Each week HuffPost Gay Voices, in a partnership with blogger Scout, LGBT HealthLink and researcher Susana Fajardo, brings you a round up of some of the biggest LGBT wellness stories from the past seven days. For more LGBT Wellness, visit our page dedicated to the topic here.
Gay, Bi Men More Susceptible To Advertisements About Appearance
A new study may explain why gay and bi men have eating disorders more often than straight men. Researchers found that gay and bi men are more susceptible to advertisements and social messages about physical appearance, increasing the likelihood of eating disorders.
Learn How One Quitline Is Becoming Queer-Welcoming
Great op-ed in The Advocate this week from the head of one of the largest tobacco quitlines in the country. In it she talks about all the steps they've taken to make sure their work is queer-welcoming, including partnering with LGBT HealthLink to test an enhanced LGBT measure that can be used on lots of surveys. Let's hope other companies take note.
Escorts Less Likely to Mix It Up With Clients
A new study compared the sex that male escorts had with their male clients and with male partners in their personal life. The findings? With clients escorts were less likely to mix it up in bed. With non-clients escorts were more likely to give oral sex, kiss, be the receiving partner for anal sex and have condom-less sex.
Is Fertility Help Only for Straight Women?
Straight women are nearly twice as likely to receive medical help getting pregnant than queer ones, a review of two studies found. And it turns out it’s not due to health insurance! Help was offered much less often to queer women -- even when they had health insurance.
Recreational Prescription Drug Use Higher for Bi, Questioning College Students
Bisexual and questioning college students use prescription drugs recreationally more than other students, a new study found. Other queer students also used prescription drugs more than straight students.
Thumbs Up for Smoking at Schools? Please no.
Well, this is embarrassing. LGBT adults are less likely than straight ones to support making schools tobacco-free, a new study found. Only 77% of LGBT were in favor of tobacco-free schools. The number was 86% for non-LGBT people, ouch.
Stigma and Outness Affect Health Care Use for Rural LGBT
According to a new study outness and stigma affect if rural LGBT people use health care. More outness increased the likelihood that queer men would use healthcare, but higher levels of stigma decreased the likelihood that trans or non-binary people sought services.
Trans Vets More Likely to have Bad Physical and Mental Health
Transgender veterans are much more likely to be diagnosed with mental health and medical disorders than non-transgender veterans, a new study found. Trans veterans were more likely to get 16 out of 17 physical health problems and 10 out of 10 mental health problems. It may be bad news... but the real takeaway here is good job to the Veterans Administration for facilitating research like this; it's only through that research we can really learn what needs to be addressed.