HEALTH

Treatment On HIV Living with and managing HIV disease requires a thorough understanding of the treatments that are available to you. It also demands that drug companies develop new and more effective HIV drugs through clinical trials and research. If you're frustrated about the lack of information specific to women, consider participating in a clinical trial (there are many kinds)! Even if you don't participate in a drug study, you're still helping us learn more about HIV disease in women! A regular part of your HIV health care involves having a sample of your blood drawn for testing in a laboratory. When you are first diagnosed as HIV+ or when you first start taking HIV drugs (treatment), you should get "baseline" tests that give a picture of your health at that moment, Most monitoring tests should be done every three to six months, or as often as your doctor recommends, Viral load tests measure the amount of HIV in your blood. Your CD4 cell count measures how many CD4 cells are in your blood, reflecting the health of your immune system. Your doctor will usually look at the results of both these tests together, to get an idea of whether your HIV disease is progressing and whether your treatment is working. Current HIV antiviral treatments and treatments for opportunistic infections are prolonging the lives of many HIV+ individuals. However, many of the drugs used to treat HIV are very harsh on the body, very difficult to take, and don't work for some people. Research is making great strides toward developing vaccines and better medications for people who are living with HIV, but there is still no cure. Most people will test accurately for HIV after 6 weeks have passed since their last risk. In very rare cases where a person has a highly compromised immune system, such as those in which a person has recently undergone chemotherapy or an organ transplant, it may take 3-6 months for their body to develop enough antibodies to test positive. These are very extreme situations, however, and other more common conditions such as colds or the flu, diabetes, asthma, and many others, will not affect the body's development of HIV antibodies in that way. Those who suggest window periods longer than 6 weeks are trying to account for all those who may also have compromised immune systems. Most people who are taking HIV treatments are taking two or more medications at the same time. This is called Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART). It may also be called combination therapy or "the cocktail". Combination therapy has been found most effective at combating HIV by attacking the virus in many different ways. There are currently three main classes of medications that are used to treat HIV: Entry Inhibitors, Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (Nucleoside, Non-Nucleoside, Nucleotide), and Protease Inhibitors. HIV holistic/herbal/biomagnetic treatment is designed to reduce HIV in your body, keep your immune system as healthy as possible and decrease the complications you may develop and completely flush out the virus from your system.