Warts
Warts
Give toads a break. You can’t catch warts from them—not by petting them, holding them or even puckering up and kissing them. Actually, it’s the guy next to you in the locker room or the child on the playground swing set who passes to you the virus that causes warts.
The virus enters the skin through a cut or scrape and sets up shop. One to eight months later, you get a wart. They are especially likely to grow on your fingers and hands but can also appear on your elbows, face and scalp. And you can make them spread by giving the virus a chance to invade surrounding areas through shaving, scratching or rubbing. Sometimes they go away on their own; sometimes they stick around for years. Even if a doctor removes a wart, the virus can remain in your skin and cause new warts to grow. The natural remedies in this chapter, used with your doctor’s approval, may help prevent or treat warts, according to some health professionals.
See Your Medical Doctor When...
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Food Therapy
Eat more foods rich in vitamin A and zinc, two nutrients important for healing and skin repair, says Allan Magaziner, D.O., a nutritional medicine specialist and head of the Magaziner Medical Center in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. (See “Getting What You Need” on page 142 for food sources of vitamin A and zinc.)
You may also get relief with this remedy recommended by Elson Haas, M.D., director of the Preventive Medical Center of Marin in San Rafael, California, and author of Staying Healthy with Nutrition. His instructions: In the morning, crush a vitamin A capsule, mix it with just enough water to make a paste and apply it directly to the wart. In the afternoon, apply a drop of castor oil; in the evening, apply a drop of lemon juice. This should help dissolve the wart.
Homeopathy
If you have a large, painful wart near a fingernail or fingertip, try Causticum 6X, says Maesimund Panos, M.D., a homeopathic physician in Tipp City, Ohio, and co-author with Jane Heimlich of Homeopathic Medicine at Home. Dulcamara 6X will help destroy a wart that is hard, smooth and flattened, according to Dr. Panos. If your wart is painful, large and jagged, she suggests Nitric acid 6X. For a soft, fleshy wart that seems to be on a stalk, she says to try Thuja occidentalis 6X. Take any of these remedies three times a day until the wart disappears, she adds.
All of these remedies are available in many health food stores. To purchase the remedies by mail, refer to the resource list on page 637.
Imagery
Close your eyes, breathe out three times and imagine yourself at a cool, clear mountain stream, writes Gerald Epstein, M.D., a New York City psychiatrist, in his book Healing Visualizations. Picture the part of your body that has the wart. Remove the part, turn it inside out and wash it thoroughly in the stream. Envision all of the waste products as gray or black strands that are carried away in the swift current. Once the body part is clean, hang it out to dry in the sun. Imagine it healing from the inside, looking like all of the healthy cells around it. When it is dry, turn it right-side out, put it back on and notice that the wart has vanished. Open your eyes. Do this exercise three times a day, two to three minutes at a time, for 21 days.