Duct Tape Can Remove Warts

chris_calabrese writes "According to this Reuters article on Yahoo! News, "Duct tape, already legendary for its many uses, can also be deployed to get rid of warts, U.S. Army researchers said on Monday." The basic idea is to tape over the warts and suffocate them. Apparently more effective than the traditional cryotherapy too."

Comments

I tried it

[L. VeGas]

I tried to suffocate what I thought was a wart with duct tape, but I had to take it off after one day because I had to pee really bad.

Hygiene

[Glytch]

I hate to sound shallow, but this will come as a huge relief to all the homely guys who hang around Possum Lodge.

This is no joke

[GreyWolf3000]

About 2 years ago I was going to school in Switzerland. The dorms were rather unsanitary, or rather, some of it's inhabitants were extremely uncouth. As a result, fungal growths were rampant, and I developed a huge wart on my right thumb.

One day I was snowboarding and I tried to jump and hit a 360, but unfortunately I was a 'n00b.' However, upon a rather harsh engagement with hard-packed snow and ice, my wart completely dislodged itself from my finger. I'd say it was about 3mm high and 2.5mm diameter.

I think yours truly takes the cake for strangest wart removal 'treatment.'

Re:This is no joke

[ChadN]

Well, I had a huge wart on my big toe, which grew back after being burned off with acid and a hot needle. Then my sister stepped on it at the airport in Hawaii (I was wearing slippers), ripping it clean off. This was at the baggage counter, where family were all trying to hug me and say, "hello". I bled all over the place. However, a dog came up and ate the ripped off wart, and followed me around licking up much of the blood.

The remaining wart crater scabbed over with a hard black shell, which I eventually tore off with some tweezers. The wart never came back.

Well then...

[Dr. Bent]

I'll just have to add that one to The List

Re:Well then...

[Gerry Gleason]

217 Get rid of plantars warts.

Looks like it is already there.

See a doctor.

[Trusty Penfold]

This is crazy; you should never try to treat yourself for anything. You are not trained to diagnose diseases in your body. It takes 2 to 3 years to train to be a doctor - and you think you can remove a wart in a month?

How do you know it is a wart - it could be anthrax or, worse, something contagious like leprosy

See a doctor before it is too late!

Re:See a doctor.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

It takes 2 to 3 years to train to be a doctor

Lol. That's a good one. Let's see, a bachelor's degree, that's 3-4 years. Then four years of medical school-- and no, you can't "test out" of any of it; medical school is four years, and that's that. Then three to six years of residency, depending on your specialty.

If you're a true badass who chooses the right specialty-- and I'm not even going to count undergrad time here-- you can become a doctor in as little as seven years. And that's if you pick one of the "easy" specialties with a short residency. If you do what my girlfriend is doing-- get your MD/PhD, then do a surgical residency, then a fellowship-- you're looking at an upper bound of fifteen consecutive years of training. That's three years for a PhD in biology, four years for an MD, six years of residency at a teaching hospital, and two more years of fellowship before you can go get an actual job practicing medicine.

Doctors are better trained than you give them credit for.

Re:See a doctor.

[floydigus]

I know for a fact you can become a doctor in about five minutes on the internet.

Re:See a doctor.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

I've never heard of a 6 year residency program.

There are several. I know University of Washington's otolaryngology residency is 6 years. I believe that UCSD's is as well.

Incidentally, my girlfriend got her PhD because it paid for medical school. She is interested in academics, but her career of choice is ear, nose, and throat surgery. At the University of Texas, you get to go to school for free if you get into the MD/PhD program. Quite a bargain.

Hmmm....

[xagon7]

So now in addition to holding the Mir together before its demise, duct tape will suffocate warts.

News Headlines from 2050:

Duct Tape Cures Cancer!

Duct Tape Cures Aids!

Duct Tape Solves World Hunger!

Duct Tape Seals Cooling/Heating Ducts!

Re:Hmmm....

[Lenolium]

> Duct Tape Seals Cooling/Heating Ducts!
Funny thing, is that Duct tape is almost completely worthless on heating ducts, the tempature they get to is too high and the duct tape gule melts and it falls right off. Go and take a look at your ducts, they don't have duct tape on them, they have some really shiney type tape (which I forget what it is called).

Original medical paper

[Tnylr]

From the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine

http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/issues/v156n10/rful l/ poa20075.html

"Sticky-sided duct tape"

[tswinzig]

As opposed to the other kind?

Simple wart treatment I've used:

[Unknown Poltroon]

1: 1/2 bottle Jack Daniels, applied internally.
2: 1 fork, tines heated red hot over gas stove
3: Apply hot fork tines CAREFULLY to center of wart area.
4: Swear a lot.
5: Big Profit!! (and no more wart, seriously)

Id say ill use duct tape in the future, but i think clearing off 1 wart this way scared all the others away permanently.

