This may sound strange, but my favourite place is usually anywhere that's risky to get caught. Something about the risk of getting caught just adds to the thrill. Such places include a cemetary, a public washroom, a church basement, and the back of a police cruiser… Yes... That's right.. I've had sex in the back of a police cruiser befoe. It was a pretty fun way to get out of a speeding ticket actually. :hehe:
True enough… 
The one up side though to closetted men is that strangely, I've found closetted men tend to be tbe kinkiest in the sheets for some reason. It's kind of strange because they're all open minded usually, but not willing to admit that they're gay in public. :crazy2:
@nmd:
My guess is that you have both sets of cables connected at once and this is confusing for it or your TV or both. Try only using HDMI and see how that goes.
This is quite possible… There is also another possibility as well. I know that when my WDTV box once did this, the solution I fould was to do a hardware reset with the reset switch on the back of the box. It was a little bit of a pain to get it going again after that, but if it's not the issue as mentioned above, this may be worth a shot.
I too have migrated from the world of Windows to Ubuntu some time ago and have never bothered to look back. Given the more advanced firewall options that you can create yourself, it's much easier to secure a network when running it behind something like Ubuntu than it is to directly expose a Windows base computer directly to the internet.
I'm glad that I'm not the only one on this site who seems to have taken to that switch to make it over to the world of Ubuntu.
Amazing HIV+ Gay Men: Tyler Curry
Source: HIVPlusMag
He was 28 when he found out he was HIV-positive. Though he worried about being ostracized, the accidental activist posed naked and sudsy to protest the use of “clean” to describe people who don’t have HIV.
BY Jorge Rodriguez-Jimenez September 05 2014 3:00 AM ET
He was 28 when he found out he was HIV-positive. Nothing was more scary to Tyler Curry than figuring out how to disclose his status without being ostracized by others in the gay community.
“So with impending doom off the table, what is there to be afraid of? Well, for me and for many I know, it is the person that is reading this article,” Curry wrote in a December 2012 online op-ed for The Advocate. “It is being the rotten golden egg that plummets to the bottom of the dumpster in Charlie’s Chocolate Factory. It is the deafening effect uttering the letters ‘HIV’ can have in a conversation.”
Well, that rotten golden egg has taken the HIV and LGBT community by storm since then, immersing himself in activism and becoming a major media presence, often using his own body and image to get his message about HIV across. As an Advocate contributor, Curry once appeared naked in a sudsy shower to protest the continuing use of “clean” to describe people who don’t have HIV. And while older activists bristled at the attention Curry got for things they’ve been saying for years, it was clear that this Gen Y upstart was getting through to a lot of young people.
Curry launched the Needle Prick Project, an editorial and visual campaign aimed to open dialogue on the current state of living HIV-positive. It included a series of published interviews and photographs of Curry with other poz notables. In addition to writing for The Advocate, he has contributed to Instinct and The Huffington Post, and today he’s senior editor and head writer for a Web-based HIV resource and magazine, HIV Equal Online.
Curry reminds us that youth is for pushing forward, making noise, and bringing attention to a cause. “Even though I probably won’t die tomorrow, I can still live better today,” Curry wrote in that 2012 column. “Realizing just that is the change in our lives that we all deserve.”
Yes… Far too often people don't disclose their status in an anonymous or group sex type scene. Most of them do not disclose their status from my experience because they're undetectable. The rational behind that is that as per what the article outlines, undetectable viral load more or less means damn near NO risk of infection.
All I can really say is consider your source. Given some of the information that was presented, there are still a number of questions surrounding the content of the original post. Somehow though, I don't think getting a clear answer will ever be possible.
Also, the same care that keeps you alive, should have been the same care that prevented it from happening in the first place.
Slut shaming pure and simple. There should be zero tolerance for this.
You could call it slut shaming, but that would imply that I am actually ashamed of what happened, when the fact is that it really doesn't bother me anymore.
The only down side to closeted men is that if you're trying to establish a relationshp with them, it can be hard to not out them in some way.
