The link between smoking and HPV

To eliminate any possibility of misunderstanding right off the bat: Smoking does not cause HPV, and it does not increase your likelihood of contracting HPV (at least, not anymore than it increases your likelihood of contracting any other disease). The main reason you shouldn’t smoke is now and always has been and always will be the possibility of lung cancer.

However, there is a link between HPV and smoking cigarettes. In 2001, the Journal of the American Medical Association found that smoking cigarettes can contribute significantly to the risk of infections with cancer causing strains of HPV escalating to cervical cancer.

Smoking increases your risk of cancer, no matter what. Not all smokers exposed to HPV will develop LSIL, or Low-grade Squamous Intraepithelial Lesions, the condition which leads to cervical cancer, but smoking certainly doesn’t help matters, either.

If you smoke, quit. Even if you don’t contract HPV, cigarette smoking can still increase your likelihood of developing cervical cancer (HPV is to blame for about 70% of cervical cancer, but that leaves more than 3,000 cervical cancer victims who do not have HPV).

Besides increasing risk of cancer, smoking does harm the immune system. This means you’re more susceptible to HPV, the flu, and even the common cold when you smoke.

Here are two things to consider:

Be Safe

Practice safe sex. Remember that even with a condom, HPV can be passed on, so know your sex partner. It’s a good idea to get an STD test if you’re not sure about yourself or your partner or partners. Practicing monogamy is also a good idea, as studies have shown that your risk for contracting HPV jumps up by about 1000% with each new sex partner (to each their own, but consider your health).

There is, actually, an HPV vaccine on the market for high risk forms of HPV. Ask your doctor about it.

Don’t Smoke!

If you smoke, you already know it’s bad for you. Quitting isn’t easy, but it’s true that, if you smoke, it will kill you. You’ll be on edge while going through nicotine withdrawal, but it sure beats lung cancer.

Some tips for quitting smoking…

Cut Back

If you’ve already tried quitting cold turkey and it doesn’t seem to be working, start cutting back. Pay attention to how many cigarettes you smoke in a day and start reducing that number. If you’re a pack-a-day smoker, only allow yourself to smoke fifteen cigarettes between the time you wake up and go to sleep. The next day, cut down to ten, then remove a cigarette or two from your daily routine every day until you’ve weaned yourself off of nicotine dependency well enough to throw your last cigarette away and not feel like digging it out of the trash an hour later.

Satisfy your Oral Fixation

For many smokers, it’s the fidgeting aspect that keeps them coming back. Try chewing on toothpicks, chewing gum, or eating sunflower seeds.

Cigars and Pipes

Chewing tobacco will give you jaw cancer, so don’t even think about it. Cigars and pipe tobacco, however, are significantly safer. In moderation, they do still pose some risk of developing mouth or throat cancer, but, because you don’t inhale the smoke, there’s little to no risk of developing lung cancer. Don’t think this is a free ticket to smoke; studies have shown that there is some risk. If you smoke something like eight cigars a day, that’s as bad as smoking two packs of unfiltered every day. Smoking anything at all isn’t really recommended, per se, but if you can’t seem to kick your smoking habit, tasting the smoke and spitting it out is a much safer way to get that nicotine fix than inhaling clouds of tar and poison into your chest. If you can switch to cigars, cigars are a lot easier to quite than cigarettes, being much less addictive, while still giving a nicotine buzz.

Little known facts about HPV

Perhaps the most shocking fact about HPV is this: 90% of people will contract HPV before they die. “Human papilloma virus” sounds really scary, so this news may worry some people, but rest easy, most strains of HPV are pretty benign. You may see warts, or you may see nothing, as HPV can lay dormant literally your entire life. It’s only those few strains that can lead to cancer that we need to worry about.

That said, here are some of the other lesser known facts about HPV…

There is a vaccine!

Not really a fact about HPV per se, but it is, nonetheless, a fact that should be shouted from every rooftop. Some of the more fanatical alternative health people are distrusting of the HPV vaccine, but any criticism you hear is simply misinformed. The vaccine does not protect against all HPV strains, but it does protect against the high risk strains, such as the ones which can lead to cervical cancer. A regular pap smear is still in order, but the vaccine can, if administered early enough, eliminate the risk of contracting an HPV strain which leads to cervical cancer. It has drawn some criticism from certain, somewhat misinformed but well meaning conservatives, as well. The vaccine needs to be administered during puberty for best results, and some see this as encouraging adolescent sex. This is silly, though. It’s in the hands of the parents to teach about having sex responsibly, the vaccine is only there to save lives.

70% of HPV infections go away on their own

When most people get a wart, they want to head straight for the drug store to grab some remover. There’s no need. Or at least, seventy percent of the time, there’s no need. Even genital warts, most of the time, will clear up on their own if you simply eat right and practice good hygiene.