Re:Simple wart treatment I've used:

[Guppy]

"what ended up working was some kind of beetle juice (no, I am not kidding, this was what the doctor said it was)"

Cantharidin. It's a blistering agent, extracted from (what else) the blister beetle.

BTW, cantharidin is also the substance known as "Spanish Fly". Although I do not recommend that anyone try drinking wart remover, as this substance is highly toxic when taken internally.

Re:This is great news

[Bonker]

A clue for the clueless -- DO NOT PUNCTURE WARTS UNLESS YOU WANT MORE OF THEM!

The virus that causes warts is easily spread from lymphatic fluid from a punctured wart.

Re:Hehe

[spencerogden]

Or the corollary: "If you can duct it, fuck it"

Possible Method of Action

[Guppy]

"The basic idea is to tape over the warts and suffocate them"

Since common warts are caused by a virus, it seems unlikely that you could literally "suffocate" it.

I'm guessing that a possible mode of action is that, by irritating the area, the duct tape is setting up a mild, local inflammation. Most warts eventually go away spontaneously, when the immune system recgnizes the virus, and a bit of inflammation would speed this process up. A number of existing anti-wart agents are believed to work this way.

Not so farfetched...

[Danse]

I have a couple of warts on my foot. I've been getting a laser treatment. They zap my foot repeatedly with a laser to kill the warts. It's not much fun, trust me. That took care of the worst one, but there are a couple others that were stubborn. Now my doctor has me putting this cream on them at night and then covering it with duct tape. In the morning I remove the tape and scrub the area with a pumice stone while I'm showering. It's only been a week so far, but it's looking pretty good. Hopefully they'll be gone for good pretty soon.

Great so far, .....

[Tablizer]

...but what do I use to remove the duct tape?

Warts? Try supplements

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've got warts, acne, athlete's foot, or other skin conditions, there's a very large likelihood you're zinc deficient. Since the soil has been so over-farmed for the last 50+ years, it's no longer possible for most people (need levels vary) to get enough zinc from just their diet any longer, no matter how "healthfully" they eat.

Seriously, zinc is real safe, try taking it for a while and see if your warts don't disappear. Mine did.

Whatever you think...

[Perdo]

..will get rid of your warts, will.

Warts respond to placibos like nothing else does. Your body's immune system can easily get rid of them. Stress prevents your immune system from removing them. Getting a "cure", any cure, will reduce your stress and your immune system will do its job.

The best placibo should be something ingrained in the mind with the ability to fix anything. Duct tape is an absolutely perfect placibo candidate.

Ah hah!

[mary_will_grow]

No wonder my genital warts have disappeared!

Planters wart removal

[macdaddy]

This is on and off topic but I see that planters warts have already been discussed, so I'll comment on them.

I had a stressful period last year. Because of that I developed some planters warts. (FYI, warts are caused by a virus. However on a healthy individual, the virus doesn't normally cause problems. Things like job problems, lack of sleep, near-death experience, etc.. raises stress levels which in turn adversely affects your immune system. Ever notice how pimples appeared right before prom when you were a kid?). I went to my family doctor to treatment when I had only 1 to deal with. I assumed I had a splinter under the skin that festered up into a ball or something. Nope. Planters wart. He said it could be cut out, burnt out, or frozen out. He recommended freezing. That's what I opted to go with. A few shots of liquid nitrogen later and I was on my way. Well it blistered, pussed up, caused more pain. Eventually the blistering went down but the wart remained. I didn't do anything about it for a while, about 4-5 months. It slowly grew. Then one day I noticed that about 4 more little bitty ones just popped up. Eww.. That's when I called my HS dermatologist. He worked miracles on me before like the case of sporo-tricosys (sp?) I developed on my elbow. He had me come in right away. He took one look at them and told me what he was going to do. He said he was going to give me shots right in the warts with a certain substance that was supposed to disolve warts. It didn't sound like fun but the original wart had grown to be about the size of a quarter, hard and crusty, and oozed puss on occasion. I bit the bullet and let him do it. He was nice enough to give me locals in each wart before proceding and to have a pretty nurse hold my ass down while he did it. He shot all of the warts (and suspect areas) full of whatever that stuff was. He also instructed me to not wash my feet for about a day. The day after that I went to take a shower. The little bastards had already turned black! The huge thing on my heal was blackish green. Cool! Anyways, the little ones slowly popped out over the course of a week or two. The skin immediately around them dried a little bit and they just fell out. The stuff inside the big one, under the hard layer of skin, turned to goo and literally oozed out one day. Made a nice green stain on my sock too. Over the next month that dead skin got harder and eventually peeled off.

I'm happy to say I'm wart-free now. Moral of the story, give a dermatologist a chance to fight skin problems BEFORE taking drastic measures like burning, cutting, or freezing. The really can work miracles some times.