You know the benefits of oral sex: It builds intimacy, helps her orgasm, and feels fantastic. In fact, we doubt any of the 85 percent of adults who have had oral sex at least once with their partner would argue that it’s notpretty damn awesome.But that doesn’t mean oral sex is risk-free. In fact, it’s one of the most common ways to spread sexually transmitted diseases, like chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes, and human papillomavirus (HPV), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).And depending on the strain you’re infected with, HPV can raise your risk of cancer—specifically of your oropharynx, or the middle part of your throat.
In fact, the number of people diagnosed with HPV-linked throat cancer is growing: Researchers found the presence of HPV in 21 percent of patients with oropharyngeal cancer before 1990. After 2000, 65 percent of sampled patients showed HPV, according to a meta-analysispublished in Chemical Research in Toxicology.
“We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg of this problem, and it’s really a public health crisis,” explains Ted Teknos, M.D., chairman for the Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center. He says that cases of HPV-related throat cancers have risen 300 percent from the 1980s to the 2000s.“We’re just seeing the effects now, but it’s going to be much more common in the coming years and decades,” he adds.
Here’s everything you need to know about how oral sexcan raise your risk for throat cancer—and exactly what you can do to protect yourself from it.
What Is Throat Cancer?
Throat cancer, officially known as oropharyngeal cancer, is more than twice as common in men than women, according to the American Cancer Society. It specifically affects your tonsils and the base, or the very back, of your tongue, says Dr. Teknos.
Throat cancer is different from oral cancer, which occurs in your lips, gums, tongue, linings of your cheek, or the roof or floor of your mouth. Throat cancer and oral cancer share some common causes—think smoking or chewing tobacco—but HPV is not one of them. Certain HPV strains are linked to throat cancer, not to oral cancer, he explains.
How Is Oral Sex Linked to Throat Cancer?
About 70 percent of oropharyngeal cancers are caused by HPV, says the National Cancer Institute. So what’s going on?
HPV is a shockingly common STD. Between 2013 and 2014, 45 percent of men aged 18 to 59 carried some form of HPV, according to the most recent CDC data. It’s so common that if you’re sexually active, you’ll probably contract it at some point in your life.
But that definitely doesn’t mean everyone who does will go on to develop the cancer. That’s because in the vast majority of the cases, your body will fight it off, clearing it from your system within 1 to 2 years.
There are more than 40 types of HPV that can infect you, though. And some strains are more serious than others. Doctors call them “high risk” strains, and researchers found that of the men who tested positive for genital HPV, 25 percent carried at least one of them. The type most commonly linked to throat cancer is called HPV 16.
Research shows that nearly 7 percent of Americans have oral HPV, but only 1 percent carries that cancer-causing type, according to the CDC.
If you’re unlucky enough to harbor a cancer-causing strain, proteins that are coded by the virus can attack your cells and cause them to grow out of control. At the same time, it messes with cell suicide—a scary-sounding process that’s actually completely normal, and stops cells from multiplying unchecked if there’s a problem there, explains Dr. Teknos. As a result, cancerous cells can begin to increase rapidly, causing the formation of the HPV-positive tumor.
Source: Menshealth