And now how to get the message to those potential onine dates who prefer 'clean'.
That's the battle that a lot of people are sadly struggling with. Even if there's absolutely no risk of transmitting HIV to someone else, failing to disclose your status can land you a criminal charge for Aggravated Sexual Assault. Sadly, I know this all too well when a sexual partner of mine lied to the police and said that I didn't tell him that I had HIV, when in fact I most certainly did. As sad as it is to say, that's the reality that we are facing at this day and age. 
Also, are they just saving the Truvada for special occasions? When I am in the groove sex is not just daily but hourly. Will these guys have to decide who is "sponge worthy"?
Based on the sound of the article, it does indeed sound like the use of Truvada is around special occasions. That being said though, Truvada is also effective as a post-infection remedy, as it has been in my case for some time now. It's also used in the treatment of Hepatits C as well.
I would concede that you may know how HIV works, but not immunology entirely or else why go to medical school or the doctor. Secondly, your doctor and drugs like abacavir have kept you alive. Also, the same care that keeps you alive, should have been the same care that prevented it from happening in the first place.
WOW!! I don't even begin to know where to start with that one. First off, HIV is short for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. (Note the word that is underlined). Simply put, it has everything to do with the immune system. In order to work with it, one must first understand the workings of the immune system. If you don't have any understanding of immunology and the way the immune system works, then you don't stand a chance in hell at managing your health and keeping on top of things. There's more involved to it than just taking the meds actually… much more. For example, eating habits (including how much of what you eat), excercise, and a proper balance of enzimes in your blood stream have a great impact on how one must manage with such things, as they all affect the immune system. And really...?! Abacavir? Are you serious?! That med has long since been placed in the obsolite antique pile of meds, along side AZT, D4T, and 3TC. Just sayin'.... It may be helpful to get some more up to date information.
I would concede that you may know how HIV works, but not immunology entirely or else why go to medical school or the doctor.
There is one very simple answer to this question… Within the province of Ontario, without a certificate (license if you will) from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, one cannot legally practice medicine, and therefore, are not able to do such things as write a prescription for the drugs that are necessary as a part of keeping themselves alive.
It's actually kind of sad to see that at this day and age, there are people out there who believe that you can only know what you know if you have a piece of paper that says so. This is a large part of the "problem" with society, especially given that there are a LOT of people out there who have a plethora of pieces of paper that say that in theory they know what they're talking about, however are complete morons and don't know the first thing about what they're dealing with. By the same token, there are also people who are self-educated, with no official pieces of paper to say that they know what they know who have a much more advanced knowledge of the subjects they have taught themselves than the people with those fancy pieces of paper. It's like saying that a mother who has successfully raised 12 children who all turned out to be successful knows nothing about taking care of or raising a child, simply because she doesn't have a piece of paper that says she knows how to read, write, and regurgitate a "standard" set of information that gets determined by some organization and varies from one region to another.
While on that topic, I suggest that you get all your facts properly before running your mouth. You assume that my contracting HIV was the result of negligence or other such stupidity on my part. Just to set the record straight, I contracted HIV by getting raped. I never asked for someone to infect me with HIV, nor did I go around being careless about my practices to end up infected. In fact, the particular sexual experience that resulted in my HIV infection wasn't exactly consentual. If it were up to me, I would never have had sex with the man who infected me, but when you're backed into a corner and forcibly taken against your will after declining sex several times by someone much bigger and much stronger than you, suddenly, there's no choice in the matter. I will be clear when I say that I never wished to have HIV, and it most certainly was not the reult of my own doing as you seem to imply. So again as I said.... Before you go assuming things, it generaly helps to have all of the facts.
By the same token, I could also ask you the same question. Do you have any fancy piece of paper that says you're "certified" in immunology? For that matter, what "formal" experience or background do you have in the field? It just so happens that I, like most people I know with HIV, have had to keep on top of such material myself in order to best understand how to manage my health, since as I said, a doctor and drugs alone simply aren't enough to keep things in check. To be perfectly blunt, there have even been times when I have actually had to explain things to my doctor for whatever reason, which only further illustrates my pervious point about a fancy piece of paper.
