couple. Now, if you are, then it works out great. Assuming that you are actually exclusive. Right. Again, a lot of trust. There we go.
to any one couple now if you are then it works out great but assuming that you are actually exclusive right again a lot of trust there's a lot of trust going on here it's just way too complicated if you can imagine and you can how hard it is to get four people all on the same page in the same room just to fuck you imagine? Getting everybody's testing schedule on a calendar, on a regular pattern. No, thanks. I don't have time for that. So your test result is only good if you haven't had unprotected sex for three to six months after your first test.
And then you need to get tested again to see if you're clean. After a waiting period for the antibodies to show up. Right. Which means don't go have multiple unprotected sex partners in that window. Because all you're doing is feeding the Petri dish. Yeah. What did you say? Feeding the Petri dish. Oh, yeah. You're just rolling the dice.
To make it even worse, tests take two to three weeks sometimes for the results to come back yeah so this was quite torturous when we started dating because we we did this we we went to our doctors yep we were like okay we're gonna get tested we we'd love to have unprotected sex with one another how do we go about doing this so we first got educated by our doctor on this topic and then we've continued our research uh when we started swinging so of course we were monogamous at the time that we were dating yes we were but so that worked out really well for the first six months yes i digress oh my goodness all right so we actually got through this pretty quick yeah and and i know there's a lot to digest which is why we'll be again putting it on the website for your references and your convenience if you want any further reading but you, you know, be smart, be safe, and remember, you know, safe sex while swinging can be a lot of fun.
Absolutely. Whether I've got a condom on or not, I'm having sex with other people. That's pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Be safe out there, everyone. Take care. Good night. Before you turn off our podcast to take care of all the vanilla things pulling you away, please reach out and give us a review. I am the first to admit that it's much easier to give a five-star rating, which we appreciate, but if you could take 43 seconds to type a review, we would love it.
If you want to share a five-star rating which we appreciate but if you could take 43 seconds to type a review we would love it if you want to share a personal story ask us questions or share your comments you can contact us at swingeruniversity at gmail.com check us out at swingeruniversity.com where where you can find links to our Twitter and Instagram feeds. Thank you so much for listening to Swinger University, your horizontal enrichment podcast. Oh, one last thing before you go.
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