Episode 21: Sex and Sexual Health Later in Life

Voice Over: You're listening to sex talk, a podcast all about sex. In this episode expect to hear some colourful language and conversations of a sexual nature. You may want to pop on a pair of headphones for some privacy during this podcast.

Sue: My name is Sue. I'm 59. I've been diagnosed with HIV for 12 years. I'm going to be absolutley honest, I was premenopause and thought ‚STIs are for youngsters aren't they – I don't have to worry about condoms! I ain't gonna get pregnant!' Things I thought about HIV back then obviously are completely different to what they are now, but I had my own misconceptions. I thought that HIV happened in other communities. Goes to get a test, goes with my best friend I've known for 47 years and I went with my younger sister. Didn't tell anyone else what was going on at the time, and we went back 2 weeks later for the test result. We go in the room and the consultant comes straight out with it. ‚Your results are back Sue, you're HIV positive.' And that's when my life changed.

Voice Over: Sex talk. Starting a conversation about sex, with your hosts Adele and Hilary.

Adele: Welcome back to our lovely loyal Sex Talk listeners and a big welcome along to you if it's you're first time listening! I'm Adele Roberts and I'm here with my co-presenter Hilary Ineomo-Marcus.

Hilary : Brilliant to be back in the studio once again. So if you haven't already guessed, Sex Talk is a podcast all about Sex, and today we're going to be focusing on sex and sexual health later in life.

Adele: According to research by HIV charity the Terrence Higgins Trust, 80% of people aged between 50 and 90 are sexually active.

Hilary: and between 2012 and 2016 there was a 9% increase in STI's in over 45's.

Adele : New HIV infections in people over 50 are also rising faster than other age groups, and these people are often being diagnosed at a much later stage of infection, which leads to further health complications. Today on Sex Talk we're going to be joined by two people in their 50's living with HIV, who were both diagnosed later in life. We heard from Sue at the start of the episode, and she'll be telling us more about her life. We'll also be joined by Simon who will be talking about his journey and the incredible work he does now to support other older people living with HIV.

Simon: More people in their 50s plus are living on their own. Isolation is really. really horrible. It really is damaging. It's important that you don't do this on your own.

Voice Over: Sex talk.

Hilary : Because of the incredible treatment now available in the UK, people living with HIV are expected to live as long as people without the virus. On previous episodes of Sex Talk we've spoken to several people who have been living with HIV for decades.

Adele: More than a third of people accessing HIV care in 2016 were over the age of 50, and many of these were people will have been diagnosed in their 20's and 30's and initially given months to live, but due to the advances in medical treatment are living well with HIV well beyond their 50's. We're now going to hear from HIV specialist Dr Shema Tariq who was involved with the recent report on the Menopause and HIV called PRIME.

Shema : Hi there my name's Shema Tariq, I'm an HIV doctor based in Mortimer Market Centre which is in central London, and I'm also a researcher that specialises in HIV and aging, especially amongst women. HIV is a really rapidly moving field. We've seen tremendous advances so even going back to the 1980s when we didn't even know what was causing it, we didn't have any treatment for a long time, and just in the space of 30 years we've got to a point where we know exactly what causes HIV. We've got excellent treatment. But I think the biggest change that I've seen over the past 15 years is a change in the patients that we see. When I first started practicing the majority of my patients were young, and that's changed radically because people are now living normal healthy long lives on HIV treatment, so for instance we know that currently about one third of people receiving HIV care in the UK are over the age of 50 and that's reflected in my practice. I've gone from managing predominantly young people to having to think about the needs of people as they get older. People living with HIV, in the same way as people without HIV as they get older, their risk of developing other medical conditions increases. But I think what's important to remember for people living with HIV is that HIV itself can increase the risk of those things so that just means we have to be quite vigilant in terms of monitoring people that come to our clinics to try and catch these complications early so we can intervene. So that's thinking quite early on when people are in their 40s and 50s about lifestyle and how you could change your lifestyle so it's healthier, so thinking about how your health is going to be in your 60s and 70s which can be safeguarded if you do things such as – all the boring things, stopping smoking, minimizing drinking and exercising regularly. But these things really matter. But I think also there's social changes that happen. Maybe people living with HIV as they get older may experience a greater degree of loneliness because they feel too frightened about sharing their HIV status with people. There remains huge stigma, regardless of age and I think that's one of the biggest challenges we face with HIV but I think the way that stigma might manifest is different amongst different age groups. Certainly if I'm thinking about people over the age of 50 the majority of the patients that I look after are women who are over the age of 50 and I remember a patient I looked after many years ago who was in her 60s when she was first diagnosed saying well how can I tell anyone, I'm a granny, and granny's don't get HIV. There is that element of stigma because when you're older there is no visibility of older women or older men living with HIV, so I think it does add to that sense of stigma and sense of isolation.

