For the past 2 years i have probably 7 warts on the bottom of my right foot.
Then last year i developed a big one on my right thumb.
Tried freezing, duct taping, salicylic acid, but nothing seemed to work long term, they would seemingly die, only to reappear stronger.
About 4-5 months ago i was sick of the wart on my thumb as it was getting in the way of everyday activities. I proceeded to take a razor and pretty much chop it off.
2 weeks after i had done this, not only was my thumb wart gone, but so were all of the warts on my feet!
How did this happen? Did i trigger an immune response in my body to fight the virus?
I had a bunch of warts on my hand when I was a teenager. We were going through any especially broke period in my family so we were eating free oranges from the grove next door. My warts disappeared after a few days of this diet.
I’ve often wondered if the citric acid or vitamin c might have played a part.
So, just Googling around, I knew they were caused by a virus, but didn’t know how contagious they were. You pretty much need to shake hands with a wart owner to get them.
IANAD but I believe that your immune system might be ignoring the warts. But then something will trigger your immune system to recognize the warts as something that needs to be attacked. So cutting off one wart can cause a reaction that ends up making all your warts disappear.
Annoying, aren’t they? I had a skin tag of all damned things on the bottom of my outside toe on my left foot. Being diabetic and all, I went to the podiatrist, who wanted me to make a surgical appointment, with copay and all would end up being something like $500US. I went and got one of those freeze it off kits, froze it 3 weeks running, most of it dropped off so I took my pumice and gently removed top layers until it was flat with the regular skin on my toe. Don’t even have a scar, never lost a drop of blood, didn’t hurt. Certainly didn’t cause a flare of the pseudogout in that foot, and certainly did not cost $500US!
I’ve now heard several times that stimulating the immune system will get rid of warts. I think one of those times was here on the board.
I once had two tiny warts on the end of my driving finger. They were annoying when I had to use a pen or pencil as we did in the olden days. One day my finger tips got slammed in a door. Within a few days the warts began to shrink, and in less than two weeks they were gone without a trace.
I have a wart on the top side of my foot at the base of my big toe. I think I’ll try slicing it off with a razor before I try slamming my foot in a door.
I’m immune compromised with Rheumatoid arthritis(under control with meds which depress my immune system). Got warts on my toes and fingers within the first year of being on meds. Just a data point.
Another data point: For several years in my teens I had a pencil-eraser sized wart on my knee, surrounded by a bunch of tiny ones. It was a pain in the ass because back then (1970s) I was wearing a school uniform and nylons, so I had to put a Bandaid over the stupid thing so it wouldn’t tear and put a run in my nylons.
Did OTC remedies, doctor visits, freezing - but it always came back. Then when I was 17 I worked on a farm for the summer - in shorts and on my knees in the dirt every day. That wart disappeared and all its little cling-ons disappeared forever.
I think that for warts to vanish suddenly is pretty common; that has given rise to all kinds of magic cures
"*Take an old, dirty penny, rub it on your warts, then throw it over the right shoulder, facing a full moon, and the warts will go away.
A string or ribbon is tied over the wart and then tossed into a moving body of water. As the water rots the string or ribbon the wart disappears.*"
When I was a teenager I had several on my right hand - very embarrassing as you might imagine. My mother arranged for me to go and have them frozen and when she told me, I naturally looked at my hand - they were all gone.
I had a fair number of warts when I was a kid that didn’t respond well to freezing or burning. I went to a dermatologist who gave me some compound (DMSO, I think) which I applied to the inside of my wrist every night until I began to get an itchy rash (an indication my immune system was recognizing the compound). After that I began to apply it directly to the warts and they were all gone on a couple of weeks.
My husband always has one or two little ones somewhere, and I’ve never had one in my whole life, so even if they’re contagious, they must not be too virulent.
He scratches them until they bleed, and after about a week of that, they shrink up and go away before popping up somewhere else in a couple of weeks. His doc said the same thing - aggravating them helps the immune system ‘notice’ that they’re there and start working on them.
When I was young, I had some persistent warts that had been burned, frozen and cut off, always to return. My grandmother told me to go find three white pebbles on the beach that “spoke” to me and bring them to her. (Somehow I understood what she meant when she said “spoke.”) I did this and she proceeded to rub the pebbles on the warts, saying a little rhyme entreating them to go away. Within weeks, they were gone.
I’ve performed the same silly ritual for a number of people and it has worked without fail. The warts always go. In all these cases, I think it’s a pretty strong argument for the Placebo Effect. Perhaps we have more control over defeating viruses with our own immune systems than we know.
In my early teens, I had a couple of annoying warts. My PCP told me he could tell them to go away and they would.
They did.
A few years later, I had really persistent one on the end of my toe. Telling them to go didn’t work. Neither did freezing, burning, or cutting. Finally, I decided to hate it off. Every evening when I went to bed, I’d lie there hating that damned wart. I’d imagine how the capillaries were drawing away from it, starving it to death. Man, I hated on that wart big-time.
In a couple of weeks I was wart-free, and I have never had another wart. That’s been something like 35+ years.
This is pretty fascinating. Is there anything else that seems to respond to the power of suggestion like this? Has there been any research into the power of suggestion with other types of viruses?
