What is HIV? Did you know that HIV is an infection that you can carry for up to 10 years without appearing to be sick? Did you know that HIV isn’t usually the infection that makes you the sickest? Did you know that HIV infections are not spread through the air like a cold but instead through bodily fluids like saliva, vaginal fluid, semen or blood?

HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus which is a virus that attacks the immune system. HIV is an infection that causes AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS is a medical condition that is diagnosed through blood tests that indicate that the body’s immune system is severely damaged. This damage allows cancers, pneumonias, viruses and fungal infections to take over and eventually kill the sufferer.

There are many facts we know about HIV that help us to make recommendations to prevent the spread of the infection. HIV has been diagnosed and treated for decades now and researchers have begun to pinpoint factors that increase your risk for contracting the illness and have learned to recognize when you do become HIV positive how to treat the spread of the infection in your body.

*A person increases their risk of contracting the infection when they become exposed to another persons blood, bodily fluids, saliva, vaginal fluid or semen who has HIV. This is the way that the infection is spread. So sex with multiple partners, sharing needles for drug use, kissing multiple partners when there are open sores or bleeding gums, working in the health care field without protection, and treating cuts and wounds on people without using protection will increase your risk of contracting the infection.

Once a person has been exposed and the infection has entered their body they may or may not experience symptoms in the first two weeks. Some people have a fever, headache, sore muscles and joints, swollen glands, stomach aches or a skin rash. All of these symptoms can be attributed to the flu. Or they may not experience any symptoms at all. In either case, although the virus is replicating in the body it doesn’t have an effect on the immune system for up to a few weeks or even a few months. This is why testing early for HIV wont result in a positive test even if the person has been exposed. It requires a test at 2 weeks, 1 month and 3 months that are negative for HIV before the person is cleared.

The HIV test will look for the antibodies that your body makes in response to the HIV virus. These antibodies aren’t present until after several weeks or a couple of months after the exposure. Women who are infected can pass the virus along to their baby during the pregnancy, delivery or with breast feeding.

The history of the HIV virus finds its roots back to the start of the century when people would hunt and eat a specific subspecies of chimps that carried the HIV virus. Eating the infected animals passed the virus along to the humans. Its believed that the virus didn’t come into epidemic proportions until the latter part of the century when there was greater movement of people into the city and increased sexual promiscuity.

Although there isn’t a cure for HIV or AIDS there have been great strides in medicine to decrease the effect of the infection on the body and increase the life span of the sufferer. In fact medical treatment has improved to such an extent that the number of deaths related to AIDS has been decreasing in the US since 1993.