About half of all adults are carrying some form of HPV right now

This one may really surprise you. Again, most forms of HPV clear up quickly enough, and in many cases, the HPV lays dormant for an indefinite period of time. It’s possible that you may have about a dozen types of HPV right now, and that you’ll never know.

Dormant HPV can rear its head later in life

Hopefully, this should save a marriage or two: It’s not uncommon for one member of a monogamous couple to suddenly show signs of genital HPV without any infidelity having taken place. You can contract HPV today and not have any genital warts to show for it until twenty years from now. Genital warts are not necessarily a sign of a recent transmission of HPV.

It is possible, but rare, to transmit HPV during childbirth

It’s not common, but there have been a few reported cases of HPV being passed from mother to child during birth.

HPV has 250 strains

You cannot contract hand warts by making skin contact with genital warts. It just doesn’t really happen, because common or hand warts and genital warts are two different strains. It’s kind of like using different formats of discs on your computer: A floppy disk won’t work in a CD drive, and genital warts won’t infect any area beyond the genitals. Genital warts can affect the area directly around the genitals, but you cannot catch genital HPV strains on your hands or feet or anything like that. Some forms of HPV may show up just about anywhere on the body, but most only affect certain areas.

Don’t hope for the best: making sure you know you’re HPV free

The only way to be one hundred percent certain that you are HPV-free is with medical testing.

If you want to know whether or not you have contracted a genital form of HPV, consider a few factors:

How many sexual partners have you had?

It’s said that, every time you are with a new sexual partner, your risk for HPV increases tenfold. This is no exaggeration. In medical terms, every time you come into sexual contact with someone, you are having second hand sexual contact with every one of their past partners. Even if you feel like you’re being nosy, it’s a good idea to talk with any potential sexual partners about their own history before engaging in intercourse. And, of course, always, always use a condom. HPV can still be transmitted with a condom, as genital HPV affects the entire area around the genitals, and not just the reproductive organs themselves, and not all of that area is covered by a latex condom.

When was the last time you were tested?

Getting an HPV test isn’t a one time thing. If you’ve had a new sexual partner since your last test, there’s no guarantee that you’re still safe. Every time you’ve been with another sexual partner, it’s a good idea to get tested again.

On the other hand, if you and your monogamous partner have already been tested and you know that you’re safe, you don’t have to test again. Unless you consider the possibility of infidelity, there is no real risk of having contracted HPV without some one-in-a-million occurrence having happened. Genital HPV is almost invariably only transmitted through sexual contact. It’s highly unlikely that you would contract HPV from a car seat or trying on pants at the clothing store.

What if I’ve been vaccinated?

The imperative for the HPV vaccine is largely thanks to the risk of cervical cancer developing from certain strains of HPV. However, the vaccine only protects against high risk forms of HPV, and so, a regular pap smear is still in order, as would be an HPV test. You simply cannot know for certain unless you A) Are, in fact, one hundred percent certain with no room for doubt that not a single one of your sexual partners have ever had HPV (in other words, you have notarized test results from every one of them), or B) have been tested, yourself.

There is no way to guess at it, no way to simply talk to your sexual partners and be one hundred percent certain that they are HPV free. Even if your current partner is monogamous with you, and has only had one previous partner, and that one previous partner only had one previous partner, if that first partner’s first partner had HPV, there is a very good chance that you will contract it, as well. There is simply no way to know without having an STD or HPV test conducted.

Considering that 70% of all cervical cancer can be blamed on HPV, there is simply no excuse not to be tested, not to have your regular pap smear conducted, and not to be careful.

Diagnosing HPV

If you’re worried about contracting HPV, here’s the good news: Over 99% of the time, if you have HPV, you’ll either know it on sight, or, if you don’t, then the infection really isn’t serious, and will pass before long.

But here’s the bad news: The strains of HPV which can lead to cancer do not show any visible symptoms.

According to the American Cancer Society, around eleven thousand women will develop cervical cancer this year, with just under four thousand of these cases ending in death. Cancer causing strains of HPV are to blame for a significant portion of these cases, perhaps as much as 70% or higher.

There are around two hundred or two hundred and fifty different strains of HPV, and luckily, only a small number of these (around fifteen) are considered high risk or can possibly lead to cervical cancer, including HPVs 31, 16, 45, and 18. Because these types do not actually show any visible HPV symptoms, it is absolutely imperative that all women have regular cancer screenings conducted. Luckily, the National Cervical Cancer Coalition estimates that around 89% of women do go in for regular screenings. If you fall into the 11% that do not, get off your butt, and call your doctor. This is too important to put off until you get around to it.

And, of course, even though visible genital warts do not lead to cancer, they don’t mean that you don’t have a more dangerous strain of HPV. Multiple HPV types can exist within the same person’s body, so regular tests need to be conducted, no matter what.