So I've been doing research on HIV and menopause for about 4 years now and that work really came about because I was seeing increasing numbers of women in my clinic who I'd looked after during pregnancy who are now reaching their 40s and 50s and coming to me and saying I'm feeling all of these things, what could this be? And so that really prompted us to set up the PRIME study, which was a 3 year study to look at the impact of menopausal women living with HIV and the results were really fascinating. So we found that between 70-90% of women that were in our study had some degree of menopausal symptoms. We found that those symptoms were associated with being psychologically distressed and also was linked to not being able to take HIV medication very well, and we also found that nearly 50% of the women that we included in our study said they hadn't ever received enough information about the menopause, and that's a really easy thing to fix. So the results of that study have been quite striking and I think are really beginning to help shape how we provide care to women aging with HIV because of course their needs are going to be different to those of men.

I think there's probably a few reasons behind the number of people being diagnosed with HIV later in life increasing. I think we've definitely been screening more, but there is probably an element of increasing infections as well and we see that with other infections as well and that's probably a result of a generational shift in sexual attitudes and behaviors. It's now much more common than perhaps it was a generation ago for people to change sexual partners in their 50s and 60s and sometimes, I mean certainly if you've been in a long term relationship and you've come out of that and you're in a new sexual relationship, you may not have had to use condoms for a long time, or you may never have had to use condoms, you may not have benefited from the sex education that young people get at school or through social media or you may not have the skills to be able to negotiate safer sex because it's not just about knowledge, it's about being empowered enough to be able to have those conversations so I think that's partly underlying this increase in infections that we're seeing in that age group.

Hilary :I took so many notes from that.

Adele : Well it was partly good in that there's a lot of advances. So there's more people coming forward, which is going to help other people out there that may be scared that maybe are getting diagnosed later in life, but Dr Shema also said there's an increasing amount of infection in over 50s which is not a good trend and I think that due to people like Sue and people that we're going to talk to in the rest of this podcast hopefully we're going to help spread the message that people should still be doing safe sex when they get over a certain age.

Hilary : Absolutely and I think another positive that I took away from that is that your age has nothing to do with the appetite you'd have when you advance in years, but on a much more serious note other things stood out for me as well in terms of the risks she spoke of that also increases as you grow old in terms of having HIV and the other illnesses that you could pick up potentially as well. She spoke of loneliness, she spoke of stigmas involved with it, because being a granny it's not something you might necessarily feel comfortable telling your grandchildren. But I think that's important because as a grandparent perhaps living with HIV, your experience would be lost if you don't share that experience with younger people because there is something they can learn from you.

Adele: Society needs to move on and we need to catch up and I think it's especially tough for these people as well because they would have lived through the 80s, they would have seen all the scaremongering and so that is still really fresh in their mind whereas people that are younger now, millennials and generation Z? They didn't live through that so they don't really have that preconception but without people like Sue spreading the word and explaining you can be infected with HIV at any age and you've always got to be careful, we're not going to get that progression in society and people aren't going to understand that they need to look after themselves at every age.

Voice Over: Sex talk. With your hosts, Adele and Hilary.

Hilary :Joining us in the studio now is Sue Riley who we heard from at the start of this episode. Welcome to Sex Talk Sue!

Sue : Thank you for inviting me in.

Adele: I hear you're going to give us some tips today cause you're a radio pro aren't you?

Sue : Not really, you've probably got more tips than me. I just host a community radio station in Brighton called the HIV hour so I just do that once a week.

Adele: Sue, can you start by telling us a little bit about yourself?

Sue : Well 59, 60 next year.

Adele: You don't look it.

Sue : Yeah it's going to be a massive celebration next year for many reasons, not just cause I'm 60 but also because next year I will have been living with HIV for 13 years. And also I'm getting married next year, so a massive celebration.

Hilary : Sue, when were you diagnosed with HIV? Was it a shock to you?

