If you have a few – or many – warts on your skin, help is at hand. Read on to know what causes warts and how you can get rid of them.
You’re sitting at your desk, idly reading through an email when your finger touches the inside of your arm. You feel a growth there – on examining it, you notice that your skin has developed a wart without you noticing. When you examine the rest of your body, you find a few warts in other places too. Now you’re worried and wondering if you’ve developed a serious skin disorder.
Relax – most warts are harmless and often painless. But they should not be present on your skin at all.
What are warts?
Warts are a growth of skin caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) that lives on human skin. Certain factors like poor skin health and reduced immunity can cause the HPV to grow unchecked. When this happens, there may be formation of a wart on the skin. In some cases, the HPV assumes a virulent form and can cause clusters of warts to appear.
You should worry if the wart is oozing a clear liquid, or is painful to the touch.
How to remove warts
Most people opt for surgical removal of warts, where the wart is simply sliced off the surface of the skin and the site is medicated to prevent infection and recurrence. But it is also possible to treat and remove warts by yourself. To kill the wart, you need to first kill the HPV that causes it. So all wart removal methods are aimed at killing the HPV – the wart then shrivels up and falls off.
Here’s how to remove warts with simple remedies:
ü Ferment the wart with a hot compress, but apply lemon juice to dry it first. The hot temperature combines with the acidity of the lemon juice to dry out and kill the HPV.
ü A sour substance like vinegar contains enough bite and acidity to kill the HPV. Take a dab of vinegar on a cotton pad and apply it to the wart and the skin surrounding it, twice a day. Let the vinegar dry on the skin and do not wash off. Over the period of a week, the wart darkens in colour and begins to shrivel. It soon dries off completely and falls off.
ü If the wart has a narrow base and a wider top, twine a fine thread around the base and tighten steadily (but not so tight that it becomes painful or pinches the skin). Leave the thread twined around the wart for a couple of days, protecting the site with a bandage. The wart dies as the blood circulation is cut, and it comes away easily when you take off the bandage.
ü An expert dermatologist can remove the wart using the right surgical implements. The procedure is quick and painless, but post-removal care is important to keep the site infection-free.
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