If you develop common warts, say on your hands or feet, t hey can often be treated very simply and successfully with over-the-counter medications for wart removal. Or you may wish to have your doctor remove them for you. Many people simply allow common warts to run their course and clear up by themselves. It is important to know that when common warts are cleared or go away, the virus may still be present in your body for some time. That is why warts keep coming back, and often require several treatments before you don’t see symptoms anymore.

Genital warts work in much the same way. There are medications available that your physician can give you to help clear up genital warts. These will also often reappear several times and require treatment more than once. In the vast majority of cases, the appearance of genital warts is not an indication that you are at risk of cancer. The strains of HPV that cause genital warts are generally NOT those strains related to cancer.

If you do contract a strain of HPV that can cause cancer, you will not know it for years. That is why, if you are sexually active at any point in your life, you need to have ongoing and routine health screening for HPV-related conditions. In this sense, HPV treatment is an ongoing process; this is why it is important for women to have regular pap smears during their annual gynecological exams to check for signs of changes in cells on the cervix that may indicate cancer. In early stages, cervical cancer is very treatable by minor surgery and poses minimal risk.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, about 12,000 women are diagnosed yearly with cervical cancer. In at least 70% of these cases, the HPV virus is responsible, and the patient was unknowingly carrying the virus for several years. Since there is no definitive medical test for HPV status, these patients are always unaware that they carry strains of HPV that lead to cervical cancer.

Although the particular strains of HPV that cause serious health conditions are not common, the risk of cancer is serious enough that it is important to educate yourself about HPV and learn what you can do to prevent yourself from being at risk.

But… when it comes to genital HPV, we can only recommend, in good conscience, real medical attention. Still, if you insist on getting your HPV treatment advice from the big book of home remedies or some such, we urge you to at least consider the following… and strike them right off the list of possible home remedies…

Foodstuffs

One of the more popular home remedies for common warts is to apply certain things from the kitchen to the infected area. You can tape a piece of garlic to a wart, dip it in vinegar, or soak it in salt water. Surprisingly, some of this stuff kind of actually works. Foods with incredibly high acidic content do, in fact, have what it takes to burn away at warts.

…And that’s exactly why you should never apply these foods to your genitals. Your hands, your feet, they can handle “spicy foods”, but putting garlic on your nether regions is no safer, and no smarter, than rubbing it in your eyes. If you’re looking for home remedies, stay out of the kitchen.

Home Surgery

Most people wince at the very idea of trying to surgically excise their own warts. Some doctors will treat hand warts with a pair of sterilized surgical scissors. It’s quick, relatively painless, and most importantly; performed in a sterile, medical environment.

If your HPV infection is severe enough that you’re even contemplating a solution this dangerous and crazy, then it’s severe enough to go see your physicist. You’re not a surgeon, don’t operate on yourself.

Footcare Products

You can get rid of plantar warts with relative ease with a hot footbath and a corn remover, but the very thought of applying the same treatment to genital warts is enough to make any rational person’s hair stand on end. Yes, it is just as painful and as ineffective as you’d guess.

In martial arts, a lot of movements are designed to keep the feet and hands in the heat of the action, and the head and genitals well outside of the action. This is because your feet and hands are the toughest parts of your body, and your head and genitals are the most vulnerable. You wouldn’t wear shoes in place of underwear, so don’t use a plantar wart removal method on your more sensitive parts.

Conclusion…

If you think what we’re saying here is “Don’t use any home remedies to take care of genital warts”, you’re absolutely correct. Trying to treat genital warts yourself can result in scarring, loss of sensitivity due to nerve damage, or worse. Just don’t do it. If you think you have genital HPV, see a doctor. Genital HPV is not a problem you can solve with a simple home remedy.

That said, most HPV infections will clear up on their own. You don’t need to go see a doctor or even buy any ointments or treatments to remove a wart. If you eat healthy, take in plenty of vitamins, sunlight, and exercise, your immune system, nine times out of ten, will get rid of your wart for you within one or two weeks.

The problem only occurs when a wart infection is persistent, when it just won’t go away, or keeps coming back. That is when you should start looking into over the counter medication. When over the counter wart treatment does not work, that’s when the doctor comes in. You don’t need to jump right into wart removal. If you can get rid of your wart by eating a little better, there’s no need to waste time on a doctor visit, as warts are not really a serious health risk. Some forms of HPV are certainly dangerous, but, even with genital warts, there are no recorded instances of visible warts leading to serious illness or cancer. The HPV types that lead to further health complications usually don’t have any visible symptoms.

So, with that in mind, if nutrition has failed you, here are some of your options:

Acid based wart removers

Most of these are over the counter. The way they work is basically that you just apply a dab to the surface of the wart, then cover the skin with a band-aid. Do this on a daily basis, and even the most persistent warts should be gone within a week. Believe it or not, you can even do this with vinegar or bits of garlic, so long as you’re careful to wipe away any garlic or vinegar that makes contact with healthy skin.

