HIV Risk Rises Among Older Brazilians

By Gary Duff, BBC News Sao Paulo, Brazil
July 29, 2008

Walking down a street or through a shopping centre in Sao Paulo, Lucia looks like any other mother or grandmother going about her normal business.

But this 71-year-old woman carries a burden that few know about. She is HIV-positive and the virus was passed on to her by her husband.

Lucia discovered she was infected in 1999, four years after he died of a heart attack.

"I nearly went crazy. I even tried to commit suicide," she says. "I couldn't believe it."

"Some marks appeared on my skin and I went to a doctor who asked me to do some tests and it was confirmed.

"I got it from my husband. As part of his work he stayed away from home for four months and I think it was then that he got it."

Lucia is one of many older people who are treated for HIV at the Emilio Ribas Hospital, the leading centre for infectious diseases in Latin America.

Research among older patients there has found that among women of more than 60 years of age, 75% were infected by their husbands.

Among the men, 80% contracted the virus through sex outside marriage.

Lucia refuses to blame her husband for what happened in her life, and even goes so far as to shoulder some of the responsibility herself.

"He was very good to me. He was an excellent husband. I didn't feel anger against him.

"We never used condoms because we never thought we would get this disease. I don't think he knew he had this virus."

'Guilt'

At the clinic for elderly people in Emilio Ribas, doctors see 100 patients a month, 10% to 15% of whom are new cases.

Jean Gorinchteyn, a specialist in infectious diseases who was responsible for the research, says he has found it is common for men to feel guilty for infecting the wife, while wives tend to forgive the husband.

"These men symbolise a role within the family, as a father, as a grandfather, as a reassuring figure. Suddenly they discover they have HIV," he says.

"It's a problem because it reveals other things, such as that he has sexual vigour and that he had sex outside the family environment."

Another woman who had to endure this experience was 65-year-old Luciene. She watched as her husband, already ill with diabetes, began to lose weight and his hair, until after repeated tests a doctor indicated he was HIV-positive.

When he was admitted to hospital in 1998, she said he was so shocked and scared by witnessing the illness among Aids patients in that period.

"He was so sad, so sad, that he stopped talking. It was like he was paralysed."

After he died, Luciene had to confront another reality.

"I underwent tests secretly. I was ashamed. My husband was very well known and I never told anyone."

She, too, was diagnosed as HIV-positive, but like Lucia she will not blame her husband.

"I never had the courage to discuss it with him," she says.

"I even asked my daughter not to say anything to anyone that he was carrying the virus and that he died of it. He would be ashamed in front of his friends."

'Education'

Pedro, 73, is among the older male HIV patients at the clinic. He arrived with a walking stick to give him support.

Pedro says he doesn't know how he contracted HIV

"I had a problem with dizziness and went to the doctor. I found out that I was HIV-positive after I had some tests done."

Pedro, whose wife died years ago, says he does not know how he contracted the virus, but he never used condoms.

"I never used to think about using condoms. I was married," he says.

"Nowadays I think that people are well-informed."

For Dr Gorinchteyn, looking after the needs of older people who have HIV and even spotting that they may be carrying the virus represents a major challenge, especially when late diagnosis can add to the problems.

"When you have a young patient with a serious pneumonia being hospitalised, the first thing you ask is whether an HIV (test) has been done. When an older person has serious pneumonia we imagine it could be because his immune system is weakened."

He has found older patients adhere much more closely to their medical treatment than younger ones.

It is as if they suddenly realise that death is closer than they thought, says Dr Gorinchteyn.

Many of those diagnosed with HIV in their 60s were infected a decade earlier, and the doctor says it is important to include older people in sexual health campaigns.

Marginalisation

"Today, someone in their 60s or 70s is still in good physical condition. If they feel physically well they will have sex. If they are going to have sex they run the risk of being exposed," Dr Gorinchteyn says.

