The Easiest Way to Get Rid of a Wart on Your Own

This post is part of our Home Remedies Guide , a review of home remedies from dubious to doctor-approved. Read more here .

Warts, especially on the hands, often appear out of nowhere. You’ve got this weird, hard lump on your skin—or more often, your baby—and now what? They do not come off easily as they are embedded in the skin. Fortunately, home treatment can be just as effective as treatment at the doctor’s office.

What causes warts?

Warts are caused by a virus, specifically the human papillomavirus. There are many types of this virus, some of which can cause cervical cancer, as well as cancer of the throat, penis, and anus. That’s why we have a vaccine against it . But some types of HPV simply cause warts to appear on the skin.

This means that it is important that warts are contagious. If you cut the wart and then shave with the same razor, you can introduce the virus into the cut after shaving. If you have a wart, you should keep it covered with a bandage and wash your hands immediately after applying the wart.

When can a wart be treated at home?

Not all warts are suitable for home treatment, and not everything that looks like a wart is a wart.

The American Academy of Dermatological Association recommends seeking medical attention for warts on the face or genitals, warts that burn, itch, or bleed, or warts that you suspect may be some other type of growth (such as potential cancer). skin). If you are unsure, seek the opinion of a professional.

You also don’t want to mess around with warts if you have diabetes, because if you cut or burn the skin on your feet while you’re diabetic, you can damage the nerve. You will also need professional help if you have a weakened immune system. Ultimately, it is your immune system that fights warts, even if you help it along with home treatments.

How can you cure a wart at home?

One effective approach to warts is to simply wait until they disappear. However, this may take some time: after about a year, half of the warts will disappear. If you’re lucky, it might only take a few months; if you’re unlucky maybe two years or more.

Since your immune system is what actually fights warts, home treatments really just speed up the process. The current view as to why these treatments work is that you are irritating the skin, essentially jacking up the immune system and telling it to wake up and fire up. So the idea is to irritate the skin of the wart just enough to trigger an immune response, but not so much as to hurt yourself.

Salicylic acid

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, over-the-counter wart removers are the gold standard for treating warts. However, this does not mean that they are an instant cure. One review of the evidence found that 73% of warts disappeared within 6 to 12 weeks of salicylic acid treatment. By comparison, only 48% resolved over this period with placebo.

To use a salicylic acid wart remover, you need to roughen the wart (for example, by sanding it with sandpaper, which you will then discard) and then apply a drop of the acid as directed on the package. Cover the wart with a bandage to avoid spreading the virus and repeat the procedure as directed.

My daughter once had a wart on her arm and this is exactly what the doctor recommended. At the same time, she gave us the number of a dermatologist who could try to freeze the wart. Make an appointment, she said, which would probably take place in a few weeks. In the meantime, use a wart remover. By the time the appointment came, the wart had clearly not lingered in this world. We canceled the appointment and pretty soon the wart fell out.

Yes, he fell. A wart is not just a patch of skin with a crust; it’s like a tiny little tumor. Old timers will talk about a wart with a “seed” underneath it, and I understand where that comes from. My daughter had a small crater on her arm after the wart fell out, but it healed quickly and looked like her normal skin again.

Duct tape and other traditional media

Probably the next most commonly recommended remedy for warts is duct tape. You can use it on its own by applying tape to the wart and changing it daily or as needed. Or you can combine it with salicylic acid, using duct tape instead of a patch, to close the wart between treatments.

The idea is that the adhesive in duct tape is irritating enough to spur the immune system into action. Clinical trials have not been able to tell for sure if duct tape works. If you don’t have a wart remover, it probably won’t hurt to try duct tape.

Other home remedies are probably not effective. Apple cider vinegar, garlic, and various medicine cabinet products such as retinol cream have been suggested as potential remedies for warts. There is no reason to believe they work, but since warts can go away on their own, I’m sure there are people who have tried garlic or hypnosis and the treatment has “worked” even if it has no clinical basis.

Finally, to pass the time while you wait for the wart to go away, you can always try some old medications . Probably not efficient, but might be fun. For example, you can rub a dead cat’s tail on a wart or ask a friend to buy your warts from you. (They can then pass the wart on to someone else in the same way.) Or fry some bacon:

In Cheshire, to get rid of warts, it is enough to rub them with a piece of bacon, make an incision in the bark of an ash tree and stick the bacon under the bark. Soon the warts will disappear from your hand, but will reappear as rough growths or bumps on the tree bark.