Is 'Undetectable' the New Safe Sex
Source: HIVPlusMag
A groundbreaking new study is quantifying transmission risk for gay men when one partner has an undetectable viral load.
BY Lucas Grindley September 15 2014 10:42 AM ET
The landmark Partner study that everyone is talking about—which tracked HIV transmission risk through condomless sex if the HIV-positive partner is on suppressive antiretroviral medication—has so far found not even one case of an HIV-positive person with an undetectable viral load transmitting the virus to a partner. But people in your everyday life may still be a little disbelieving.
“The most common response I get from disbelievers is that positive men use ‘undetectable’ as a way of getting people to sleep with them without a condom,” says Tyler Curry, an editor with the new group HIV Equal, who has written about his frustration with gay men still ignorant about what it means to be undetectable. “Positive men don’t want to transmit the virus to someone who is negative just as much as a negative person doesn’t want to become positive,” Curry emphasizes.
The Partner study itself comes with a series of warnings about what exactly the study has really found about undetectable viral loads. Researchers don’t recommend that undetectable gay and bi men have sex without the usual methods of protection, for example.
While some of this could be used as cover by skeptics, it also means positive people are left to understand and explain all of this science to a world that continues to stigmatize (and in some cases, criminalize) anyone with HIV.
Of the 1,100-plus couples taking part in the Partner study out of Europe, 40 percent are gay. This is the first time any study has so comprehensively investigated the risk of anal sex among men who have sex with men. To join, couples had to say up front that they sometimes don’t use protection—meaning no condoms, and the HIV-negative partner could not be on a daily PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, regimen.
In an analysis presented to the world in March at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston, the study’s researchers also excluded any couple in which the HIV-positive partner’s viral load had gone above 200 copies per milliliter of blood. That’s the threshold at which they declared a person stopped being “undetectable.” Perhaps unnerving for anyone trying to keep their viral load down, that was the case for 16 percent of couples.
The first thing to understand about the Partner study is that some of the participants did contract HIV. Based on previous studies, researchers knew that odds were some of the negative partners would get HIV. So they put in place ways of identifying whether the undetectable partner had transmitted it to them.
Among gay men especially, the reality is that condomless sex outside of their primary relationship or marriage does happen with regularity. A third of the HIV-negative partners in gay couples reported having condomless sex with someone other than their primary partner, while just 3 to 4 percent of straight participants admitted the same thing. And what many experts already know about how HIV is transmitted still holds true: New infections usually come from people who are undiagnosed, who don’t know they have the virus, and who are not on treatment.
Partner researchers haven’t said exactly how many people contracted HIV during the study, promising only that the number would be released at a later date. But a phylogenetic analysis of the DNA from the strain of HIV showed it had not come from the undetectable partner. Meaning, the men who got HIV did so through someone other than their partner, who was undetectable.
More importantly, statistics show researchers should have seen 15 transmissions in straight couples and 86 in gay couples if partners hadn’t been on treatment. The chance of acquiring HIV from a partner who is undetectable very well might be zero. But that’s not what this study says, at least not yet.
The longer the study progresses and the more people who participate (Partner 2 starts this year and includes only gay couples), the higher confidence researchers can claim in their probabilities. Results so far are only preliminary and won’t be finalized until 2017.
The researchers themselves point out that their study isn’t the end-all for concerns about transmission. For example, they worked only with couples who said they hadn’t used condoms for two years, on average. Maybe transmission risk is greater the first time a serodiscordant couple has sex? They couldn’t know that from this study.
What researchers do is quantify levels of risk. A risk analysis published online in the journal AIDS in May attempted to make the basic point that risk accumulates over time, even if you’re using treatment as prevention. The chance of passing HIV to another person in a single year is less than it would be over a 10-year period, the study’s authors concluded, though they caution that the study is only a model and not meant to estimate actual transmission risk.