The problem is that older patients are overlooked and not targeted by government campaigns, he says.

For Luciene, what matters most now is getting on with her life as best as she can.

Luciene was infected by her husband, but does not blame him

"My life continues well because I have a loving family. I don't want for anything. The doctors here are better than in the private sector," she says.

"The worst thing is the sadness that we have because we feel humiliated."

*The names of the patients have been changed to protect their identity.

Three Cheers for National Sex Day!

If all goes well, the creative geniuses at Hallmark will be hard at work thinking of greeting cards for this hoped for holiday observance. National Sex Day was an idea conceived by a Vancouver student. It's slated to be celebrated August 21, 2008. A great idea that consenting adults of all ages (within legal parameters) can enjoy. It might be a little more difficult to find a greeting card for this occasion than Grandparent's Day!

MCauch
SageHealth Network
-----------------------


Unzip and unwind for National Sex Day
August 10, 2008

By Terrine Friday, THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA — Here’s one holiday you won’t want to miss.

A Vancouver student has launched an Internet campaign to create a National Sex Day.

And while it won’t be an official holiday, it’s sure to be fun.

Jonathan Yaniv, a computer science student at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, B.C., wants to make Aug. 21 a day devoted to the art of love.

The 21-year-old is trying to get at least one million Canadians to join the Facebook event “National Sex Day 2008.” If he’s successful, it will likely be the biggest organized sex event ever.

The Facebook group already has over 130,000 people getting ready to unzip and unwind.

“I thought a special day, just for this type of activity, (would) be the best,” said Yaniv.

He has been preparing his guests by promoting safer sex, even sending out free condoms on request.

March 21 was initially slated to be the first National Sex Day, but it didn’t go over well with Christians — it was also Good Friday.

Despite that misstep, Yaniv hopes to set a new record with the upcoming mix and mingle.

Vancouver sexologist Dr. Pega Ren thinks the idea is long overdue and wants more Canadians to hop in the sack.

“People should call in well rather than call in sick (that day),” she said.

Ren said a day devoted to sex and sexual well-being is important because it “de-emphasizes hatred and promotes kindness, loving and sexuality.”

She also said that if Canadians don’t get the day off, they should “at least get a long lunch.”

Brittany, a 19-year-old student in St. Catharines, Ont. — who requested her last name not be used — said she can’t wait to “make the best“ of the informal holiday. But she added that participants should be careful.

“If you’re silly enough to find a partner just for the day, don’t be upset when you get a sexually transmitted disease,” she said.

Mike Haymes, spokesman for sexualityandu.ca, reminds participants to make smart decisions about sex and sexual health.

Sexualityandu.ca, which is run by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada, provides Canadians of all ages with online resources to lead a healthy sex life.

Haymes said he will probably take part in National Sex Day, especially since it coincides with his wedding day.

But not everybody is as eager to get it on.

Guinness World Records decided not to take track the online effort.

“We try to stay away from explicit types of records,” Guinness said, citing responsibility to younger readers as their main reason for staying chaste. 14:37ET 10-08-08

Intimacy is important in the lives of seniors

Scarborough Mirror
June 11, 2008 09:23 AM
MARIA TZAVARAS

Whether we like it or not it happens to each of us: we get older.
If we're lucky, we will live long enough to survive our golden years enjoying retirement and with a rich personal life. That's right, a personal life.

Nowhere does it say that when we hit a certain age that our desire to be in an intimate relationship with a special someone diminishes. But that is one of the misconceptions of seniors - they don't date, let alone have sex.

"People cannot put those two concepts together (seniors and dating)," said Michele Cauch, executive director of SageHealth Network, a Toronto-based sexual health promotion and education company that hosts workshops for seniors. "They cannot imagine it and if they do they're disgusted by it and it's so pathetic, and it's sad and discouraging."

Cauch said she hopes that through her work with the SageHealth Network she'll change those misconceptions about seniors.

