Herpes Events – Party Till You Pop

October 8, 2012 H-YPE No comments

When we say “Party Till You Pop“, we don’t mean that literally.

That would be disgusting, but hopefully it got your attention and now you too can join in on our herpes events and gatherings.

H-YPE herpes events

H-YPE is proud to be the only UK herpes social site that brings you herpes events and gatherings throughout the United Kingdom. We started arranging events for herpsters back in 2004; two years before H-YPE was launched. Now we like to refer to them as H-YPE events for H-YPEsters. You could go as far as saying that H-YPE was born out of those original beginnings as we watched how these gatherings changed people’s lives for the better, helping bring back a sense of normality.

These fantastic herpes events and parties helped many people with herpes realise:

  • that herpes is only a cold-sore
  • you will have sex again
  • you can still meet a life partner
  • herpes does not kill you
  • life does go on.

Our London herpes events are now regularly attended by over 100 H-YPEsters as well as many of our friends from the HVA (Herpes Viruses Association) which is a wonderful herpes charity based in the UK. If you have the means then you might want to make a donation directly to them, via their own website. To donate please click here.

We now have H-YPE herpes events throughout the United Kingdom, many of which are arranged by H-YPEsters themselves. There is an event for everyone. Though we must warn you: YOUR SOCIAL LIFE MAY GO INTO OVERDRIVE!

Although our events are centred around people with herpes meeting other people with herpes, we do like to encourage our members to bring along their non-herpes friends (Muggles as we now like to call them). It demonstrates to others that there are people out there who will not scream with terror and run away when you tell them you have herpes. It can have a profound effect on giving the newly diagnosed the courage to have “The Herpes Talk” with possible partners, friends and even their family.

Please take a moment to join H-YPE. It’s free to registar and to RSVP to one of our herpes events.

Take the leap and join H-YPE! You’ll be so glad you did.

“Like it” or not, H-YPE has a Facebook page

September 26, 2012 H-YPE No comments

H-YPE has a Facebook page

We ask you to Like us.

H-YPE now has a Facebook page. It has come about due to the suggestion of one of H-YPE’s very proactive members who asked why we didn’t have one. We thought “Who would want to be associated with a herpes community page on Facebook?”

Luckily, the name H-YPE doesn’t scream out “HERPEEEEEEEEEEEES” like other site names do (one of the main reasons we chose it) which means that if someone was to look at your “Like” list, they would actually have to click on the link to find out it has anything to do with herpes.

So here is your chance to officially “Like” H-YPE. Please remember that it will appear in your “Like” list where others may see it but it will only say “H-YPE” and not herpes till you click on it.

Please take a look and “Like” it if you like it.

Here’s the link. www.facebook.com/herpesHPV

Boldly Going Where No Other Site Has Gone Before

July 21, 2012 H-YPE One comment

We first announced this offer back in 2009 and since then other sites have followed our lead in this and in many other ways, such as putting community before dating. Obviously we must be doing something right as they continue to try and emulate H-YPE.

Just to reiterate, if you are on Disability Living Allowance, on Job Seekers Allowance or Income Support and are finding it difficult to pay for FULL ACCESS membership, then H-YPE would like to help.

Free H-YPE membership for those on benefitsWe will offer you free full access membership on a month to month basis. All we ask is that you email us a scanned copy of your relative paperwork proving your DLA, JSA or Income Support and a scanned copy of photo ID such as a passport or drivers licence. We also require a contact number in case we have any questions regarding your request. All of this is necessary to stop those who would abuse this offer and end up spoiling this opportunity for those that really need it.

We can assure you that all data received will not be passed onto anyone else and be used soley for H-YPE full access membership applications.

This is a month to month offer and would need to be applied for on a monthly basis.

Please send your requests to allowance@h-ype.com and we would appreciate you patience while we process the data.

All decisions made by H-YPE are final and not open for negotiation.

Do not apply for this unless you can provide the proof mentioned above in its entirity.

An Overview of Herpes 1 & 2

July 21, 2012 H-YPE No comments

Herpes Simplex Virus - www.h-ype.comHerpes simplex virus 1 and 2 (HSV-1 and HSV-2) are two species of the herpes virus family, Herpesviridae, which cause infections in humans. Eight members of herpes virus infect humans to cause a variety of illnesses including cold sores, chickenpox or varicella, shingles or herpes zoster (VZV), cytomegalovirus (CMV), and various cancers, and can cause brain inflammation (encephalitis). All viruses in the herpes family produce life-long infections.

