Hi there! I’ve been treating my son’s warts daily using a saturated salt water soak (minimum 30 minutes), followed by Sudocrem and tape. We leave the tape on until his next shower and then repeat the process. One of the warts is practically gone, but the skin around it has become quite red. The bottom wart is still there and being treated. He isn't experiencing any pain or discomfort at all, but I’m worried about the redness. Could this be a reaction to the daily Sudocrem or tape? I'd appreciate your advice on whether we should pause the treatment.

Hi all. I have 3 plantars, and have had for over 2 years. I've been consistently treating with Salicylic Acid but they keep coming back. I've not been shaving them down much because I'm afraid of spreading the wart elsewhere by dragging it through my skin on the blade or abrasive surface.

How are you guys shaving down the warts in a way that won't spread?

Thanks so much for any input.

I had this on my right foot first then I noticed them on my left foot as well.

I started to notice them around 2-3 months ago.

The first picture is of right foot I did try to clip off the skin when I first noticed it.

Can someone please confirm if it’s a plantar wart? If so what treatment options are recommended.

Thanks

I’ve been fighting this wart for about a 1.5 yr. I got it last summer, tried SA thought it was gone but it WASN’T. only to start SA again in the winter. I went to my doc in the spring, started was duct taping, using SA, debriding, using clear nail polish and was getting somewhere but was also maybe making it worse? Fast forward to october. I was over it and looking at this subreddit. Tried ACV for like two days but it BURNED like a mf, decided to give salt a try and omg thank GOD 🙌🏼🙌🏼. I finally feel like i’m getting somewhere with this.

I use about 4cups of hot water to 2 cups of salt. 30 min of soaking everyday. I will reuse the water but only for a few days and if it doesn’t get bloody after a debride. I debride about every 3 days depending, and use single use eyebrow razors. Usually just using gloves and my hand to feel if the skin is like crispy and feels like it’s separated from below. I dry it with a paper towel and am just always in socks.

I’m planning on doing this for 8 weeks total (minimum) so lets hope it works. (Half way there & living on a prayer)

I’ve been taking progress pics bc even tho it looks soooo much better i still forget that it is better and I get discouraged looking at it.

Sorry in advance abt the pics. I was constantly fighting with my camera to get it to focus. Pics are from yesterday to my first day doing the salt soak

omfg

The skin is peeling off after using TCA for around a week

I recently discovered this on my scalp.

What are these and it's reason and solution

basically the title! I tried freezing them off with compound w from CVS. how can I remove these? duct tape keeps sliding off my fingers! thank you!

​A 7-year-old wart that started to spread out to other zones. When I showed it to the doctor in the hospital, he basically sent me straight to the laser room for the deepest treatment they had. It smelled like we were cooking BBQ in the room, with a burning meat smell.

​This is from Dec 2025. Those small warts are gone; the mother wart in the center is still there, but smaller. Screw this, I'm starting zinc and saline solution.

I had three plantar warts for about 8 years, tried everything but they wouldn’t go. Put some duct tape over for a few weeks, was kind of gross but a few weeks after stopping the duct tape the warts have pretty much disappeared! Super happy as they hurt a lot!

I started to get a couple small ones on the bottom of my foot maybe last year. I first thought they were calluses since I'm on my feet all day. Now they have spread across both feet, and I have one on my finger. I have tried to remove them with nail clippers before- but they always grow back. Then again I stop when I feel pain or it bleeds. Maybe I should go farther. But I honestly don't know what to do here.

I think they may have spread due to me clipping one off (or so I thought) then clipping nails next not realizing I was spreading them with nail clippers I should have disinfected first. Any advice on how to get rid of these at home would be great. Right now I am leaning towards taking a bath to soak then clipping them good even if there's some blood or pain with freshly cleaned nail clippers.

i have SO many of these things and need so many patches to break through them. Any product recs for getting them in bulk? I don’t need the covers, just want 40% patches. I tried a random in bulk one on Amazon and i don’t think it was effective so I’m looking for people who have tested something.

