The Truth about Warts and How to Treat Them Effectively

When you got married, your spouse promised to love you…warts and all.

But if you really do have warts, we bet they’d love it even more if you got rid of them.

Today, there’s all kinds of treatments, some ridiculous and others not, for removing this unsightly condition.

So let’s see what research shows to be the most effective treatments for warts, as well as treatments you should avoid.

1. Research from the American Academy of Family Physicians Reveals…

The AAFP did research on a variety of wart treatments. They summarized what they found in this handy little graphic:

And we’ll add a little bit of clarification on how each approach works:

• Salicylic acid therapy – This over-the-counter treatment softens the wart and dissolves it. You’ve probably heard of it or done it already. It works well.
• Cryotherapy – This means freezing the wart you have. Only doctors can do the procedure. AAFP finds it effective, but not as much as salicylic acid therapy.
• Pulsed dye laser therapy – With this treatment, a laser heats and destroys the wart.
• Imiquimod – It’s a topical prescription cream.
• Bleomycin – While it gets used to treat warts, bleomycin is an antibiotic mainly used for chemotherapy.
• Immunotherapy – This treatment boosts your immune system’s ability to fight warts. It usually comes into play when other treatment options have failed. Warts are actually caused by one of the more than 100 forms of the HPV virus. That’s why you need to be careful when you shave so you don’t spread the wart over the rest of your body.

Home Remedies That Don’t Remove Warts

When it comes to wart removal, you’ll find more home remedies than you could even try.

Most don’t work.

Here are some we’ve heard of:

• Rubbing your wart with garlic. (Well, at least you’ll keep vampires away too!)
• Make and apply a mix of baking powder and castor oil.
• Crush vitamin C into a paste and apply.
• Soak warts in pineapple juice.
• Use the handyman’s secret weapon, duct tape.
• Apply apple cider vinegar with cotton balls.
• Using milkweed sap externally.
• Use the whitish mush from the inside of a banana peel twice daily and apply it to your wart. Wash your hands thoroughly afterward so you don’t spread it.

We could go on and on with more examples. But that’s enough for now.

It’s up to you what route to go. But that’s the evidence for effective wart removal.