Forties and the Cervical Cancer Risk

Why Women Over 40 are at Risk

The Staff of Fabulously 40 and Dawn Bonner

You will be shocked to learn why women over 40 are at risk…and its not because of age.

Patricia Harman, CNM MS, of Morgantown, W.Va., is a nurse-midwife and has been a gyn practitioner for 30 years. She is a cancer survivor and author of the book The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife’s Memoir.

Harmon said, “I want my patients to remember to get their pap’s on schedule. We women have a habit of taking care of everyone but our selves.  I want them to remember the warning signs.”

Warning Signs

Abnormal spotting.  Don’t blow this off and think it’s just premenopause or an irregular period, pain with intercourse, or persistent pelvic pain. People are afraid of the diagnosis of cancer, but most women’s cancers are very treatable. Go to your doctor, nurse-midwife or nurse practitioner.  Don’t put it off.

Don’t smoke.  Smokers get more cervical cancer.

Vitamin Support

Get a vitamin D supplement.  Deficiency in Vitamin D is now linked to an increased risk of many types of cancer.

HPV Vaccine

If mothers have young daughters they should definitely get them the HPV vaccine.  These injections are given at the pediatrician’s office or your own GYN.  If you take the young lady to your nurse practitioner or gynecologist they do not have to have an exam.  The HPV vaccine will not make pap tests unnecessary, but will greatly reduce cervical cancer.

What the Mayo Clinic Says About the HPV Test

According to Dr. Sandhya Pruthi, M.D. as reported in a question sent to her, early findings from a large Canadian study suggest that the human papillomavirus (HPV) test is a far more accurate screening tool for cervical cancer than is the standard Pap smear. But the Pap smear isn’t going away anytime soon.

Like a Pap smear, an HPV test is done on a sample of cells collected from your cervix. The difference is that a Pap smear checks only for changes in the cells of your cervix, while an HPV test checks for the genetic material (DNA) of human papillomavirus. It’s an important difference, because several strains of HPV can lead to cervical cancer over time.

Canadian researchers reported that the HPV DNA test was nearly 40 percent better at detecting precancerous cervical lesions than was the Pap smear. The HPV DNA test did incorrectly identify normal cervical cells as precancerous more often than Pap testing did, but the difference was not as great as some previous studies had suggested.

Safe Sex.  Safe Sex.  Safe Sex.

Harmon said, “The condom isn’t perfect, but next to abstinence, it’s the best thing we have to prevent STDs, and that’s what HPV is.  You know who my worst patients are? The forty-year young women who do not have safe sex.  When they were young all they needed was the pill.  Now some are divorced, have tubal sterilizations and are dating again…In the exam room I ask them…”So, are you using condoms?”

“Most of the time…,” my patient replies.

MOST OF THE TIME!?   That doesn’t cut it.  Even teenagers know better.  It’s been drilled into their heads since they were in the seventh grade.  Next thing you know, the nice school teacher is back in my office crying because she has an abnormal pap smear, needs a colposcopy, and has herpes.  You get my point,” said Harmon.

Half of Cervical Cancer Occurs in Women from 35 to 55

The Mayo Clinic says cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers that affect a woman’s reproductive organs. Various strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted infection, play a role in causing most cases of cervical cancer.

When exposed to HPV, a woman’s immune system typically prevents the virus from doing harm. In a small group of women, however, the virus survives for years before it eventually converts some cells on the surface of the cervix into cancer cells.

Thanks largely to Pap test screening, the death rate from cervical cancer has decreased greatly over the last 50 years. Still, every year more than 11,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer, and nearly 4,000 die of cervical cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. Around the world, cervical cancer is the third-leading cause of cancer death in women.

For more information visit Mayo Clinc’s articles on cervical cancer.