Surgery

In 99% of wart cases, going under the knife is a little excessive. If you have a wart infection that just plain will not go away, though, surgery can help. Here are a few methods…

1.    Scalpel or scissors

Simply put, your doctor will cut the wart away. There is a small chance of scar tissue being left behind if the wound does not heal properly, of course.

2.    Laser

Much safer than the scalpel. The laser works to simply burn or scrape away dead tissue.

3.    Torching and freezing

Warts can be removed with extremely low or extremely high temperatures. In both cases, chemicals are usually employed, but it’s entirely possible to simply burn or freeze a wart away with surgical tools.

Alternately…

Your doctor may deem surgery excessive, and might just prescribe you some antibiotics or some drug store wart remover, or he or she may simply make some suggestions regarding your diet.

If you do contract HPV, don’t be embarrassed. Some 90% of people contract hand warts, plantar warts or some other form of wart sometime in their life. It’s honestly no big deal, unless it happens to be a form of HPV that leads to cancer, which is why prevention is so important.

Another form of prevention would be the vaccine. The HPV vaccine is something of a medical miracle, really. Tens of thousands of women die every year thanks to cervical cancer resulting from an HPV infection. With the vaccine, we can put a dent in that number. However, even if you have been vaccinated, you should always practice safe sex, as HPV isn’t the only sexually transmitted disease that you have to watch out for.

That said, if you do contract HPV, there are a few steps you should take…

Contact your Doctor

Okay, hand warts and plantar warts are pretty easy to identify, and can usually be treated pretty easily with over the counter remedies, if they don’t go away on their own. You don’t have to run to the doctor’s office every single time you get a wart on your hand or foot. However, if you have contracted a genital strain of HPV, or if you have a persistent infection that just won’t go away, it’s a good idea to talk to your doctor.

This should be in addition to regular checkups. For example, the HPV strain which causes cervical cancer does not cause warts, and can only be identified by a pap smear. Uncomfortable as that whole deal may be, it might save your life, so get a thorough check-up whenever you can.

At Home Treatment

If you want to get some over the counter medication for your warts, go ahead and take your pick. Read the instructions carefully and make sure you apply the treatment correctly.

But, you don’t even have to spend any money to treat your warts. The old wife’s tale of getting warts from frogs is bogus, but there are plenty of home remedies that actually work on common warts. For example, if you take a tiny chunk of raw garlic and apply it to your wart with a piece of tape, the acid in the vegetable will actually help to dissolve your wart. The same goes for applying white vinegar to your wart.

Whatever you do, don’t try to perform a surgical operation on yourself! Doctors often remove warts manually with a scalpel, lasers, or even a pair of scissors, but they use tools that are sterilized, they know what to do in the event of bleeding, and they know when and where it’s safe to cut. This isn’t a problem you can solve with a sewing kit!

Just Ignore It

If you’ve only got a couple tiny little warts on the back of your hand… honestly, it’s not that big a deal. If you have a serious infection, you should certainly talk to a doctor or apply some sort of treatment, but if it’s just a minor little bump, it should take care of itself in time if you just make sure to eat healthy and get some exercise to keep your immune system in fighting shape.

That sounds totally crazy, but think about it: The strains of HPV which lead to genital warts do not lead to cancer. The HPV strains which lead to cervical cancer, in fact, almost never show any visible symptoms of infection, and can usually only be detected by a pap smear.

So count your blessings, and then talk to your doctor about treating genital warts, because, sure, you don’t have cancer, but the sooner you can get rid of genital warts, the better.

Now, keep in mind, there is no real quick and easy cure for HPV. All we have is ways to treat the symptoms. Being a virus, HPV cannot simply be killed off by medicine.

When it comes to the treatment of genital warts, you have a number of options, thankfully. Your doctor may recommend or prescribe one, or you may be given a choice.

Bear in mind that treatment is not to ‘get rid of’ an HPV infection, but rather, to induce wart-free periods. The actual infection is still there, and you may experience further breakouts in the future, but the symptoms are gone.

Luckily, it’s not uncommon for an HPV infection to become dormant after awhile. Still, don’t expect your genital warts to disappear forever upon treatment.

Wait it Out

Maybe not the most preferable course of action, but 90% of the time, genital warts will clear up on their own before too long. However, they can also increase in size and number, if left untreated. If your infection isn’t too serious or uncomfortable, this may actually be the best option.

Cryotherapy or Acid Therapy

Cryotherapy and Acid Therapy are treatment methods wherein small doses of chemicals are applied to the warts to literally burn them right off. This isn’t as painful as it sounds! Any spilled chemical can be prevented from doing any damage by talc or baking soda. It isn’t like your genital warts literally catch fire using this method, either; Chemical treatment usually involves a weekly treatment regiment.

