I don’t care how kind or politically correct we are, we are still likely to stare or back away when we encounter someone whose hands (or other body parts) are covered with warts.‚ Those things are not attractive.‚ I can remember when I was a child seeing classmates with warts all over hands or knees and believing, because my mother told me, these warts had been caused by touching toads.‚ I¢‚¬„¢d also been warned if I touched these unfortunate sufferers I would soon sport my own crop of large bumpy protrusions.

Fortunately we now have a better understanding of warts as well as ways to cure them.‚ Other than genital warts, which are in a different category and are usually caused from a different source, warts are easily explained.‚ There are five kinds of non-genital warts:

¢‚¬¢ Common warts grow most often on the hands.‚ But they can be anywhere on the body. They are rough, shaped like a dome, and gray-brown in color.
¢‚¬¢ Plantar warts grow on the soles of the feet. They look like hard, thick patches of skin with dark specks. Plantar warts may cause pain when you walk, and you may feel like you are stepping on a pebble.
¢‚¬¢ Flat warts usually appear on the face, arms, or legs. They are small (usually smaller than the eraser on the end of a pencil), have flat tops, and can be pink, light brown, or light yellow.
¢‚¬¢ Filiform warts grow around the mouth, nose, or beard area. They are the same color as your skin and have growths that look like threads sticking out of them.
¢‚¬¢ Periungual warts grow under and around the toenails and fingernails. They look like rough bumps with an uneven surface and border. They can affect nail growth.

Will we get them if we touch infected people?

It is certainly possible.‚ Warts are easily spread by direct contact with the human papillomavirus (HPV). You can infect yourself again by touching the wart and then another part of your body. You can infect another person by sharing towels, razors, or other personal items. After contact with HPV, it can take 2 to 9 months of slow growth beneath the skin before you notice a wart.‚ It is unlikely that you will get a wart every time you come in contact with HPV. Some people are more likely to get warts than others.

What are the symptoms?

Warts come in a wide range of shapes and sizes. A wart may be a bump with a rough surface, or it may be flat and smooth. Tiny blood vessels grow into the core of the wart to supply it with blood. In both common and plantar warts, these blood vessels may look like dark dots in the wart’s center. In most cases, the skin lines and creases over the wart look distorted.

Warts are usually painless. But a wart that grows in a spot where you put pressure, such as on a finger or on the bottom of the foot, can be painful.

How are warts diagnosed?

A doctor usually can tell if a skin growth is a wart just by looking at it. Your doctor may take a sample of the wart and look at it under a microscope (skin biopsy). This may be done if it is not clear that the growth is a wart. It may also be done if a skin growth is darker than the skin surrounding it, is an irregular patch on the skin, bleeds, or is large and fast-growing.

How are they treated?

Most warts don’t need treatment. But if you have warts that are painful or spreading, or if you are bothered by the way they look, your treatment choices include:
¢‚¬¢ Using a home treatment such as salicylic acid or adhesive tape. You can get these without a prescription.
¢‚¬¢ Putting a stronger medicine on the wart, or getting a shot of medicine in it.
¢‚¬¢ Freezing the wart (cryotherapy).
¢‚¬¢ Removing the wart with surgery (electrosurgery, curettage, laser surgery).
Wart treatment does not always work. Even after a wart shrinks or goes away, warts may come back or spread to other parts of the body. This is because most treatments destroy the wart but do not kill the virus that causes the wart.

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Beverly Vines-Haines is the Marketing, Research and Text Coordinator for Healing Leaf LLC.‚ This is a company that tackles the toughest skin and nail conditions known to man.‚ A best-selling author for years before she became a part of Healing Leaf LLC, she is dedicated to natural healing and creating pure products that are both safe and earth friendly. For more information about these effective products, visit www.NoFungusAmongUs.com.

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