Duct tape treatment for wart - Using it for treating warts
The following is an article about duct tape and how it helped Richard get rid of his warts. Please read my comments and personal experience using duct tape to rid my girl of hand and plantar warts - at end of his article.
Duct tape wraps it up - warts and all
By Richard Bedard staff Writer, June 12, 2005 /www.sun-sentinel.com
There's a neat story I once read -- about a famous physicist -- that goes like this: To enjoy the fresh air at night, he would prop open the window with a stick. But when it rained, the water blew in and soaked everything. The solution?
He balanced the stick on a sugar cube. The rain dissolved the cube, the stick fell, and the window closed.
Sometimes simpler works better. I can personally attest to that, after a long-running battle with a plantar wart on my foot. For those unfamiliar, this is not one of those ugly, cauliflower-textured warts that make little girls gasp and tug their mother's sleeve.
Most plantar warts are tiny, the size of a pinhead. They are barely noticeable. Except for mine. It had grown a little larger than the circumference of a pencil eraser. It sported black dots the size of pepper grains, representing the tips of clotted capillaries carrying blood to the angry little thing. It had suffered the indignity of two series of strong acid treatments.
The first time, my podiatrist shaved skin off my foot with a scalpel, then dabbed a concentrated dose of cantharone on the wart's exposed core. "We're going to burn a hole in your foot," he announced proudly. And burn it did.
For a few days I limped to work and propped my stockinged, throbbing foot on my desk. After several acid treatments, the wart vanished. For a few months. Then it came roaring back.
My podiatrist minced no words. If the second round failed, surgery was next. That meant crutches for four to six weeks, to prevent a scar from forming on the sensitive, weight-bearing ball of my right foot.
I would have to give up cycling 130 miles a week and riding time trials. So of course, the wart returned, like a bad party guest swinging by for another shot at the punch bowl.
Desperate, I invented my own treatment regime. I deployed an immune-system modifying drug, a pair of fingernail clippers, tweezers and fine-grit sandpaper. All the snipping, sanding and tweezing succeeded in one thing: creating a smaller, sister wart nearby.
While browsing the Internet, I stumbled across the Cult of the Duct Tape. Yes, clarion trumpets, light from the heavens -- some people are fanatical about its many applications. That's right: simple, unpretentious, workmanlike duct tape. The foot soldier in man's battle to make things adhere to each other. The fabric-based duct tape with the super-sticky rubber-based adhesive.
One Web site, dedicated to its medical uses, gloriously describes this product as "HMO on a roll." If the site is to be believed, duct tape has prevented frostbite, fixed ingrown toenails, stabilized trick knees and helped cure bursitis. And, of course, it kills warts, writers claimed, in too-good-to-be-true testimonials.
Their simple eloquence spoke to me. Said one: "I walked around school for five days with this piece of duck tape on my neck. I felt like a big dummy. But after five days the wart was gone." So, feeling like a big dummy, I put some over-the-counter acid on the wart and cut out a generous square of duct tape. For the record, those drugstore wart-be-gone products had done nothing for me in the past.For four weeks, I walked around with a 2-inch-by-2-inch patch of duct tape on the bottom of my right foot. I gained renewed respect for the rugged gray stuff.
Changing the duct tape daily, I noticed that it really, really sticks. Also, your skin underneath gets whitish and soft. The wart area turned blister-white, and there were other changes I'll spare you. Then it began to shrink. Now it's gone. Really. It's my own little miracle. I've never seen the Virgin Mary's face on a grilled-cheese sandwich or Satan's image on the shell of a slider turtle, but I've got this, and it sure feels good. Maybe it isn't a miracle.
A study in a pediatric journal in 2002 found that freezing with liquid nitrogen cured 60 percent of patients of their warts. But duct tape was 85 percent successful. The speculation: Duct tape irritated the warts, causing the body's immune system to clean them up in a bit of all-natural housekeeping. Whatever. All I know is, why make life complicated. Got a wart? You head to Holy Cross. I'm going to Home Depot.
Richard Bedard is an assistant business editor. He can be reached at rbedard@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4666.