Sue : Right okay. Well at the moment it was 12 years ago. I'd just come out of a relationship of 18 months and prior to that I was in a marriage for over 20 years. So the relationship broke down and we parted as friends and he went his way, I went mine and then he started to get ill. The doctors didn't know what was wrong with him, couldn't get rid of the chest infection, couldn't get rid of the throat infection and that went on for months until he got pneumonia and then he was rushed into hospital and it was only in hospital he was offered the HIV test. And he was diagnosed HIV positive and when he came out of hospital he was well enough, he came to see me and I remember him knocking on my door saying 'I need to talk to you Sue'. I let him in, put the kettle on, got the custard creams out, and then he told me he said 'I need to tell you I've just been diagnosed HIV positive and I advise you to get a test'. Well. I had masses of misconceptions 12 years ago. I thought HIV happened in other communities. Anyway. Goes to get a test, goes with my best friend I've known for 47 years and I went with my younger sister, didn't tell anyone else what was going on at the time and we went back 2 weeks later for the test result and we goes in the room and the consultant comes straight out with it. 'Your results are back Sue, you're HIV positive'. I remember exactly what was in the room that day. And that's when my life changed. As soon as I got my diagnosis my life literally changed and I was warned that it would do, and I thought 'yeah, yeah'… and it did. What I thought about things were completely different. I thought it was a death sentence, can I just say first of all.

Hilary : We hear that all the time.

Sue : I remember the 80s. I remember the film stars dying and I thought that's it, I'm going to die. But what made it so real is two weeks after I was diagnosed I received a text message. It was a text message from my partner who had been diagnosed positive, and it was from his ex-wife actually, it wasn't from him, and the message said 'Chris died at 2.30 this morning'. And that's when I thought this is it, I'm going to have to start putting my life in order. My preparations, arranging my funeral, start telling people. One of the things I did do for about 6 and a half years is keep that diagnosis from my daughter and that was to do with stigma and discrimination.

Adele : Was HIV and sexual health on your radar before you were diagnosed?

Sue : Well. I'm going to be absolutely honest, I was pre menopause and thought 'STIs are for youngsters aren't they? I don't have to worry about condoms, I ain't gonna get pregnant'. So fairly well educated person, knew quite a lot about many things, certainly didn't know an awful lot about STIs and sexual health.

Hilary : What do you think needs to happen to make people more aware of their sexual health later in life?

Sue : I think there needs to be another major campaign for older people. Let's look at this, we're living longer, we're certainly living longer living with HIV. We're paying our taxes longer, we're going into older age homes, we're certainly having lots of sex.

Hilary : I'm aware now from the earlier statistics.

Sue : So hello, the government and other organisations need to wake up and smell the coffee. We need, if we want to get those stats down on transmissions, not just on HIV but sexual health, other STIs, we need to have some sort of campaign for older people and stop picking on the youngsters all the time.

Hilary : Speaking of which, you mentioned your daughter, how did she respond to your diagnosis? How did you tell her?

Sue : She was 14 and a half. The interest in boys was appearing. I thought this is the time to have that conversation. So I remember she came in from school that day and I remember knocking on her bedroom door and come in she goes, 'what do you want Mum?' 'I Just want to have a chat'. 'Oh for goodness sakes mum I just got in from school and you're banging on about the internet'. And I sat down and I had to go right back to the beginning. She knew my partner who passed away. She never knew how he died though. I said Chris didn't die of cancer those years ago, that was many of the many lies I'd told her over the years. I said he was diagnosed HIV positive. And just before he passed away I was diagnosed myself. Her iPhone dropped on the floor, her head looked down. She looked back up at me and she looked into my eyes and she said you're going to die mummy aren't you? You're going to leave me now. And I took a massive deep breath and I looked in her eyes and I said I ain't going nowhere. I've been promised a normal life expectancy.

Hilary : How do you think that changed her outlook on sexual health?

Sue : Quite a lot. She has a fantastic education now because of the work I do in HIV and sexual health. So I remember there was a time when she was going out she'd just turned 21 actually and I used to pop some condoms in the purse. 'Mum I don't need those!' Anyway I turned around and just before she went out she'd popped them back in there. I didn't let on that I knew she was doing it but… I think she's been very cautious and very careful, but hey she's a young person…

Adele: I think it's great that she's got you in her corner, she's got you to support her. Who supported you after you got diagnosed?