Partner researchers say a person with an undetectable viral load could indeed have zero risk of transmitting HIV. We’ve long known that it’s riskier to be the receptive partner during anal sex and that sex with ejaculation is riskier. So far researchers have also determined that the maximum possible risk for same-sex couples who have unprotected anal sex with ejaculation is only 4 percent, if the HIV-positive partner is on fully suppressive antiretroviral therapy. That small number is in itself big news.
Still, for some doubters it won’t make a difference.
“As far as dating goes, I don’t need to convince someone else that they are safe to date me because I am undetectable,” says Curry. “I give them the facts and they either accept them or they do not. Either way, I know what it means to be undetectable and I know that I am safe from ever transmitting the virus so long as I stay compliant.”
In Curry’s own relationship, he talked with his boyfriend about what it means to be undetectable when they first began dating. “But the topic quickly turned into a conversation about trust,” he said. “Undetectable, positive, negative, whatever…in a relationship, it is all about trust.”
Sex, Lies and HIV: When What You Don’t Tell Your Partner Is a Crime
Source: HIVPlusMag
Laws that criminalize HIV in this country are so askew, one man got a 25-year prison sentence after having sex using a condom, another when his viral load was undetectible; both had close to zero chance of passing HIV, but that's not really what these outdated laws punish. They punish people who are HIV-positive for having sex without disclosing, even if they have no chance of infecting another person.
BY Sergio Hernandez ProPublica March 26 2014 2:00 AM ET
Nick Rhoades was clerking at a Family Video store in Waverly, Iowa, one summer afternoon in 2008 when three armed detectives appeared, escorted him to a local hospital and ordered nurses to draw his blood. A dozen miles away, his mother and stepfather looked on as local sheriff’s deputies searched their home for drugs — not illegal drugs, but lifesaving prescription medications.
Lab results and a bottle of pills found in the Rhoades’ refrigerator confirmed the detectives’ suspicions: Nick Rhoades was HIV-positive.
Almost a year later, in a Black Hawk County courtroom, Judge Bradley Harris peered down at Rhoades from his bench.
“One thing that makes this case difficult is you don’t look like our usual criminals,” Harris said. “Often times for the court it is easy to tell when someone is dangerous. They pull the gun. They have done an armed robbery. But you created a situation that was just as dangerous as anyone who did that.”
The judge meted out Rhoades’ sentence: 25 years in prison.
His crime: having sex without first disclosing he had HIV.
Officially, the charge, buried in Chapter 709 of the Iowa code, is “criminal transmission of HIV.” But no transmission had occurred. The man Rhoades had sex with, 22-year-old Adam Plendl, had not contracted the virus.
That’s not a surprise, because Rhoades used a condom.
And medical records show he was taking antiviral drugs that suppressed his HIV, making transmission extremely unlikely. A national group of AIDS public health officials later submitted a brief estimating that the odds of Rhoades infecting Plendl were “likely zero or near zero.”
After his lawyers petitioned the court, Rhoades’ prison sentence was changed to five years’ probation. But for the rest of his life — he is 39 — he will remain registered as an aggravated sex offender who cannot be alone with anyone under the age of 14, not even his nieces and nephews.
Rhoades’ is not an isolated case. Over the last decade, there have been at least 541 cases in which people were convicted of, or pleaded guilty to, criminal charges for not disclosing that they were HIV-positive, according to a ProPublica analysis of records from 19 states. The national tally is surely higher, because at least 35 states have laws that specifically criminalize exposing another person to HIV. In 29 states, it is a felony. None of the laws require transmission to occur.
Defendants in these cases were often sentenced to years — sometimes decades — in prison, even when they used a condom or took other precautions against infecting their partners. In 60 cases for which extensive documentation could be obtained, ProPublica found just four involving complainants who actually became infected with HIV. Even in such cases, it can be hard to prove who transmitted the virus without genetic tests matching the accused’s HIV strain to their accuser’s.