Surgical Removal

You may cringe just thinking about it, but there are a number of options for your doctor to manually remove the warts. This can include electrosurgery, scissor excision, laser surgery, or the trusty scalpel.

Dietary Treatment

Not as quick and convenient as surgical or chemical removal of warts, but by eating properly and getting some exercise, you can strengthen your immune system and quicken the process of your body getting rid of your infection naturally, without having to resort to chemicals or surgery. And of course, a strong immune system can help to prevent further breakouts after the initial treatment.

But of course, the most important weapon against HPV is prevention.

Don’t have sex without protection or an STD test. It’s not just genital warts you have to look out for, it’s HPV strains that can lead to cancer, it’s HIV, syphilis, genital herpes, and all sorts of unpleasant diseases. Practice safe sex, or you’ll be playing Russian roulette every single time you meet a new sex partner.

If you’re concerned about HPV, read up on it on your own time, but don’t be afraid to ask your doctor to clarify things for you or to give you more specific advice for prevention.

Getting over the embarrassment

If you’re currently dealing with an HPV infection, don’t be reluctant to talk to your doctor about genital warts treatments and genital warts removal and how to discourage outbreaks, get all the genital warts info and information on HPV you can. Remember that this is the first and most important step to talking with your doctor about an HPV infection: Don’t be embarrassed.

There are some unfortunate misconceptions that plague HPV sufferers in certain circles. Most obvious of which is, of course, that anyone suffering from genital HPV must be a “person of poor moral fibre”, but there are just as many misconceptions regarding common hand warts, etcetera. Such as that only unsanitary people get warts, that frogs are the main cause of hand warts, and all kinds of crazy things like that.

Rest assured that this is not something to worry about when you’re talking to a trained medical professional. These ridiculous misconceptions occur thanks to ignorance of what really causes HPV. Your doctor should know the truth about the disease and its causes, and there’s no need to worry about being judged by medical professional when it comes to your health.

Full Disclosure

Talk to your doctor about past HPV infections that have cleared up, as well. In some cases, HPV can lead to some unpleasant complications, including cancer. More often than not, fortunately, once a hand wart is gone or an infection clears up, there isn’t much to worry about unless you experience another breakout, but genital HPV, including some types which don’t even show signs on the surface, can lead to cervical and genital cancer.

For women, it is absolutely imperative that to have a regular pap smear conducted, as HPV can develop into cervical cancer without even showing any obvious signs.

Trust your Doctor’s Knowledge

The main thing is to put your trust in your doctor.  To put it bluntly, in order to ensure you’re taking care of yourself, you need to be willing to tell your doctor things you would never even tell your closest friends. If you want effective advice and treatment, your doctor should know as much about your sex life and body as you can tell them.

Something that might surprise some people is that trouble with breathing might be a result of an internal HPV infection. It’s not common at all, luckily, and even in those rare cases, very few result in surgery, but if you’re having trouble breathing and can’t figure out why, don’t hesitate to ask your doctor what it might be.

For that matter, don’t ignore any abnormality in your bodily functions. Even beyond HPV, you never know when a minor annoyance might be the sign of a bigger problem. We’re not telling you to become a hypochondriac and run to the hospital every time you stub your toe or have to cough, but if you are experience a persistent or recurring problem, don’t ignore it.

Of course, most warts will disappear on their own, given time. If you’d rather not wait, there are several over-the-counter products which will help to speed up the process and make warts go away faster. The most popular wart removal products would include…

•    Compound W

•    Dr. Scholl’s pads, discs and liquids

•    Wartner

•    Curad

These products all work by burning or freezing the wart away with chemical compounds or simple acids. Again, these don’t cure HPV, but can get rid of warts and make HPV easier to live with. There are also genital wart removers, but you should probably seek a doctor’s advice before trying to conduct genital wart treatments on your own.

All of the above products will tell you how to remove warts with the product on the label. Make sure you follow these instructions carefully, as the chemical compounds used can damage healthy tissue just as well as tumorous tissue.

Home Remedies

The myth of getting warts from frogs is completely unfounded, but there are a few home remedies that actually work to get rid of warts pretty quickly:

•    Garlic

It’s not only delicious, it can also kill warts pretty fast. Crush some fresh garlic (use the flat side of a knife and pound the garlic, being careful not to cut yourself) and, being careful not to get any garlic on the surrounding, healthy skin, rub the garlic directly on your wart and cover it with a band aid. Some people report that this can eliminate a wart in just one week, as the wart will blister from the acidic content of the garlic. Replace the garlic once a day.