They are also called Human Herpes Virus 1 and 2 (HHV-1 and HHV-2) and are neurotropic and neuroinvasive viruses; they enter and hide in the human nervous system, accounting for their durability in the human body. HSV-1 is commonly associated with herpes outbreaks of the face known as cold sores or fever blisters, whereas HSV-2 is more often associated with genital herpes.

An infection by a herpes simplex virus is marked by watery blisters in the skin or mucous membranes of the mouth, lips or genitals. Lesions heal with a scab characteristic of herpetic disease. However, the infection is persistent and symptoms may recur periodically as outbreaks of sores near the site of original infection. After the initial, or primary, infection, HSV becomes latent in the cell bodies of nerves in the area. Some infected people experience sporadic episodes of viral reactivation, followed by transportation of the virus via the nerve’s axon to the skin, where virus replication and shedding occurs.

Herpes is contagious if the carrier is producing and shedding the virus. This is especially likely during an outbreak but possible at other times. There is no cure yet, but there are treatments which reduce the likelihood of viral shedding.

Transmission

Herpes Transmission - www.H-YPE.comHSV is transmitted during close contact with an infected person who is shedding virus from the skin, in saliva or in secretions from the genitals. This horizontal transmission of the virus is more likely to occur when sores are present, although viral shedding, and therefore transmission, does occur in the absence of visible sores. In addition, vertical transmission of HSV may occur between mother and child during childbirth, which can be fatal to the infant. The immature immune system of the child is unable to defend against the virus and even if treated, the infection can result in inflammation of the brain (encephalitis) that may cause brain damage. Transmission occurs when the infant passes through the birth canal, but the risk of infection is reduced if there are no symptoms or exposed blisters during delivery. The first outbreak after exposure to HSV is commonly more severe than future outbreaks, as the body has not had a chance to produce antibodies; this first outbreak carries a low (≈1%) risk of developing aseptic meningitis.

Treatment

Treatment for Herpes - www.H-YPE.comHerpes viruses are known for their ability to establish lifelong, incurable infections. Treatment usually involves general-purpose antiviral drugs which reduce, but are unable to completely eliminate, the infection. Reducing the viral load can reduce the physical severity of outbreak-associated lesions and the amount of infected cells shed by the body, lowering the chance of transmission to others. Research has also shown that the virus’s growth is to a moderate degree proportional to the ratio of the amino acid arginine to the amino acid lysine in the diet of infected individuals. Research into a vaccine is ongoing.

Is my sex life over now that I have herpes?

May 30, 2012 H-YPE No comments
Will herpes kill my sex life?

Is there sex after herpes?

You just found out you have herpes, you don’t have a special someone in your life and you doubt you ever will now because you have GENITAL HERPES. You are probably thinking, “Who will want to ever have sex with me now?”.

You feel dirty. You feel like you are on your own. There is no-one with whom you can talk to because they will probably run away screaming and tell all your friends and family while escaping from your disgusting, infected self.

Well we can assure you that

  • you will have sex again
  • you are neither disgusting nor dirty (where herpes is concerned)
  • you have every chance of meeting a life partner
  • people may surprise you and say they have it too
  • you are not alone and that support is out there

Herpes is much more common than you may think and approximately 1 in 4 people have it.

If you are looking for something more serious then you will find that herpes can be very effective at filtering out the players.

When it comes to sex, you must be responsible and inform your partner prior to the act, not after. Everyone deserves to be given the opportunity to make an informed choice.

The Herpes Talk is necessary and should be carried out in a calm way to maximize success.

Check out the following links for more info on telling someone you have herpes:

http://h-ype.com/blog/how-to-sweeten-up-telling-someone-you-have-herpes/

http://h-ype.com/blog/telling-someone-you-have-herpes-how-to-tell-them/

If having the talk scares the hell out of you but you still want the chance at meeting someone, be that for sex, love or simply for friendship, then there are websites such as H-YPE.com dedicated to bringing people with herpes and/or HPV together.

It has a wonderful community feel and offers you the opportunity to meet others in the same boat as you as well as ask any questions you may have and get the support you need. H-YPE.com can also be a great place to rebuild your confidence and help you on your journey to feeling like you again……and though you may not feel it now, with time and support, you will be able to date the unblessed again provided you haven’t already found someone special at H-YPE.

At the end of the day, having herpes does not have to be a negative thing. In fact, it can be a whole new beginning.

Oh and YOU WILL HAVE SEX AGAIN.

Can you get herpes from a toilet seat?

May 25, 2012 H-YPE No comments
Can you get herpes from a toilet seat?

