So worried foreigner... need an advice

ea 1991^st,

Welcome to the H&N forum, it sounds like a series of special events brought you here.

You have not been diagnosed with cancer, correct?  You have no symptoms of cancer, correct?

Your life style, while somewhat loose, does not guarantee HPV related H&N cancer.  For those of us it did, the timeline can be many, many years before it presents itself and when it does it can be extremely subtle.  Even if you are checked for it, it often lies below the surface and is not visible.

Swearing off girls may be a bigger challenge than anticipating H&N cancer (HPV).  If you develop swollen lymph nodes or something funny feeling in your mouth, tongue or throat, have it checked, but be cautiously optimistic.

One thing you can do is try to maintain a top notch immune system, as that is the key to preventing HPV from taking a hold.

Matt

And I thought saddles were edgy...

But, there are no formal clinical studies tying oral sex to HPV.  HPV has an incubation period of potentially decades, so an epidemiological study is probably not possible.  I have seen reports tying the book the Joys of Sex to the epidemic, but the epidemic is present in countries where English is not a common language, and the book was never translated into the vernacular (case in point: Iran, a rather conservative country not likely to allow the spread of western decadence).  

Random samples in the U.S. indicate that upwards of 80% of the population commonly carry HPV present in their throats.  With a population of 322 million, that leaves 257,600,000 potential active victims of which 42,000 get treatment for HPV cancer in a year.  No study has ever actually demonstrated that HPV is what actually triggers the genetic shift that creates on oncogene.  None. If and when that causality and trigger mechanism is actually established the researchers achieving that will include picking up their Nobel prizes in their victory lap.   Nor, by the way, has any valid clinical study ever established a link between meat consumption and HPV cancer, tho there are advocates for that hypothesis as well.

My theory, is that with an 80% presence in the population, it is highly probable that the HPV virus would be present, regardless of its role as a causal agent.  I think they took the presence of HPV in cervical cancer, found it in throat cancer, and tenuously theorized a link.  Creative minds took it from there.

Note that I am in no way denying the possibility of causality linked to HPV.  I am not an oncology researcher, tho I would love to find one and interogate them in depth.  My impression is most cancer is currently explained in probabilities, and that direct causal links have yet to come.  Each time they make a break-thru they discover increasing complexity, and that existing theory is depressingly incomplete.   I am, however, going to have chicken tika madras for dinner.   Griswold v Connecticut is reason enough to not discuss my intimate relationships.  

So, Boots and Saddles! Mount up.

Again, you are asking questions where there is general evidence, but not yet a smoking gun.  Absolutely, viruses 'cause' [some] cancers,  and that has been known since the early 20th century.  Behavior that leads to increased contact with viruses 'probably' increases risk.

 The paradox of HPV is it sometimes 'causes' cancer, and sometimes doesn't.  Some viruses lead very quickly to cancer and causality is nearly 100%.   HPV seems content to percolate for decades, until something triggers it.  But then again, maybe not.  While HPV 'certainly' causes HPV cancers, the mere presence of HPV is not indicative that cancer will develop.  The overwhelming majority of the time it won't.  That seems to be a curious way of measuring certainty. The lack of epidemiology compounds confusion, but to conduct proper studies would require tying source to behavior, in my case perhaps DNA from girlfriends 40 years ago in different parts of the world.  Factor in that there seems to be evidence that mouth to mouth kissing can transmit HPV.  You arrive at a huge pool of potential victims, virtually most of humanity, for a desease that fails to infect the overwhelming majority.  The information that sex can cause cancer, but probably won't, doesn't deliver any particular insight.  

Yet, again, that rate of infection seems to be increasing, but not at catastrophic proportions, possibly linked to behaviors that have been part of humanity for millennia. For an additional spin, HPV Head and Neck infects women at about a 30% proportion, well outside the range of the risky oral sex pool. Even more perversely, that growth in incidence is cross-cultural, and global.  The commonality seems to be having physical contact with other humans. Do you feel lucky, and is luck actually even a factor.