Improve Your Overall Health

An HIV diagnosis can be a good opportunity to take steps to improve your overall health. These include eating a healthy, well-balanced diet, getting enough exercise, maintaining a health weight and getting adequate sleep. If you smoke, consider quitting. Get tested for other infections, including hepatitis B and C and sexually transmitted infections. Ask your doctor which vaccines you should receive. Many people living with HIV have other health conditions, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart, kidney or liver disease. Work with your health care team to get the appropriate treatment.

HIV/AIDS is not a death sentence however it requires a change in your lifestyle.

• Get in care and take medicine to treat HIV (called antiretroviral therapy or ART). Taking HIV medicine can reduce the amount of HIV in the blood (called viral load).

• ○  HIV medicine can make the viral load very low (called viral suppression). Viral suppression is defined as having less than 200 copies of HIV per milliliter of blood.

• Getting and keeping an undetectable viral load (or staying virally suppressed) is the best thing you can do to stay healthy. Having an undetectable viral load also prevents transmission to others. In fact, if you have an undetectable viral load, you will not transmit HIV to your sex partner. Most people can get the virus under control within six months.

• ●  In some cases, it may be necessary to change HIV medicines because of a side effect. However, do NOT cut down on, skip, or stop taking your HIV medicines

• ●  Learn more about the benefits of HIV treatment.