It's Alive!

The short answer to that would be NO.

You cannot get herpes from a toilet seat. Herpes is a sexually transmitted infection (STI) spread by skin-to-skin contact. In most cases, the virus enters your body through mucous membranes — the type of skin found in your mouth, genitals or anus. The virus can also enter your body through skin that has tiny scrapes or tears.

Herpes Simplex Virus 1 (HSV1) is known as oral herpes and Herpes Simplex Virus 2 (HSV2) is known as genital herpes because of the area of the body they effect. This is slightly misleading as someone with oral herpes (a.k.a. The Common Cold-sore) can pass on HSV1 to their partner’s genitals through oral sex and someone with genital herpes can pass on HSV2 to their partner’s mouth.

Both herpes 1 and 2 are not able to live on a non-living surface, such as a toilet seat. Therefore, unless the toilet seat you happen to be using is alive (which if it is then catching herpes from a toilet seat would be the least of your worries) then it is not possible to contract herpes from a toilet.

The virus that causes herpes is very delicate and it cannot live long or at all on such surfaces. It requires skin-to-skin contact or bodily fluid contact through sexual encounters in order to live and multiply.

The herpes virus dies quickly outside of the body making it virtually impossible to get the infection through contact with toilets used by an infected person.

Don’t believe us? Then check with the thousands of members at www.h-ype.com and ask them if they did, but we bet they didn’t.

Who’s Got Her Peas? (We really mean Herpes)

May 22, 2012 H-YPE No comments

The general statistics indicate that 1 in 4 people have herpes and 80% of them don’t actually realize they do because their symptoms are so mild, if they get any at all.

Therefore that would imply that 1 in 4 celebrities have herpes too. Many names have popped up such as Jason Biggs from “American Pie” who Tweeted his fans about the progress of his developing herpes cold sore.

Here is our take on who’s got herpes……oh we mean her peas. Enjoy!

How To Raise Your Profile Using Social Networking

May 22, 2012 H-YPE No comments
Social Networking made easy with H-YPE.com

Whether you join a dating site for people with herpes or one of the huge commercial dating sites, the end result may still be the same. There may be nobody in your area or the competition may be so huge, it’s daunting. So, what do you do to get noticed or pass the time until that perfect one joins? This is where the social networking comes in.

Social networking is the key to your success. It’s all in the name. You do what it says on the tin.

Be social and network.

Use networks like H-YPE.com to interact with other members and having fun doing it. Stand out from the crowd without being a prat. It’s obvious that a profile with a picture gets more attention than one without a photo right? So what do you do when lots of members have their photo attached to their profile because they feel safer on H-YPE than on most other herpes/HPV dating sites?

Take the next step on the H-YPE Social Network and allow your head to pop above the crowd. Make yourself even more visible to other members by:

  • popping into the chat room (best time for that is late evenings after about 9pm)
  • attending events, or better still, arrange one yourself
  • answer people’s questions in the forum or start an interesting thread from scratch
  • join a group to meet others with similar interests and if there isn’t one you like, then start a new one
  • write a blog about whatever you like and comment on other’s blogs
  • add a video to your profile introducing yourself making sure to keep it short and sweet.
In doing these things you are being proactive. All these things will make you even more visible to the crowd because you are now standing out, and for the right reasons too. Remember, it’s “Survival of the Fittest”. No-one will do this for you. You have to do it yourself.

Don’t be that person that says, “No-one ever emails me.” Take control of your situation and go to them.

We have created the stage for you to shine. Use H-YPE as your tool to socialise and network.

Look at Facebook for example. It’s not a dating site but people do meet and date through that social network as they do on the major dating sites. You have friends, wall posts, photos, comments, etc, as you have on H-YPE, so make the most of these facilities.

In a perfect world, you would go online, click a profile and find that perfect person that lives around the corner from you. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case and having herpes and/or HPV doesn’t make it any easier. What social networking does is it opens your search radius and that of others. You may catch the eye of that perfect one, who came across your profile, and lives an only hour away. We know this happens and have the marriages to prove it!

So, don’t be shy, jump in and happy networking!

How To Sweeten Up Telling Someone You Have Herpes

May 18, 2012 H-YPE One comment

Say you have herpes - with a cakeSay it with a cake? If that works for you then great.

On a more serious note though, telling someone you love or are interested in that you have herpes can be very embarrassing. If you’ve ever had to tell someone you have herpes, how did you do it? Did it go well? What would you do differently if you could?

If you pick the right time and say it the right way, there’s a good chance things will work out OK.

