That's Fit

Life Fit Chat with That's Fit Life Fit Expert Laura Lewis brings conversation provoking tidbits to your table, served up with a touch of spice! Byte-sized information that pack some punch, brought to you every Wednesday and Thursday!

An astonishing one in four teenage girls nationwide has an STD. This equates to over three million teens in the United States that are suffering from a sexually transmitted disease. A virus known as human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted disease among teen girls between the ages of 14 to 19. This virus actually causes cervical cancer, which technically means that cervical cancer in of itself is a sexually transmitted disease. HPV, which can cause genital warts, can lie dormant in both men and women for up to ten year or more. Oftentimes, men and women both may show no signs of carrying the disease, which is one cause for its prevalence. A vaccine targeting several HPV strains recently became available, but has not been available long enough to have an impact on HPV prevalence rates in teen girls.

GARDASIL, the vaccine that can be administered to prevent certain types of HPV, is given as three injections over six months. Side affects include pain, swelling, itching, and redness at the injection site, fever, nausea, and dizziness. While this may seem like a wonder pill, it has been highly controversial. Many parents believe that by vaccinating their teenagers they are silently signing over their parental blessing for promiscuity, and therefore opt not to have their children vaccinated. What do you think? Is vaccination a silent permission for teen sex? And, well, what about the risks of the vaccination itself? What do you think?