“5 Incurable STDs & How To Stay Healthy If You Have One”

3. Human Papillomavirus (HPV)

HPV is also called genital warts, although only a few of the 40-ish strains actually cause warts. Some of the other strains are potentially cancer-causing, and the rest kinda just hitch a ride in your body.

Depending on how old you are, you may have already gotten the vaccine against HPV — this only covers you against the highest risk strains for cancer and warts.

So regardless, chances are at some point in your life, you’ll get HPV in your body. There are some things you can do to manage your symptoms.

These include some medical procedures like freezing off the warts, changing what you eat, taking herbs, and minimizing your stress. But nope, there’s no medical cure.

I say “medical” because you do have a cure — you! Your immune system, more specifically. Most times, your body clears the HPV infection all on its own. So just because you test positive for HPV or get warts, doesn’t mean you’ll have it forever.

In fact, the average life of an HPV infection is between four and twenty months, and most people kick it within two years. HPV progresses to pre-cancer in the rare instance when your body is unable to clear a high-risk cancer strain for a long time. This leads your infected cells to turn abnormal.