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I can't cure herpes?

[00:00:00] Okay. In an ongoing effort to address your pain points, people today is Friday. Not on call till Sunday, but I finished a very packed office day. Um, we finished early on Fridays, but we pack it in and so two patients today and that's a lot for one day. Two patients with the exact same question, phrase the same way. 

can I cure herpes? The answer is no. But it's not like you can't cure it. It's incurable. It's not an incurable disease. It's a virus that once your body has been exposed, it keeps the virus in its system. People tend to use inflammatory words like, I can't cure it. Herpes is forever. I think that it's because it's an std. 

People get all freaked out. But the truth is, if I said to you, you don't cure chickenpox. Chickenpox is forever, you wouldn't be all freaked out. And by the way, do you guys know that? Because without realizing, you know it, you know it. You know that chickenpox gets into your system, you're exposed to it. You either display chickenpox or. 

Your body has displayed [00:01:00] antibodies to it, so you're actually immune to it, and then it lives in your spinal cord. It lives there forever until one thing might trigger it to come up, and then you get what's called shingles. So for all intents and purposes, chickenpox is forever, but there was never like, A PR campaign or a poster like back in the seventies saying herpes is forever. 

No one said that about chicken pox. So no one said to freak out about it. But when it comes to anything sexually transmitted, we tend to use very inflammatory language, which I would argue, as you know, I do. That's bad. It's wrong. It makes you feel more anxious than you need. So this very young patient who is not having sex, but I was educating her preemptively on. 

Herpes and HPV and what to expect and why. Please don't be anxious about it. Try to avoid it. Use condoms when you're having sex. Um, get your vaccine for Gardasil, for hpv, but also keep in mind that if you ever get exposed, it's not at the end of the world. It's not a big deal. Don't freak out. I say this so much. 

And her question [00:02:00] was, but herpes, isn't it not curable? And again, no, it's not curable and that's okay. Let me repeat about herpes. You get exposed to it often without knowing it. You kissed someone, you had oral sex with someone. You did something with someone where you got exposed to the herpes virus, your body responded with antibodies, and then you never even knew it or you ended up with an outbreak. 

When that happens, you create anti. You may never have an outbreak again, but will you get rid of the virus? No, you can't. It's okay. Let's not be all like, oh my God, uncurable. Let's just say, hey, once you've been exposed to herpes, you're gonna carry it just like chickenpox. No freaking out. Okay. Um, so we talked about that. 

I'm gonna talk about shingles at some point, maybe over the weekend. I'm gonna talk about your postpartum visit after you had a baby, cuz a bunch of things came up today with a bunch of postpartum patients. Um, I have a bunch of things on my. But those are two things that I'm gonna try to talk about in the next couple days if I have time.[00:03:00]  

Okay? Have a great weekend.