"We're all going to get older and for God sake's if anyone judges me because of how I look because I have wrinkles or grey hair, I think that's horrible, you're really dehumanizing a person because of their age," she said.

Ruth Goodman, senior social worker at Baycrest Geriatric Health Care Centre in North York, agreed. She said many people have stereotypes about seniors, with the impression they are somehow different when it comes to love.

"There is a lot of misunderstanding and gender bias as well," she said. "If older men have grey hair that's an attribute, but a woman with grey hair is seen as somehow losing her sexuality and that's unfair."

According to Statistics Canada, the 65-plus age group accounts for 13.1 per cent of Canada's total population, which means, Cauch said, for the first time ever this country will have more older than younger people. By 2050, that number will be at 26.3 per cent.

This number can be attributed to people living longer, advances in medicine and healthier lifestyles, and, Cauch said, a solid emotional and social life certainly adds to that longevity.

Goodman said meeting a new person, having someone being interested in you and having fun are things many older people are hungry for and it contributes to their general emotional well-being.

"Some things are core for everyone no matter the age and that is you want to be acknowledged, validated, and we get that through our relationships," Goodman said. "These things are lifelong, the need to love and be loved, cared about and wanted."

That's not to say that seniors may not face challenges.

For example, if a person has been out of the dating game for awhile she may not only may not only be hesitant, but out of practice.

Goodman said once a senior is ready to date again, the No. 1 thing to do is be socially involved so you have the opportunity to meet people.

Cauch's workshops touch upon all kinds of topics, including the best places for seniors to meet people.

"Volunteering, it's a great way to feel good about yourself and give back to the community; special interest classes; there's going out with friends; faith-based groups; singles travel, which is huge right now; and senior centres," Cauch said.

One area that has exploded, Cauch said, is online dating for seniors, which recently has expanded to include online speed dating.

Goodman also suggested meeting people at church or synagogue, as any social gathering equals opportunity.

That being said, if a senior has been absent from the dating game for 30 to 50 years, some things have changed.

Sexually transmitted infections are on the rise for seniors

Scarborough Mirror
June is Seniors Month
June 11, 2008 09:23 AM
MARIA TZAVARAS

Seniors who have been out of the dating game have a new set of things to think about.
While they don't have to worry about getting pregnant any more, sexually transmitted infections are on the rise for older people.

Michele Cauch, executive director of SageHealth Network, a Toronto-based sexual health promotion and education company that hosts workshops for seniors, said there are many reasons for this, including people not using protection.

"Just because they're (seniors) beyond child-bearing years people aren't using condoms, they think 'Why should I use condoms I'm not going to get pregnant, I'm 75'...," she said.

Another reason is that 50 years ago, diseases were curable and AIDS was not an issue.

Cauch said the number of HIV cases are also going up because individuals with the disease are living longer and are aging with their illness.

"So there are people acquiring sexually transmitted infections later in life because they're not practising safe sex but there are also people who have acquired STIs earlier in life and they're living longer," Cauch said.

Another interesting fact to note is that with the advent of Viagra, there has been an increase in older married women getting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

"A lot of these older men are taking Viagra and then cheating on their spouses, pick up an STD and bring it back to their wives," Cauch said

Caution aside, Cauch said senior dating is often more about meeting friends and having companionship more than it is about dating and having sex in the traditional sense. That's because some seniors may have mobility issues and medication can affect desire and ability.

"With respect to sexuality, seniors I think have a different interpretation about what sex is," Cauch said. "It may not be penetrative sex but it's more what I like to call outercourse."

Ruth Goodman, senior social worker at Baycrest Geriatric Health Care Centre in North York, said sexuality and intimacy should definitely be present in a senior's life, but it should be defined more broadly.

"Intercourse is not the only way to be close to someone, ... it's affection, touch, hugging, kissing caressing. With older people where there may be certain physical losses so it means lovemaking takes a different shape," Goodman said.