Think about how you want your partner to take the news. Do you want it to seem like a huge problem? Of course not, so don’t present it that way. If you say, “I have some awful news for you,” your partner will likely take it as awful news. Instead, be casual, direct, and unemotional.

If you say, “You’re going to freak out when you hear this,” or “Don’t freak out, but…,” you are setting your partner up to panic either way.

Simply say you have herpes, and ask if he or she knows what that means. Be prepared to present the facts.

Choose the most appropriate setting – a relaxing one. Just the two of you. Where there won’t be any distractions.

The worst time to tell, other than after having sex, is during foreplay or when your clothes are already off. That would not only spoil the mood, but it could also annoy your partner, starting the conversation on the wrong foot.

It would be best to let the topic come up naturally in conversation. That way, it would seem less like a bombshell and more like any other development in your life. For example, you could say, “Just so you know, my doctor called me yesterday with some test results, and said I have the virus that causes genital herpes.”

If you’ve never slept with the person before, it’s not impolite to ask if he or she has any sexually transmitted diseases. You could start the conversation by being the first one to ask.

You might be surprised at the number of stories we’ve heard where immediately after telling someone they have herpes they hear the response, “I have herpes too.”

It’s possible that he or she might also have been looking for the appropriate moment to tell you they have herpes.

Remember that your partner might take the news badly no matter how well you deliver it. In that case, don’t get defensive. Allow him or her some time to think it over in private, calm down, and come to terms with it. It may not be the first challenge you’ve faced together, and if the relationship is valuable enough to continue, it won’t be the last.

If after reading this the thought of telling someone you have herpes (a.k.a.”The Herpes Talk”), then you can always try a dedicated herpes and HPV social site like www.H-YPE.com where having the talk is not necessary.

What is the point of a Facebook STD app?

May 16, 2012 H-YPE No comments

As many a Facebook friend will tell you, revealing more about your private life than you would like is an everyday hazard of the web.

But a new concept for an app could see social network users sharing information far more sensitive than a drunken party snap.

Researchers are exploring whether websites such as Facebook could be used to sift through users’ friend lists and flag up which of them may be carrying a sexually transmitted infection.

A team at the University of North Carolina’s Center for Infectious Diseases hopes this approach can harness the power of increasingly ubiquitous social networks to prevent the spread of diseases such as HIV and chlamydia.

At an international health conference held last month, Dr Peter Leone – the professor leading the research – pointed out how a patient’s circle of friends can be a vital clue in identifying who could be at risk of infection.

The theory is that, since social networks mirror our real-life friendship circles, services such as Facebook could be used to contact an entire at-risk group and tell them they may be in danger.

In a previous study Dr Leone tested the sexual partners of newly diagnosed HIV patients and found 20 per cent of them showed up HIV-positive.

His latest research looks at this finding in light of the idea that people who move in similar social circles often have sexual partners in common.

Dr Leone aims to develop a more precise approach to tracking the spread of STDs than simply focusing on at-risk demographics or limiting the search to those with whom the patient has had direct sexual contact.

Speaking to Salon, Dr Leone told of how a syphilis outbreak in North Carolina demonstrated how STDs can thrive within a social circle.

He said: ‘When we looked at the networks we could connect many of the cases to sexual encounters, and when we asked who they hung out with, who they knew, we could connect 80 percent of the cases.’

The researchers offer a service whereby newly diagnosed HIV patients can provide a list of past sexual partners and anyone else who could have picked up the virus indirectly. The team then contacts these people, sometimes through Facebook, to let them know the patient is HIV-positive and that they should get themselves tested.

Describing the spread of sexual infections as a ‘population-level effect’, Dr Leone told Salon: ‘It would be no different from someone who goes to a picnic and gets food poisoning. We’re concerned about everyone that was at that picnic.’

Another method being considered is based on an exisiting app for tracking the spread of flu. Developed by genetics professor James Fowler, of the University of California in San Diego, it trawls status updates for certain patterns and keywords, notifying users if their friends’ activity indicates that they may be at a higher risk of falling ill.

The problem, of course, is that Facebook users are far less likely to broadcast news of their newly contracted STD than of a sore throat.

Nevertheless, Dr Fowler said social networks remain useful in the fight against STDs.

Not only do the likes of Facebook enable users to spread the message of safe sex, he said, they allow people to set examples to friends and destigmatise sexual health issues.

The above extract was taken from the Daily Mail.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2123914/Why-Facebook-soon-tell-friends-STD.html

One would hope that herpes or HPV would not be one of their targets but it is something to think about.

« Older Entries