Getting started is the hardest part. Knowing you should do something that’s good for you is not the same as being motivated to do it. This is often true about good health, and especially so when it comes to exercising. Alicia Diggs, a 52-year-old long-term survivor of HIV in North Carolina, knew she had to exercise, given her family history of diabetes and heart disease. She started making some small but simple and effective lifestyle changes—she stopped drinking soda and began taking walks in the park. She even joined a gym. But what really got Alicia going was that she had found a local Double Dutch Club of mostly Black women who jumped rope, played with hula hoops and danced.
Alicia had discovered something fun.
“It’s like a support system. A sisterhood,” she tells Tim Murphy in the cover story, “Taking that first step” (READ HERE). A health and exercise enthusiast and long-term survivor of HIV, Tim advocated for the story, intending it for people who put off or lack the motivation to exercise. He’s a big believer in how small changes can lead to big changes and that consistency is the key to success. All you need is motivation—finding something you love to do and have fun doing.
We underestimate the importance of fun. Many people define themselves by their work, but I think that what we do for fun says a lot about who we really are and who we wish to be in those unguarded moments. It’s a respite, a break, a getaway. It allows us to feel joy. We might even experience connection.
That’s why fun can also be an antidote.
A study published last October in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (JAIDS) found that being single and lonely had a greater connection to frailty in older people with HIV than a person’s lowest recorded CD4 count or even multiple co-existing conditions. It raises the question, “How much can loneliness impact frailty in older people with HIV?” (which is the title of Larry Buhl’s article).
Larry interviews the study’s author, Alice Zhabokritsky, MD, MSc, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Medicine. “Our study shows that companionship, whether through intimate relationships or social networks, is incredibly important for the health of older adults living with HIV,” she says. Dr. Zhabokritsky believes it might be a feedback loop—social isolation could contribute to frailty and frailty could exacerbate social isolation. Other co-existing conditions might also factor into the loop.
The article is accompanied by a sidebar on tools for combatting social isolation. Read the report here, you can find a Spanish-language version here as part of our continuing effort to engage readers for whom Spanish may be their primary language.
What we do for fun says a lot about who we are and who we wish to be in those unguarded moments.
Elsewhere in the issue, how to mitigate weight gain associated with integrase inhibitors (INSTIs), a common HIV drug class, was a topic at last fall’s IDWeek 2024 medical conference in Los Angeles (READ HERE). Switch meds? Take one of the popular weight loss drugs? The answer isn’t so clear cut.
A former boyfriend accused Lashanda Salinas of exposing him to HIV in 2006 in Tennessee. She was arrested, took a plea deal of three years’ probation—and discovered she had to register as a sex offender. Lashanda couldn’t prove that she had told him she had HIV and that she was undetectable at the time. In Idaho, Kerry Thomas served 15 years of a 30-year sentence for criminal exposure of HIV. Like many state laws that criminalize HIV, Idaho’s law took no account of Kerry’s undetectable status. So it’s no wonder Lashanda and Kerry say, “I want my name back,” in a conversation the two HIV de-criminalization advocates have as they share experiences (READ HERE).
Just a few days after this past Christmas, longtime HIV activist Bryan C. Jones fought his final battle with cancer, dying peacefully at home in Cleveland accompanied by his partner Derek Barnett, his family and his beloved chihuahua Diva Pearl. Derek shares some personal recollections of his life with Bryan (READ HERE). A personal note of appreciation to Derek for revealing a vulnerable side to an HIV warrior who is deeply missed.
Rounding out the issue, in her column, Being Bridgette, Bridgette Picou looks ahead to an uncertain year ahead with a measure of hope (READ HERE). But instead of waiting for something to happen, she says, “hope is something you can work toward.”
Kerry says something similar in conversation with Lashanda. “You gotta be an active participant in your own survival,” he says. You make your own survival. You make your own hope. And I hope you make your own fun. Together.
You are not alone.
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