Sue : I had a fantastic HIV consultant and a HIV specialist nurse and I started to get involved with some groups, some women's groups that were in Brighton. Still frightened to talk about HIV because I still had those misconceptions about HIV. I tried to deal with it myself for a long time until I started meeting other women, other people, HIV in itself has changed my life completely because I have friends from communities I never dreamed I'd have the pleasure of having and I mean that really sincerely. It's really opened doors to many, many, many things. I got support from peer support, listening to other people's experiences and thinking actually I'm not the only HIV in the village and I started to speak out about my HIV status. I started to think I can't be the only woman heading to 50 living with HIV. I cannot be, I'm not that special. And through education and educating myself I found out I wasn't.

Adele: It's a pleasure for me and Hilary to meet people like you who are so vocal and maybe if we take ourselves back to the start of the episode where we said that 80% of people between the ages of 50 and 90 are sexually active, that's a lot of people. Can you reflect on that, is there any advice for any doctors that might listen to this podcast – what can be done?

Sue : More information. Absolutely more information. We are having sex, we're still having sex. I'm nearly 60. I'm still having sex and I'm not ashamed to say it.

Hilary : Good for you.

Adele: We can tell you're glowing you look amazing. If I look like Sue, bring it on.

Hilary : What issues do you think people over 50 living with HIV might face that younger people might not?

Sue : Thinking will they ever have a relationship again because first of all you're getting older and there's misconceptions about getting older and having relationships regardless of HIV or not, but also having a lifetime health condition HIV so some people feel that may be a barrier and that can cause you mentioned isolation earlier in the podcast and that could possibly be a reason as well. We all know that as you get older, as much as we don't want to accept it or agree with it, our bodies as much as we try and keep fit and healthy, the ageing process will happen to all of us so we've got those ageing processes to contend with, and possibly other illnesses one can get getting older. But you've got the HIV on top of that. It's going into your 60s, going into your 70s and 80s but a lot of the stats are now saying HIV positive you're on HIV medication you can live a normal life expectancy.

Hilary : And I can see you've got a badge on as well that says 'can't pass it on'.

Sue : You certainly can't. If you're on HIV medication you're undetectable, and that means the virus is undetectable in your blood, you cannot pass HIV on to any other person in any other way. Medical fact now. One of the messages I like to give out to other people now, especially living with HIV, there is always help out there. You can live the healthiest life you can live. I'm very lucky. I don't live with any other illnesses, I never ever take that for granted. I'm very lucky and fortunate and grateful that I only live with HIV and I live very healthily. Many, many people now diagnosed even later on in life will live a long and healthy life.

Hilary : Love that. Sue – would you like to play a game with us?

Sue : Go on then.

Adele: Word porn!

Voice Over: Sex talk. Word porn.

Adele: Okay so we have the Wordsworth dictionary of sex, flick through the book, we're going to stop on a letter that you shout out, and then we're going to read you a word beginning with that letter and you have to guess what it means. What letter can we get you?

Sue : V.

Adele: Okay why V?

Sue : I've got something in mind that's why. And it's probably not what you're thinking of either.

Adele: Okay Venus highway.

Sue : Wow I'm trying to think…

Adele: I might start using this one.

Sue : Is it to do with a vagina?

Adele: Yeah.

Sue : I thought so.

Hilary : How would you use that in a sentence?

Sue : I'd like to take you up the Venus highway.

Hilary : Be careful Sue.

**Voice Over: **Word porn.

Hilary : Sue thank you ever so much for joining us today.

Adele: When's your show on?

Sue : My show is on a Thursday evening at 7pm. The radio show is called Radio Reverb and it's a Brighton community radio station and it's called the HIV hour so it's radioreverb.com.

Adele: Wonderful, give us a shout out.

Sue : Will do.

Adele: According to research published by the Terrence Higgins Trust this year, over half of people living with HIV over the age of 50 defined themselves as living on or below the poverty line

Hilary: and a large proportion, 82%, said they experience loneliness

Adele : We're joined in the studio now by somebody who has experienced this himself and is working hard to help other people in similar situations. Welcome to Sex Talk Simon.