People with HIV have even done time for spitting, scratching, or biting. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, spitting and scratching cannot transmit HIV, and transmission through biting “is very rare and involves very specific circumstances” — namely, “severe trauma with extensive tissue damage and the presence of blood.”
Many law enforcement officials and legislators defend these laws, saying they deter people from spreading the virus and set a standard for disclosure and precautions in an ongoing epidemic.
“Shifting the burden of HIV disclosure from the infected person, who is aware of a known danger, to one who is completely unaware of their partner’s condition smacks of a ‘blame the victim’ sort of mentality,” Jerry Vander Sanden, a prosecutor in Linn County, Iowa, wrote in an email to ProPublica. “It would be like telling a rape victim that they should have been more careful.”
Even many people with HIV support the laws. In a recent survey of HIV-positive people in New Jersey, 90 percent said that people with the virus bore most of the responsibility to protect their partners. More than half approved of the kind of laws that resulted in Rhoades’ sentence.
But some health and legal experts say using criminal penalties to curtail the epidemic could backfire and fuel the spread of HIV. According to the CDC, 1.1 million Americans are currently living with HIV, but one-fifth of them don’t know it. And studies show that about half of newly infected people got the virus from those who didn’t know they had HIV. So relying on a partner to know, let alone disclose, their HIV status is a risky proposition.
The laws, these experts say, could exacerbate this problem: If people can be imprisoned for knowingly exposing others to HIV, their best defense may be ignorance. Such laws, then, provide a powerful disincentive for citizens to get tested and learn if they carry the virus.
The laws “place all of the responsibility on one party: the party that’s HIV-positive,” said Scott Schoettes, a lawyer who supervises HIV litigation for Lambda Legal, a national gay-rights advocacy group. “And they lull people who are not HIV-positive — or at least think they are not HIV-positive — into believing that they don’t have to do anything. They can just wait for their partner to reveal their status and not, instead, take steps to protect themselves.”
Schoettes also says that the laws unfairly single out HIV, further stigmatizing and reinforcing misconceptions about living with the virus.
“There’s no reason why we should be singling out HIV for this kind of treatment,” he said. “It’s based in just a lot of fear and misconception.”
Being HIV-positive can still carry a powerful stigma. Since July 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice has opened at least 49 investigations into alleged HIV discrimination. The department has won settlements from state prisons, medical clinics, schools, funeral homes, insurance companies, day care centers and even alcohol rehab centers for discriminating against HIV-positive people. Individuals with HIV may also fear that news of their status will spread to third parties, leading to rejection, embarrassment, or ostracism for themselves or even their loved ones.
In September, a disability rights group accused the Pea Ridge, Ark., school district of kicking out three siblings after officials learned that members of their family had HIV. The family’s lawyers declined to comment. The school district did not respond to requests for interviews but issued a statement acknowledging that it had “required some students to provide test results regarding their HIV status in order to formulate a safe and appropriate education plan for those children.”
In romantic or sexual settings, people with HIV often report fear of rejection, abandonment, and stigmatization.
“My first girlfriend in middle school — her mom banned her from seeing me, and it took me five years before I felt comfortable to try again,” said Reed Vreeland, a 27-year-old New Yorker who was born with HIV. Vreeland works as the communications coordinator for the Sero Project, a nonprofit advocacy group that campaigns against HIV exposure laws, which it denounces as “HIV criminalization.”
In 2006, Vreeland started dating a classmate at Bard College in upstate New York. He disclosed his HIV status on their second date.
“What’s going through your head is being scared of being rejected,” he said. “It’s scary to give someone that power.”
Vreeland and his girlfriend continued to date. Last spring, they married at a ceremony in the Bronx. “It took me a long time to propose, because I thought I would die,” he recalled. “I was saying, ‘Well, OK, why should I propose if I’m scared of dying in 10 years? And if we do have a kid, then I might die and leave my kid without a father, like I grew up without a mother.’”
The fear is “choking” and “silencing,” he said. “You’re conscious that saying three letters will change the way people will see you.”