SELF DIAGNOSIS OF VISIBLE STRAINS OF HPV

Luckily, we know what warts look like. It’s easy to spot a hand wart or a genital wart, most of the time. If you can see a wart, don’t worry. Even genital warts, as unsightly as they may be, almost never lead to any form of cancer.

Not all visible warts look exactly like, you know, warts, though, or at least not in the way we all know what warts look like. A number of strains can cause warts that don’t exactly stick out like a sore thumb.

Because they start small and eventually grow, it’s important to pay attention to your body. It’s weird, you use your hands for everything all day, but how often do you actually stop and look at your hands? Or your elbows for that matter, or even the bottom of your feet, or your genitals? You don’t need to sit down and inspect yourself for an hour every day, just take a look at your whole body the next time you shower. It’s said that nearly every person contracts some form of HPV at one point or another before they die, so it’s not entirely impossible that you might be developing plantar warts and not even know it.

It’d take too much space to list every possible type of wart, so just be on the look out for any out of the ordinary blemishes that can’t be chalked up to acne, moles, or minor bruises, etcetera.

If you catch a wart early, you can treat it right away. Most wart infections don’t actually need any professional medical attention. You can get an over the counter wart remover at nearly any drug store in the world. If you take a lot of vitamins and eat well to strengthen your immune system, you might even stop a wart in its tracks and prevent it from becoming any bigger.

When a wart infection becomes persistent, if it keeps recurring after treatment or it just won’t go away, that’s when it’s time to talk to a doctor and see what can be done. Fortunately, the actual diagnosing of warts is easy to do yourself, and, most of the time, so is treatment.

Dealing with the Social Stigma and Misconceptions attached to HPV

There are a lot of rumours, myths and misconceptions about sexually transmitted HPV, and, in some social circles, an unfortunate stigma attached to people who suffer from HPV. These falsehoods range from simple misinterpretation of the actual HPV facts, to outright silliness. Let’s take a moment to dispel these mistruths as well as we can…

Only prostitutes get sexually transmitted diseases like HPV genital warts!

This misconception is one of the most common, and perhaps the most unfortunate. In some communities, people who contract HPV wind up feeling too ashamed to tell even their doctor, and this leads to HPV sufferers who never get the proper treatment because they’re too embarrassed to even admit that they contracted HPV.

The truth of the matter is that more than fifty percent of sexually active people will contract some form of sexually transmitted HPV sometime in their lives, and the causes of HPV can affect anyone. Luckily, most forms of HPV are relatively benign and may come and go without the infected person even knowing they’ve been infected. Other forms may lead to genital warts and even cervical cancer, but it is just plain ridiculous to allege that only promiscuous people or “workin’ girls” will become infected. You could have sex with only one partner your entire life and still contract a form of HPV.

You can spot HPV on sight alone

Many forms of HPV do not have any visible signs, including the types which can lead to cancer. HPV does not necessarily mean ‘genital warts’. In fact, genital warts, unsightly and uncomfortable as they are, do not typically lead to cancer at all, meaning that, yes they are unpleasant, but they are not considered “high risk”. The only way to know for sure if you are infected with HPV or not is to have HPV testing or STD testing conducted by medical professionals.

If the warts have been treated, HPV is not contagious

To be fair, while this might easily be chalked up to misunderstanding, the fact is that researchers aren’t quite sure. Many subjects are reluctant to talk about their sex lives with researchers, and this can make an HPV hard to track from partner to partner, so some of the details get a little murky and we can’t be 100% sure whether or not HPV can be transmitted when there are no genital warts.

It is generally believed that the human papillomavirus can be passed on whether it is showing visible genital warts symptoms of HPV or not, so while research is inconclusive, it is best not to risk it. Look into HPV vaccination, and always, always practice safe sex.

“My monogamous partner has venereal warts, they must’ve cheated on me!”

HPV statistics suggest that most people who are infected with HPV don’t’ even know it. HPV can be contracted, and then lie latent for weeks, months, years, or a person’s entire life, without showing any symptoms. It is entirely possible to contract HPV from a sexual partner even decades before meeting your current partner, and not see any genital warts or other symptoms until well into the monogamous relationship (or ever, for that matter). HPV is not a sign of infidelity, and the misconception that it is has, unfortunately, broken apart more than a few loving couples.

Conclusion…

Be informed. HPV affects billions of people, not just those who have casual sex. Everyone is at risk to some extent, and the only way to arm yourself is with the facts. Practice safe sex, read all the available information on HPV, and ask your doctor any questions you might have. Don’t be ashamed or embarrassed, and don’t waste your time worrying about what misinformed people say.

Genital HPV

Honestly, most forms of HPV are actually pretty harmless and benign. Common warts, for example, may be unsightly and uncomfortable, but let’s be honest, they’re not really a big deal. You put a little treatment on them and they’re gone in a couple weeks.

