How Do You Know If You Have Chlamydia?

Chlamydia infection is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the whole world. The CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) states that there are over 1,300,000 people in the US with Chlamydia infection. In almost all states, over 5% of the population is infected. This should warn you about common it is, and how we should all take more precautions.

Lots of times, people with Chlamydia do not even know they have it because it often shows no symptoms.This makes getting treated hard, and allows it to be passed on without even knowing. This is why all sexually active people should get STD testing once a year.

However, if Chlamydia does show symptoms, it may be any of the following:

• White discharge
• Pain when urinating
• Lower back pain (women)
• Nausea
• Fever
• Pain during intercourse
• Bleeding between menstrual periods (women)
• Itching around infected area

If symptoms do show, they usually happen 1 to 3 weeks after infection.

Because Chlamydia often doesn't show symptoms, people can go long periods of time with the infection. If this happens in women, they can develop PID (Pelvic Inflammatory Disease) which is very serious. This happens when the infections spreads to the uterus and fallopian tubes. If this happens, it can scar and damage those areas causing chronic pelvic pain, ectopic pregnancy, and even infertility.

Complications in men rarely happen, but could include infection of the epididymis.

Testing for Chlamydia is very easy. They do a simple cotton swap and test and can find out within the week. For men, they can do a urine test, but it's not as accurate as the cotton swap test.

Once they determine if it is Chlamydia (and not something else), they will prescribe you an antibiotic. Curing Chlamydia is very easy, and not really a big deal to be worried about.

It's most common to be given:

• a single dose of azithromycin
• twice daily weeks dose of doxycycline

It's basically required to stop having intercourse until seven days after you finished taking the antibiotics otherwise you might get reinfected. This is dangerous because the infection can develop a resistance to the medicine.

Also, its best to get retested a month after taking the medicine to make sure that it completely worked.

Besides the normal infection from sexually intercourse, Chlamydia can cause infections in mainly two other ways:

1. Chlamydia can cause an infection of the eye that is called Chlamydia conjunctivitis or trachoma. This used to cause 15% of blindness but now is only around 4%. This can happen by spreading with fingers or sharing towels and cloths, and even through childbirth if the mother is infected.
2. The other cause is through childbirth. For this reason, its best an expecting mother gets tested. The Chlamydia infection can cause abortion, premature birth, blindness, and even pneumonia.

Having STDs can be an embarrassing thing, but compared to all the STDs, treating and curing Chlamydia is very easy. It's not a big deal. Just go get it done and it'll be all over. Obviously, the best thing to do is use protection (meaning condoms) even if the other person is on birth control. Birth control does not prevent STDs.