In some cases, people with HIV have been met with violence — and even death — after disclosing their status. Last month, in Dallas, 37-year-old Larry Dunn was sentenced to 40 years in prison for murdering his HIV-positive lover. Police said he used a kitchen knife to stab and kill Cicely Bolden, a 28-year-old mother of two, after she told him about her HIV status. “She killed me,” he told investigators, according to his arrest warrant, “so I killed her.”
Until recently, criminal punishment was virtually unheard of for infectious diseases other than HIV. Federal and state officials have the authority to quarantine the sick to contain epidemics, but this power was typically granted to health authorities, who are versed in the latest science, not police and prosecutors. Very few criminal statutes take aim at diseases. At least two states have catchall laws against exposing others to “communicable diseases,” but only if exposure happens through routes most commonly associated with HIV, such as sex, sharing needles or donating blood. And while some states have laws that specifically punish exposure to tuberculosis, syphilis or “venereal diseases,” HIV exposure is almost always punished more severely.
But since 2007, three states have added hepatitis B and C to laws criminalizing HIV exposure. Those diseases are most prevalent among the same groups of marginalized people most at risk for HIV: intravenous drug users; gay men, especially those who are black or Latino; and black women.
Yet the laws may be unnecessary. In rare cases when someone intentionally tries to spread a virus, prosecutors have been able to put them away using ordinary criminal laws, such as assault or reckless endangerment. In 1997, a New York man named Nushawn Williams was accused of deliberately infecting at least 13 people, including two underage girls, with HIV. Williams pleaded guilty to two counts of statutory rape and one count of reckless endangerment. When his 12-year sentence ended in 2010, state officials kept him confined under laws that allow dangerous psychiatric patients to be locked up. He remains behind bars.
In Iowa, Rhoades’ case has prompted some lawmakers to reconsider whether exposing someone to HIV should carry such a heavy punishment.
“Putting somebody in prison for 25 years when they didn’t even transmit HIV is the most absurd thing that the state could be doing,” said Matt McCoy, an Iowa state senator who has introduced legislation to reduce the penalties. “It’s medieval.”
Even Plendl, the man Rhoades had sex with, thinks the law is too harsh. “Do I think he needs to be locked up forever?” Plendl asked. “No. Do I think these laws need to be revisited? Yes.”
[box title=Side Note]I personally have some experience with this myself. It's sad to say, but even in Canada, this type of law still gets followed by the Canadian courts as well. I posted this as a means of enlightening people to the realities that some of us who live with HIV must face and are always at risk of facing, even if the allegations are completely bogus. See this PDF for an example of exactly what I'm referring to. It outlines the case that I was involved with and had the unfortunate experience of actually having thrown at me. For the record, I had a damn good lawyer, so she managed to negotiate my sentence down to only 18 months (of which I had to serve 12).[/box]
Yes… I would count yourself as being quite lucky in that regard. The effects of Truvada that I have gone through for the last several years are quite unpleasant. That being said though, within the next month, I will be happy to announce that I will finally be changing off of Truvada due to the side-effects that I have experienced.
That being said though, the two other most common side-effects of Truvada are dry mouth and nausea. These side-effects of course aren't always going to hold true in every case due to the fact that everyone will respond to the drug differently, but they are a possibility. Some of the more uncommon side effects can include things like low bone density and liver failure. The odds of the liver failure though aren't really all that great. It is a risk nevertheless though.
Having HIV for 5 years does not make one an expert in immunology.
It kind of does actually becuase knowing the ins and outs of immunology is kind of a requirement in order to keep yourself alive. If you do knot know enough about the way that the human immune system works when living with HIV, you quite literally set yourself up for a most certain doom. Then again, what would I know? I've only been having to keep myself up to date with such things for the last 5 years becuase my life depends on it :lolp:
Why Thank You…
I've come to learn a long time ago that proper education on such subjects is the ultimate weapon in preparing yourself for how to handle and deal with such things.