Do it yourself
Here's the simple treatment plan I used to vanquish my plantar wart. I used Duofilm with the duct tape, which may work faster than the tape alone. Before trying this or any home remedy, seek the advice of a medical expert before starting treatment.
1) Dab some over-the-counter wart-treatment liquid, such as Duofilm, on the plantar wart.
2) Cover with a large 2-inch-by-2-inch patch of duct tape.
3) Change the duct tape daily, coating the wart each time with more Duofilm.
4) After three weeks, or four at most, the wart should be gone.
If a tiny wart does reappear, just cover it with duct tape for a few days: It should go away.
OUR COMMENT:
Well done and told, Richard!
We've also heard about rubbing the blooming wart with potato peels, garlic, even drinking one's own first-morning-pee... be brave, drink it with a straight face. it's said to be very nutritious and healthy, even containing HGH. 3 million chinese drink their pee each day. Even buy pee from schoolchildren to boil their eggs in... True! I'm not joking!
1/2 a cup a day. Hold your nose while you drink and put it (covered in one of those sticky plastic wrap) in the fridge for half hour - tastes better ;-).
See our additional recommendations for boosting yourself and your immune system. Click here.
From My personal experience using duct tape treatment for wart fighting:
We wrapped my little girl's fingers with duct tape (see photo below, and- no, you don't turn Shrek green using this silvery duct-tape... this was purely her arty wish!) - be carefull of hairy parts: try to avoid taping 
them, as it hurts kids like hell to pull it off!!!
After first cleansing the freshly washed hand with a damp cottonwool/ cosmetic pad we had added a few pure tea-tree oil drops to. Let dry.
We had noticed, that many of the warts we treated with a very thin slice of garlic over them, under the duct tape, got bluish-greenish-black looking. Real scary sight! My guess was that it started to die from roots up- all capilaries perhaps got cut off thanks to double action effect of garlic (a natural antibiotic) and duct tape. However, not all warts react the same. You must persist with duct tape.
Garlic is best applied under duct-tape at night time, so child doesn't need to suffer going to school stinking of it!
Garlic + duct tape can cause severe itching and pain to child, if skin is peeling and sensitive.
After 3 weeks of duct tape treatment with banana peels, garlic or plain duct tape, her fingers got all soggy, peeling and overly sensitive to the touch. We had to stop and let the raw skin (layers of skin peeled off her with some of the nasty warts during 3rd week) heal.
If your child suffers too much, try only applying garlic covered by soft tissue paper and held in place by tape that does not directly touch the sore skin. Or test areas you do without garlic or banana. Everyone reacts differently to duct tape and other ingredients.
In addition, Camille got lots of painful blisters whilst wearing the duct tape, whenever she cycled or walked. Poor little girl!
After one week we could clearly see a change in warts- a crumbling in center, cauliflowering of formaly smooth surfaces and shrinking of warts. Again, not all warts. We chose to go 100% natural and avoid duofilm, which Richard had used.
We alternated between garlic and ripe banana peels, which we cut into strips and placed over warts, and put cotton pads over them, held by some regular tape. Banana peels turn all black after some hours, so don't get a shock!
After 2-3 weeks, some warts fell off, skin was changing. After 3-4 weeks more than 50% of original warts were gone but we stopped using duct tape on remaining areas, due to raw skin.
However, new warts were born to our dismay, taking over the place of deceased relatives!
We returned to our homeopath who told us it is better to have the warts than an internal desease. She said that it is not a solution to suppress HPV by burnning warts, scratching warts or to getting rid of them merely topically, since we must also handle the body's immune from the inside. Detox, Food supplements, Noni. See the best products we've researched and found.
Therefore, we are working on building up her immune system, repairing her peeling and dried out damaged skin with natural products you can find here!
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Attention: Read this man's account of how he got rid of his 6-year warts. Want to get rid of Your stubborn skin moles, warts, plantar warts, genital warts, and even skin tags?
LIVE your life without the ugliness, fear and low self-esteem moles, warts, and skin tags create...
Click here to read his report!