•    Vitamin C

Plenty of vitamin C will not only help to burn the wart away with its high acid content, but the vitamin C will also help your body fight off the HPV itself. Take some vitamin C tablets and crush them, then mix them with water to create a paste. Apply the paste to your wart and cover it with a bandage.

•    Steaming hot footbath for plantar warts

Plantar warts are highly sensitive to heat, so if you use heat water to about 110 degrees F or so and then soak your feet a good fifteen minutes a day, you should see results before long.

•    Basil

Fresh basil actually has some quite potent virus fighting capabilities. If you crush a basil leaf and tape it to your wart on a daily basis, you can put the virus killing compound to work at killing your warts.

•    Duct tape, water and pumice

Place a small piece of duct tape over your wart, leave it on for six days, and then remove the tape, soak the wart in water for a couple of minutes, and use a pumice stone to file the dead skin on your wart. You won’t be able to get rid of a wart in one go this way, so reapply some more duct tape the next morning and repeat the process until the wart is gone. The theory behind this method is that, by irritating the skin, your immune system will kick into gear in that area and work harder to fight the virus.

How they Work

All of the above home remedies may sound kind of nutty, but the way they work is actually quite simple. The wart itself is not a virus, but a benign tumour, basically infected skin. It’s not hard to kill your own infected skin with acids, heat, or cold.

There may not be a way to get rid of HPV right away, but we’re coming closer to an honest to goodness cure every day, and until then, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention: Nobody likes warts, so it stands to reason that there are dozens of ways to get rid of them! Look at all the available methods, the ones listed above and HPV treatment methods you might find online. Talk about it with your doctor, and settle upon a therapy that you feel comfortable with.

As you may or may not know, there are several types of genital HPV. Only a few types lead to genital warts, which, as ugly and uncomfortable as they are, are actually not dangerous and may leave nothing but some unfortunate scar tissue. Others actually cause no symptoms at all, but some can lead to cancer; cancer of the anus, the cervix, the penis, the vagina or the vulva. Even though most HPV is relatively benign, the risk of cancer should be enough motivation for anyone to practice as much prevention as seems necessary, and that’s exactly why this vaccine is so important.

The Catch

The vaccine is most effective in preventing HPV when given to boys and girls well before sexual activity with partners begins. This places the ideal age for vaccine recipients between 9 and 12 years of age.

While this may seem like an irrelevant detail, there is some very, very unfortunate controversy over this matter. There is no doubt that this vaccine is a positive thing, but nonetheless, it has come against some opposition from people claiming that an HPV vaccination for such young people would be giving children a virtual parental permission slip to become sexually active at a very young age.

Honest HPV Info

These are HPV facts, this HPV information is not blown up to put forth a political agenda or anything like that, but simply the facts on HPV and cervical cancer:

There are around 130 different strains of the HPV virus, with about 40 of them affecting the genitals and reproductive system. HPV test statistics suggest that about twenty million people in the United States alone are currently infected with some form genital HPV.

Genital HPV is so common, that about half of all sexually active people will contract some form of genital HPV or another at one point in their lives. For most people infected HPV, it won’t be a problem, but for others, it can develop into life threatening cancer. Even for the lucky women who survive cervical cancer, consider concerns regarding HPV and pregnancy. Tragically, many women are left sterile by the damage HPV, cancer, and invasive surgery leave behind in the reproductive organs. Any step towards a widespread vaccine is a good step.

The HPV vaccine itself, developed by the pharmaceutical company Merck, is very nearly one hundred percent effective against HPV 16 and HPV 18. These two types of HPV account for seventy percent of all cervical cancer. The vaccine also helps to prevent unsightly, uncomfortable genital warts. Other drug companies are developing their own vaccines, as well. Some of these are simply not on the market yet, while others are in earlier stages of development.

Fighting the Good Fight

Luckily, various groups are doing everything in their power to spread the good word on the HPV vaccine, and why it is so necessary. If you’d like to contribute to the effort to bring HPV prevention and medicine to the public consciousness, what you can do to help is actually quite easy. If you simply send a letter or e-mail to your congressman or other elected officials, voicing your support for groups like the Planned Parenthood Action Network, that may well go a long way.

You may also wish to send letters to local newspapers or other publications. Even bringing the subject up in casual conversation, word of mouth may be enough to help someone dodge the cancer bullet and live a full life. Basically, anything you can do to make sure just one or two more people know that there is a vaccine that can prevent HPV will be a big help for the cause, and it is an important cause. In 2003 alone, and just in the US, cervical cancer killed thirteen thousand women. With a vaccine, maybe this won’t happen again.

There is no treatment for HPV, no cure for genital warts, but by keeping a close eye on the early signs of genital warts systems, and by sharing the HPV statistics, perhaps we can help to prevent cases of female genital warts from developing into something more serious.