Whether you're 65 or 95, Goodman said the richer your social network is the better off you will be. Because seniors go through a number of mental and physical changes, a great support system will help them to better navigate through those changes and be more resilient.

More Sex for Today's Seniors

Tara Parker-Pope
New York Times
July 22, 2008


The sex lives of senior citizens have improved markedly in the past three decades, according to a new study.

The data, published in The British Medical Journal, have been collected since the 1970s from 1,500 Swedish adults, all of whom were 70 years old at the time of the interview. Although the report is from Sweden, it mirrors recent research in the United States that shows many people continue to have active sex lives well into old age.

But the Swedish data are notable in that they illuminate how people’s sex lives and attitudes have changed over time. Today’s seniors report that they are having sex far more often and have more positive feelings associated with sex than their counterparts just 30 years ago.

From 1971 to 2000 the proportion of 70-year-olds reporting sexual intercourse increased, although interestingly, more married men say they are having sex than married women. Among married men, 68 percent were having sex, compared to 52 percent in 1971. Among married women, 56 percent were having sex, compared to 38 percent in the 1970s.

Sexual activity also has increased for unmarried seniors. Among the single, 54 percent of the men and 12 percent of the women reported having sex, up from 30 percent of men and less than 1 percent of women in the 1970s.

Among those who were sexually active, more than one in four seniors in 2000 reported having sex once or more a week, compared to only about 10 percent in the 1970s.
More than half of men and women reported very happy relationships, compared to just more than one-third in the 1970s. Overall, modern 70-year-olds reported higher satisfaction with sexuality, fewer sexual dysfunctions and more positive attitudes to sexuality in later life than those who were interviewed in the 1970s.

The researchers noted that the study wasn’t designed to determine why seniors appear to be having more sex. However, the people interviewed in the 1970s were born at the turn of the century, at a time when sexuality and sexual pleasure were not discussed. The last generation of 70-year-olds interviewed for the study were in their 30s during the 1960s sexual revolution and may have had more liberal values about sex.

Modern 70-year-olds likely are more healthy as well. During the course of the study, life expectancy for Swedes jumped five years for men, to age 77, and four years for women, to age 82. Modern seniors also have access to medications like Viagra that earlier generations did not.

Original link: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/more-sex-for-todays-seniors/?em

More Seniors Find Love a Click Away

By Frank Greve, Detroit Free Press
July 20, 2008

Murray Katz, 82, a retired senior federal patent-appeals examiner, has made a transition that lies ahead for millions of Americans.

"When I was growing up, I didn't see women who were in their 60s and 70s as women," he said recently. "Now, it's amazing. The men I know are all looking at 80-year-old women. They're our friends. We listen to them. We dance with them. We have sex with them when we can. It's beyond comprehension."

For many it's unimaginable. But one of the things new under the sun since Katz was a boy is an 18-year increase in U.S. life expectancy, much of it spent in healthy retired life.

Those who are living through it spend their time in the traditional American way: pursuing happiness. And so it is that senior citizens aren't just dating more, they're the fastest-growing users of Internet dating services and the fastest growing group of cohabiters.

To be sure, older men remain in short supply and millions of widows decide that meeting one man's needs was enough. A few million more are ailing beyond caring. Still, there are more couples than ever like Eleanor Robinson and John Kunec.

She's 85, a Scrabble player, poet and table tennis champ whose social hub is the bustling Holiday Park Senior Center in Wheaton, Md., just north of Washington.

He's 83, fit and friendly, a retired government accountant.

Both are widowed.

As surely as she carries his harmonica in her tote bag and they finish each other's sentences and watch ballgames together, they're a couple."I never had a relationship such as I have now," confided Robinson, Robinsone friends of friends. According to Mark Brooks, a consultant and newsletter writer who tracks the Internet-dating industry, the number of seniors joining online dating services has risen at double-digit rates annually since 2003, the most of any age group.