Well…. It does indeed seem to reasonably prove that there is an elevated risk of dementia with obeasity, but I still don't know that one can reasonably say that obeasity inexorably causes dementia. It's at least reasonable to say that it could be considered a contributing factor, or that at the very least, it's an accelerant or catalyst for developping dementia. I'm still not convinced that there's a causal link between the two.
I will concur that your references do indeed point to findings of a co-relation between the two, and do provide some explanation of why this is believed to be. What I would be interested in looking at for argument sake is the genetic background of the people in question to see if its a common thing within their family that develops at that age, and if so, if the process seems to develop any sooner than the family history shows. Things like this are the reason why I say while there may appear to be a corelation on the surface, most studies often overlook other potential factors, and in some cases, completely omit other critical information. Now, I'm not saying that this is the case here, but I am saying that I think there's more information than what appears on the surface to take into account. This is often the flaw with many medical studies. So…. As I said, it may appear on the surface that there's a co-relation between obeasity and dementia, however given the information that is supplied, it leads me to question whether or not one can really establish a causal link between the two.
You should be prepared to debate your statements regarding T cells. Einstein said a little knowledge is a dangerous thing because people have just enough rope to hang themselves.
I have been living with HIV for about 5 years now… Immune system functions are not something new to me at all. "T Cells" as they were once branded actually come in two different forms, namely CD4 and CD8. Generally speaking, when referring to said T cells, they're actually making reference to CD4 cells. There are two other factors that also do not seem to be taken into account with the reference to these cells. One of the biggest factors to take into account when assessing your "T leves" as they have labelled it is the saturation level. While you may have a high CD4/CD8 count, if the saturation (calculated in percentage) is too low, effectively, you won't have a proper defence against anything. By the same measure, you can have a substantially lower CD4 and/or CD8 count, but actually still be quite strong at fighting off any kind of foreign matter in your body, provided that the saturation level is where it should be.
The second factor to take into account when assessing your "T levels" as it were is your CD4/CD8 ratio. If your ratio is too far out of whack, once again, you open yourself up for a whole world of trouble. As a general rule, the CD4/CD8 ratio should be around 0.9 to 1.9. This ratio will also affect the saturation levels as well, which ultimately impact the CD4's effectiveness. These of course are only but 2 of the most major factors when assessing the "T levels". Simply put, the actual level or count alone by itself realisticaly is insufficient to get the full picture.
For these reasons, I don't quite know what to make about the following reference:
1. It makes you less manly. Say goodbye to your T levels if you’re obese.
I also fail to understand how testosterone or hormone levels have any impact on immune system function. Granted, it is possible for there to be an underlaying co-relation for which I am not aware, but based on the information that is given, I can't quite wrap my brain around how one impacts the other, much less why such a general and obviously broad statement relates to obeasity. The other thing that I noted that is a little troublesome to me about that is that before I went to jail, I was a skinny little fucker. At that time, my CD4 count was just barely over 600, however as I gained some weight, I noted that in my case, my CD4 count actually went up as I gained the weight. Granted, there are always exceptions to every rule, and not all people wil be affected in the same way, however I just find it odd that my particular observation seems contrary to what is stated here.
It just brings a lot of questions to mind…. hehe
While this is plausible, I do not understand how a co-relation somehow proves a causal link. Do you by chance have a reference to the original source for further reading?
Call me skeptical if you must, but there are a few things that came to my mind when I read the article.
The first and biggest thing that comes to my mind is how one thing causes another. Simply put, while they may find a co-relation, I fail to understand how a co-relation implies a causal link. For example, you can establish a co-relation between drinking an espresso and being obese, but that doesn't mean that drinking an espresso inexorably leads to becoming obese. Granted, I get the connection for obvious reasons, but some of the other references seem a little suspicious to me.
One such example is the link between the T cells (actually referred to as CD4 or CD8 cells) and obeasity just doesn't seem plausible to me. The fact that the original publisher refers to them as "T" cells only makes me wonder about how much scientific credibility that the study actually has…. Just sayin'