How To Get Rid Of Plantar Warts

I'm here to talk to you today about how to get rid of Planter warts. Basically Planter warts are warts that occur on the sole of the foot, there are other warts that occur on the backs of the hand, on the backs of the toes and there are mosaic warts, which are clusters of warts on the sole of the foot, various other types of warts as well but they are all of the same wart family there are about 70 different sub types, so generally they take a year to appear from first contact a lot of children have them so there mainly spread trough direct contact or through a scratch in the skin, probably children 90 % of warts get better after two years, in adults it slightly longer, especially if they've got immune problems. So how to get rid of them, if there not causing you any harm they will go after a few years, they can be unsightly and sometimes they can be painful, especially on the sole of the foot or they could spread as well so if your concerned the simplest way of getting rid of them is getting some duct tape and you just press it flat along the wart and including them will basically flatten the wart out and help get rid of it.

The other way to do it is by using a lotion with salicylic acid on it or a paint or something with something called podophyllin toxic, podophyllin toxin you probably need a prescription from your G.P. and you mustn't use it if you're pregnant.

So using salicylic acid paint you just paint on the warts and you cover in duct tape, more effective is if you, before you put the paint on, you soak the foot in warm soapy water and you us emery board or pummy stone and you gradually file away at the hard skin overlying it, this means that the paint can better absorb through the skin because one the problems that, one of the reasons why its so hard to treat warts is that the skin overlying is very thick and the paint just cant get through to the virus and kill the virus and that's why warts don't get better with treatment. Sometimes, the paint can make it sore in which case you just stop the treatment for a while until the soreness goes and then you can start the treatment again. 70% of the warts will go and they can take up to 12 weeks to go, with using the duct tape its important to use it 24 hours of the day and just change it when you having a bath or shower.

There are also ways of getting rid of it by freezing, there's something, Wart-No which you can buy over the counter which is sort of D.I.Y.

freezing, its not as cold as using liquid nitrogen but it can work for some patients. Otherwise, most GP's can freeze the wart and you need to go back every one to three weeks to have it frozen again, its based on the freeze thaw cycle where by thawing kills the virus and then you freeze it again and then you thaw it again, it may take several goes but eventually it will go. Another way of doing it is by Curettage where you can, you inject with local anaesthetic and you cut the wart and this will cause some bleeding so you basically burn the blood supply off and that can get rid of the wart as well, although it can be slightly painful.

Sometimes if you do want to cut the wart you will find that it will bleed a lot and there's no problem with that you just have to control the bleeding, the reason is that if you look at a wart closely there's this little small black dot in the center and that's basically a very very very tiny capillary suppling the blood to the wart and its just clotted at the end. These methods, however, don't stop the recurrence of the wart especially if you cut it off, there are other treatments such as laser which require specialist treatment. So I hope this has been helpful and thank you for listening.