But attitude changes are probably the biggest factor in their expanding social lives.

A generation ago, romance among the elderly was derided, said Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist who's studied dating among older adults.

"Falling in love at an elderly age was seen as somewhere between unwise and dementia," she said.

Today, the elderly find remarriage fraught with headaches: It can threaten pensions. It can alarm children worried about inheritance. It comes with love-testing anxiety about liability for a new spouse's health costs. So remarriage rates among seniors are flat.

But, according to Susan Brown, a demographer at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, cohabiting among older people increased 50% from 2000 to 2006, based on census figures.

The total -- 1.8 million -- counts only couples who live together full time and were willing to admit it to census interviewers. Part-time cohabiting -- traveling together, sharing a summer house, spending weekends together -- is up at least as sharply, according to seniors.

The family's acceptance is key to romances that flourish, said Steve Shields, head of Meadowlark Hills, an adult living center in Manhattan, Kan.

"The need for approval and support from their children is really large," he said.

"No matter how deeply they love in late life, the importance of the love of their kids never diminishes."

Seniors Having More Sex Than Ever

By Alan Mozes, Washington Post
July 9, 2008

When it comes to sex, grandma and grandpa are having more of it these days, new Swedish research suggests.

According to the study, the last quarter century has seen a dramatic rise in the frequency of sex among the 70-year-old set, whether married or unmarried. And as an added bonus, seniors today (particularly women) say they're much more satisfied with their liaisons than the previous generation -- facing less sexual dysfunction and feeling more positive about the experience.

"Our study shows that a large majority of elderly consider sexual activity and sexual feelings a natural part of late life," said study author Nils Beckman, a doctoral candidate with the neuropsychiatric epidemiology unit at the Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology at Gothenburg University. "It is thus important that health professionals and others take sexuality into consideration, irrespective of age."

The findings are reported online in theBritish Medical Journal.

Beckman and his team reviewed surveys concerning sexual behavior and attitudes that had been completed by more than 1,500 healthy 70-year-old Gothenburg residents over a 30-year period.

The polls had been conducted in 1971-1972, 1976-1977, 1992-1993, and 2000-2001.

Between the first survey and the last, the frequency of sexual intercourse was found to have increased among all groups. Among married men, 68 percent said they were engaging in the practice in the latest poll, compared with 52 percent in 1971, while among married women the number had risen from 38 percent to 56 percent.

Among unmarried men, the jump went from 30 percent to 54 percent in the same 30-year span, while among unmarried women the observed bump was from just under 1 percent to 12 percent.

Women seemed to make the most headway in terms of increasing their sexual satisfaction. While men expressed more positive attitudes about sex in 1971, by 2001 the gender difference had evaporated.

As well, more 21st-century women said they were highly satisfied with their sex; fewer said they had low satisfaction; more said they experienced an orgasm during sex; and fewer said they had never had an orgasm.

Regarding the degree to which the respondents said they felt "very happy" about their relationship, the three-decade trend also moved in a similarly positive direction for both genders: rising from 40 percent to 57 percent among men, and from 35 percent to 52 percent among women.

Beckman and his colleagues speculated that, in part, the findings might simply reflect the degree to which Western societies have become more comfortable in dealing with sexual matters frankly and openly -- perhaps leading to a greater willingness to honestly report sexual encounters.

"(And) maybe it has become more permissible to leave an unhappy marriage today," suggested Beckman. "And even for widows [and] widowers to establish new relations."

Whatever the explanation, S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health and senior research scientist at the Center on Aging at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), said the findings closely mirror the results of similar research conducted at UIC and elsewhere.

"Probably the addressing of physiological problems with the development of medications like Viagra explain some -- but not all -- of the upward sexual activity trend," he said. "But the most important point being made here is that when it comes to sex, clearly it doesn't matter what age you are. At least most men and many women still have a desire to have it as they age."