Simon : Thank you, glad to be here. It's been a short journey for me compared to some of my friends. 2015 I was quite ill and I was bleeding and rushing in and out of hospital. They thought it was a cancer scare so in and out. I was going through a whole lot of stuff. I was going through a divorce, I was going through homelessness, I was made redundant, all within the first 6 months of 2015. I was quite ill and they thought it was rectal cancer and it wasn't it was ulcerative colitis, but as I was going through many checks I went down to get a normal check-up and the clinic instead of just texting me the results asked me to pop in. So I went back to the clinic two days later on 2nd July 2015 and I walked into the health advisor's room and I said 'before you say anything you're going to tell me I'm HIV positive'. And he said 'are you expecting it?' I said 'look I've had this gone wrong, this gone wrong, this gone wrong in the last four months, it could be the worst thing that could happen'. But for me it wasn't the worst thing. I'd been involved in outreach work in the mid-90s and yes we buried a lot of people, but I also knew it wasn't the same back then. I'd got friends at the time 17, 18, 19 years diagnosed and yes there's been huge changes with medication but it wasn't that bad. It wasn't the tombstones or the icebergs or anything else. So I went in thinking that was okay. To be honest everything else was the problem, mental health issues. It was the perfect storm.

Adele: Simon you're remarkable.

Simon : I carried on going. Funniest thing is once I was homeless and I was sofa surfing moving around London staying with friends, when they called me back to go and get my test it was a Thursday and my friends weren't back until the Friday. So the day I was diagnosed with HIV was the first day I slept on the streets of Camden.

Adele: The same day you slept on the streets of Camden the same day you got diagnosed.

Simon : But it wasn't that bad, I didn't mind about that. I was lucky because it was July, if it had been November it would have been horrible but the point is yeah you get isolated at the beginning.

Adele: You've had a really difficult time Simon. What has helped pull you through those difficult days?

Simon : I think it's sheer bloody mindedness. In 2015 there was twice that I was going to kill myself. The first time was in May after being arrested while sofa surfing at a friend's place and there was drugs there, my whole life collapsed purely because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So it was a bit of a crash and burn for me that weekend. So the following day I got to a friend who I thought was going to help and everything else, and he couldn't cope with it because it was a bit too full on for him. I basically just gave up and I was going to kill myself. As I got to Kensington West my phone rang. I don't answer the phone to unknown numbers, it's always PPI or whatever. This time I was crying and I answered it and it was my friend who'd just had a liver transplant and he'd just had his trichotomy taken out of his throat and literally he knew that week I'd lost my house, he was checking up on me. So instead of turning left to go to the flat to kill myself, I turned right to go to the hospital and meet him. And that changed my life. It gave me another lease on life. It's tough because you get backward steps and forward steps all the time. The week after the diagnosis with HIV they came back and said you're also Hepatitis C. I take full responsibility for what's happened to me. It's not anyone else's issue, what's happened has happened but more important for me now is to try and get people to understand you're not just taking responsibility for yourself, you're taking responsibility for other people around you. And that's given me the drive to do what I do.

Adele: What advice do you have for anybody who's over 50 because there's a growing trend with over 50s.

Simon : Guys in their 50s when do they go to the doctors? They've got a check-up, oh I can get through this I'll be fine, it's man flu, they don't check. But if you don't check in occasionally, what could be around? I'm lucky, yes I've had things thrown at me, but I know now if it wasn't for being diagnosed I would be dead. Not because of HIV but because I'd have killed myself because my mental health was bad or one of the other things, my blood pressure, my weight, my hepatitis because I had that before, all these things would have been worse for me, but because of my diagnosis I now get to see a doctor regularly. I now have consultants, can we check this, can we do that, we can engage with it. Now that I don't want to kill myself thanks to professionals that have given me advice and support, I'm going to be around a long, long time, I'm going to make sure I am and that's really important for me. But I also know how difficult it is. More people in their 50s+ are living on their own. Isolation is really, really horrible. It's really damaging. I worked out that for a week I'd spoken to nobody apart from 'Hey Google' or Alexa. Switch the lights on or TV or radio. And yet you look back on yourself and you're thinking that's not so good. I was lucky because when I was diagnosed I was sign posted to the Positively UK and I did a new diagnosis course. Literally within one month of being diagnosed. Also within one month of being diagnosed I started treatment straight away. So within one month I was undetectable. So yeah it's important for me to make sure I take care of myself, and yes some things don't work as they should do, I've got back problems, I've got neuropathy. But yeah I'm still going to be around.

Hilary : Simon give us the good news, what is your life today?

Simon : First thing is I'm alive. That's the most important thing. Even if I wake up and I'm in agony I'm alive. Yes I know I've passed some dark places, some really dark places, and if it wasn't for the support from the Terrence Higgins Trust, Positively UK, The Food Chain, all these different organisations and the brilliant people working with them I wouldn't be here because the first year was a bit tough. But I'm alive and that's really important for me.

