(Just as a note, we're not all ladies -- some of VP's most informative members are female-but-not-ladies, genderqueer, or guys. If you could tweak to something that included them (I like "VP Superstars!") that'd be lovely. O:> )
Basically, what you do to maintain the health of your cervical cells is what you do to maintain your health in general: try to eat a reasonably nutritious diet, take a vitamin if you're not sure you're managing the rest of the nutrition (many people are vitamin D deficient, and D plays a large part in many people's immune system!), and get reasonable amounts of sleep, so that your immune system will be in fine fettle and ready to jump on any HPV it finds and pummel it into the ground.
(Smoking does tend to introduce compounds into your body that make cancer more likely everywhere. If you smoke, it would be better for your body if you could kick the addiction.)
Because HPV isn't a special snowflake virus. (HSV is a special snowflake virus!) It's just a virus. And your immune system is evolved to combat viruses and bacteria. It's actually dang good at it. How many colds and flus have you fought off? So when your immune system is on the ball, it has an extremely good chance of fending off HPV without you necessarily even having an abnormal pap or showing a wart.
You can also choose to use barrier methods during genital-involving sex -- especially with new sexual partners -- to reduce the chances of exposure, or of providing "reinforcements" to an existing infection. (This is a somewhat controversial theory, but I recall that seen it proposed in some studies. If I recall correctly, it went something like: HPV issues clear up faster when people use condoms, versus the controls who continue to have PIV sex without condoms. The speculation is that the HPV gets "reinforcements" so that the immune system can't make significant inroads on the issue. I can dig up the studies again with a little work, I suspect.)
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Date: 2011-12-14 09:08 pm (UTC)Basically, what you do to maintain the health of your cervical cells is what you do to maintain your health in general: try to eat a reasonably nutritious diet, take a vitamin if you're not sure you're managing the rest of the nutrition (many people are vitamin D deficient, and D plays a large part in many people's immune system!), and get reasonable amounts of sleep, so that your immune system will be in fine fettle and ready to jump on any HPV it finds and pummel it into the ground.
(Smoking does tend to introduce compounds into your body that make cancer more likely everywhere. If you smoke, it would be better for your body if you could kick the addiction.)
Because HPV isn't a special snowflake virus. (HSV is a special snowflake virus!) It's just a virus. And your immune system is evolved to combat viruses and bacteria. It's actually dang good at it. How many colds and flus have you fought off? So when your immune system is on the ball, it has an extremely good chance of fending off HPV without you necessarily even having an abnormal pap or showing a wart.
You can also choose to use barrier methods during genital-involving sex -- especially with new sexual partners -- to reduce the chances of exposure, or of providing "reinforcements" to an existing infection. (This is a somewhat controversial theory, but I recall that seen it proposed in some studies. If I recall correctly, it went something like: HPV issues clear up faster when people use condoms, versus the controls who continue to have PIV sex without condoms. The speculation is that the HPV gets "reinforcements" so that the immune system can't make significant inroads on the issue. I can dig up the studies again with a little work, I suspect.)
I don't know about colposcopies, though. Sorry!