Ryan Segedi. Prop styling by JoJo Li.
By Kasandra Brabaw and Zahra Barnes
HPV should just not exist, but here we are.
People who have sex tend to have a few things in common: They like to feel good, they’ve dealt with a sex stain or two in their lives, and they’ve been exposed to HPV, or human papillomavirus. Around 79 million people in the United States have HPV, making it the most common STI in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
There are a few ways you might discover you have HPV (or that might make doctors pretty sure you have it). Maybe you went in for a routine Pap or HPV test and your doctor called with some unexpected results. Or perhaps you got the news after finding some unusual bumps around your vagina that turned out to be genital warts. Either way, an HPV diagnosis can lead to a slew of confusing questions: How did you get it? Why did you get it? Is it dangerous? And…wait. Does this mean you have to stop having sex for some undetermined period of time?
To give you some clarity, we asked a few HPV experts to answer these questions. The most important thing to remember as you read: Having HPV doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or somehow “tainted,” Kristina A. Butler, M.D., a gynecologic oncologist at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, tells SELF. It simply means you have a communicable disease that literally millions of other people have, too. And, depending on the circumstances, it might not even change your sex life much. It all comes down to the specifics of your situation. Keep reading to see what we mean.
The ubiquity of HPV
“The only way to fully avoid HPV is to never be sexually active,” Grace Lau, M.D., a gynecologist who specializes in HPV at NYU Langone, tells SELF. Welp. As Dr. Lau explains and as you may relate to, that’s just not realistic for many people. But because HPV spreads through skin-to-skin contact during vaginal, oral, or anal sex with someone who has the infection—even if they don’t have any symptoms—it’s hard to fully protect yourself. Unlike STIs such as chlamydia and gonorrhea, you don’t need to come into contact with bodily fluids like vaginal secretions or semen in order to get HPV.
Using latex condoms and dental dams can reduce your risk, but the infection could be on a part of the genitals that these barriers don’t fully cover. There’s a good chance that some of your uncovered parts will touch some of your partner’s—that’s kind of how the whole thing works. There’s also the chance that one of you could touch the other’s genitals and then your own.
Along with HPV’s ability to pass through skin-to-skin contact, another reason it’s so prevalent is that it actually isn’t one virus at all. HPV is a group of more than 150 related viruses, according to the CDC. Each one gets a different number, which is called its HPV type or strain.
Unfortunately, while anyone can get HPV, not everyone can easily test for it. There is currently no HPV test specifically for people with penises approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and it’s not possible to perform any of the approved tests for HPV on people with penises. Right now, the only way people who have penises can get diagnosed with HPV is when genital warts show up around the penis, scrotum, anus, or groin, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Even though HPV can cause cancer in body parts like the throat and anus, there’s not yet recommended routine screening for those areas, either, the CDC explains. Testing limitations are part of the reason why so many people with HPV don’t know they have it and may be passing it along to other people.
Dealing with an HPV diagnosis
We know this is easier said than done, but try not to freak out if you find out you have HPV. The vast majority of the time, HPV doesn’t cause any harm. When a person gets HPV, their body will produce antibodies that are often able to completely fight off the virus, Dr. Lau explains. Pretty cool, right?…
more…
https://www.self.com/story/hpv-and-sex
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