Adele: If anybody's listening that would like to help in terms of the loneliness aspect that you spoke about which I think is really important, what can they do? Are there any charities?

Simon : Basically it depends where they are in the country. Terrence Higgins Trust has an online and telephone support so that can be accessed from anywhere. But not all charities have groups because a lot of the funding has gone. But look up the Terrence Higgins Trust and contact them either on phone or online and they will put you in connection with services around you. Their website has just been redone so it's nice and pretty. It's got all the local things when you put your postcode in so again you can find out where things are. The most important thing is don't put it under the carpet because at the end of the day it's still there.

Adele: Well you're part of the solution I think Simon, you being here. It's about community. There's a big community out there so if anyone's listening to this and they're in the situation you were in back in 2015...

Simon : Please, please do, it's important that you don't do this on your own. You probably do know somebody that's got HIV but the point is they haven't told you. If it wasn't for people like me and your other speakers, if we aren't putting our heads up and saying 'oi we're here', then it's a hidden thing and it doesn't need to be. We need to make sure we get away from the stigma of that.

Hilary: Simon thank you so much for being so open.

Simon : The best thing is there's a book we produced, it's Roland Chesters book called Ripples from the Edge of Life. Now that's a book, there's 14 of us. Roland was diagnosed 12 years ago. He was told he had two weeks to live and he's then talked about his story and everything else, and there's 13 of us, our own stories are in there. It just shows by being open about what's going on, it shares our experiences, the good, the bad, the highs and the lows but the whole thing is that there is a positive side to this and it's on Amazon and eBooks everything else as well.

Hilary: Simon, we're nearly out of time, but we wondered if you wanted to play a little game with us before you head off?

Simon : I've heard about this game. Okay.

Voice Over: Sex talk. Word porn.

Hilary : So we've got the Wordsworth dictionary of sex and what I require you to do is to choose a letter from this, I'm going to find a word under that letter and ask you for a definition. So what letter would you like to go for?

Simon : F.

Hilary : Why F?

Simon : Doesn't matter why F.

Hilary : Right I'm going to try and find something a bit more interesting for you.

Simon : He's censoring himself already.

Hilary : Okay I've got one – I saw fanny but thought that might be too easy. fecondation.

Simon : I'm stumped. I picked it for another reason. Wow…

Hilary : It's something that happens in women.

Simon : Well…

Hilary : Actually saying that there's a film with Arnold Schwarzenegger that happened once…

Adele: Arnold's done it?

Hilary : He was once. It typically happens in women. It's to procreate…

Simon : Getting pregnant?

Hilary : Yes it's an alternative term for impregnation.

Adele: Arnold Schwarzenegger got pregnant?

Hilary : In Junior. I'm being serious. Arnold Schwarzenegger's in a film called Junior where he got pregnant, believe me I had it on VHS actually.

Voice Over: Word porn.

Adele: Simon you absolute legend, that was wonderful, thank you for coming to see us today.

Simon : You're very welcome it's good to get the message out there and most important is check – no one else can do it for you.

Voice Over: Sex talk, with your hosts Adele and Hilary. -

Adele : Unfortunately that's all we've got time for on this edition of Sex Talk. If you need further advice or support on any of the issues raised in this episode of Sex Talk contact your GP. They should provide out of hours contact details for emergency calls.

Hilary : Alternatively you can go online - www.nhs.co.uk - to find your nearest STI testing and treatment service.

Adele : For peer support, Positively UK can offer advice. Their national helpline is open Monday to Friday 10am-4pm on 020 7713 0444 and you can visit their website positivelyuk.org where you can find more information about the support they offer people over 50.

Hilary : The Terrence Higgins Trust also offer support which has been mentioned on this episode. You can call their helpline which is open from 10am to 8pm Monday to Friday on 0808 802 1221 and you can visit their website tht.org.uk

Adele : Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast to keep up to date with the latest episodes, and to follow us on Twitter, we're @sextalkradiouk

Hilary : And you can join in the conversation using #SexTalkPod

Adele: In the next episode of Sex Talk we'll be looking into Sex Education with Lizzie Jordan who we spoke to in episode 18, and Sexual Health and HIV Specialist, Dr Stuart Flanagan.

Hilary: Until next time stay safe

Adele: And keep talking.

Voice Over: Thanks for listening to Sex Talk. The conversation doesn't stop here. Search #SexTalkPod and keep talking. Sex Talk