Genital HPV is what you need to worry about.

Believe it or not, though, it’s not genital warts you have to look out for. Certainly you don’t want genital warts, but aside from the general unpleasantness of genital warts, they rarely lead to any further health complications, and can be treated with relative ease.

The most dangerous forms of genital HPV might not even show any visible symptoms. The most dangerous strains can lead to testicular cancer, cervical cancer, rectal cancer, and penile cancer, and might not even be detectable until the later stages.

Unfortunately, there is no real cure for any strain of HPV. We have all sorts of ointments, chemicals, and treatments to get rid of ugly warts, but HPV stands for Human Papilloma Virus, and as of right now, we still haven’t discovered an effective method for actually killing viruses.

Genital warts might not show up for weeks after the virus is contracted, but when they do show up, they will be taken care of by the body’s immune system pretty quickly about 90% of the time. Again, genital warts do not lead to cancer. The only strains of genital HPV that lead to cancer do not cause genital warts.

It is estimated that around half of the world’s population is infected with genital warts, right now, and that most people will actually contract the virus at some point in their lives. Luckily, most of these cases come and go without even showing any symptoms or escalating to cancer. This isn’t a Get Out of Jail Free card, though. If you have sex without protection or without getting yourself and your partner tested, you’re playing the odds. Because so many strains of genital HPV don’t even show any signs, you can’t rely on your ability to “spot” an infection in the form of venereal warts. The only way to keep yourself safe from STDs is to either always use protection, or have STD testing conducted on yourself, and every single one of your sexual partners.

Luckily, there is an HPV vaccine available. Tens of thousands of women die, every year, thanks to cervical cancer caused by an HPV infection, and if we can get enough people administering and signing up for the HPV vaccine, it may well be possible that nobody should ever have to die thanks to HPV.

But the vaccine has met some unfortunate controversy. The vaccine is most effective when administered around the time of puberty, and a group of ‘concerned citizens’ have taken it upon themselves to speak out against the vaccine, stating that it would give pubescent children “permission” to go out and have unprotected sex.

Raising sexually responsible people is the job of the parent, not the pharmacy companies. If we can save tens of thousands of lives, there is no reason to object to the HPV vaccine.

HPV and associated diseases

HPV can lead to many other complications, symptoms and related diseases. Perhaps the most important being cancer, though this isn’t the only thing that can develop as a result of HPV.

Genital warts

Genital warts are the visible sign of HPV types 6 and 11. However, there is a common misconception that venereal HPV means genital warts. Only 6 and 11 cause genital warts, but the entire list of venereal HPV includes types 16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 59, 66, 68, and 73. 6 and 11 do not typically lead to cancer, though types 16 and 18 are responsible for about seventy percent of cervical cancer.

Dealing with genital warts is unpleasant, of course, but fortunately, genital warts are not a terminal disease and, once they clear up, will leave nothing but, in some cases, a bit of scar tissue. So in short, venereal HPV can lead to cancer, but genital warts do not.

Common Warts

Caused by cutaneous HPV types, such as strains 1 and 2, common warts appear on the hands and feet, or even on the elbows and knees. These are identified by their cauliflower-like appearance. With the right wart treatment, common warts can be cleared up in just a week or two. It is said that the majority of people will contract common warts as children. Nobody wants warts, but in comparison to some of the other HPV associated diseases and symptoms, an ugly bump on the finger isn’t so bad.

Respiratory papillomatosis

Respiratory papillomatosis is a condition wherein warts form along the larynx and other areas of the respiratory tract. The condition results in trouble breathing and these warts can recur quite frequently. In rare cases, repetitive surgery may be required. Respiratory papillomatosis can lead to cancer but, fortunately, this is rare.

Respiratory papillomatosis is one of the most unpleasant conditions that can occur as a result of HPV, but, luckily, one of the rarest, as well. Respiratory papillomatosis is caused by HPV types 6 and 11, the same strains that cause genital warts, and may be contracted through oral sex.

Epidermodysplasia verruciformis

Also known as lewandowsky-lutz dysplasia, epidermodysplasia verruciformis, is, luckily, incredibly rare. Because of the few case studies available, a lot still isn’t quite known about this disease, though it’s thought to be caused by HPV types 5 and 8.

The condition seems to only occur in immunocompromised patients. Epidermodysplasia verruciformis is a skin condition characterized by scaly papules and macules growing in various places throughout the surfaces of the skin, particularly on the hands and feet.

Various studies differ with regards to when the condition most commonly begins showing signs. Some reports put this period at early childhood, others in the teen years, and others in middle age.

There is no known cure as of now, and treatment tends to focus on the removal of tumoral lesions and preventing recurring breakouts. Research is still beinh conducted and, again, fortunately, this is an incredibly rare condition.