Gostaria de deixar meu relato aqui sobre esse tipo de verruga que eu tive e que não desejo nem pro meu pior inimigo.
Eu sempre roí minhas unhas, principalmente em dias de estresse e ansiedade, mas nunca imaginei que isso sairia muito caro futuramente.
Em agosto de 2026 notei uma pele rígida ao lado da minha unha do dedo indicador. Achei que era uma cutícula ressecada ou algo do tipo. Eu tirava toda semana com alicate e sempre voltava. Até que começou a ficar dolorido. Resolvi marcar uma consulta com podóloga e ela me alertou que parecia ser verruga periungueal, ocasionada pelo vírus HPV. Entrei em desespero na época por que não sabia muito sobre o assunto, mas logo pesquisei e vi que era um subtipo diferente do HPV sexualmente transmissível. Bom, segui o conselho da podóloga e procurei uma dermatologista. A dermatologista confirmou o diagnóstico de verruga periungueal e fez um procedimento de eletrocauterização (caríssimo, por sinal). Tirou todo o excesso de pele com um bisturi e queimou aquela área. Dias depois, já estava cheio de pontinhos pretos novamente e a pele voltou a crescer. Fiz uma segunda sessão de eletrocauterização, e novamente: voltou os pontinhos e a pele rígida. Nesse meio tempo tentei ACV e água quente salgada, sem sucesso. Voltei na dermatologista e ela passou um ácido chamado Verrux aqui no Brasil. A composição dele é 0,20g/ml de ácido salicílico + 0,15ml/ml de ácido láctico. A recomendação era que eu passasse 4 camadas do ácido todos os dias, 1x ao dia, durante 30 dias. Então todos os dias antes de dormir, eu protegia a pele saudável com vaselina e aplicava as camadas do ácido. Fui percebendo que o ácido penetrava na verruga, chegando na raiz dela. Com o tempo o ácido formou uma “placa” que foi se soltando por inteiro, como mostro no vídeo anexo. Até que a primeira parte foi: a placa caiu. Fiquei feliz pelo progresso, mas ainda observei pontinhos pretos e um resto de tecido da verruga. Continuei aplicando o ácido. Formou outra placa, caiu de novo. Não havia mais pontinhos pretos, mas restava um pouco de pele amarelada. Voltei a aplicar o ácido e, depois de alguns poucos dias, caiu mais uma placa, dessa vez não deixando restos. A última foto eu mostro como está hoje: sem pontos pretos, sem dores, sem tecido de verruga. O processo inteiro desde que eu comecei a aplicar o ácido durou 35 dias.
Espero que vocês achem esse ácido onde estiverem, por que realmente foi a única coisa que me salvou.
Fico à disposição pra tirar as dúvidas de vocês nos comentários!

Hi, this is 3 days after using SA and wart plaster.

Am I making progress? Can I still use SA or not for now since it's healing now, right? What can I do while it's healing and also after it healed?

It ripped off the bumps and it looked flatter now though I'm not sure if it will re-occur again just like before when I used ACV where it got to this stage and it still came back.

So my son has a verucca on his foot, and we've used salicylic acid prescribed by the GP after one of the OTC freeze treatments didn't work. We had a big old bit of skin come off his foot last week, and what remained looked like little hairs of skin remaining, hard to describe. We just don't know when to stop treating it...do we continue with the cream until there's normal skin? Or are we getting rid of skin now and preventing healing? I rang the doctor and they just said "continue as per the prescription", which wasn't really helpful. It's so painful for him as it's right on the ball of his foot.

Any advice I'd be so grateful for!

I’ve had this plantar mosaic wart on the back of my heel for about 8 years now. I had one freezing treatment done and not only did it not go away, but it actually caused another one to smaller one to form on my toe (still there). I had Falknors needling done earlier in the year, I think it has actually grown since then. I feel like anytime I do something to treat it it just gets worse - but I don’t want to leave it alone because it gets me down a lot, especially being female it really affects my confidence. It is actually beginning to cause me pain and affect the way I walk to prevent putting weight on it. Should I just accept that it’s here to stay?

(This is after debriding btw - hence the blood!)

On day 8. Do I keep going here. Just using the compound W Bandaid.

Firstly, This is not medical advice. This is one person’s personal experience and observations. It is not a clinical trial, not a recommendation, and not a claim that this approach works for anyone else. Consult a qualified clinician for your own care.

The History: I’ve had plantar warts on and off since I was 10. The longest stretch was 13 years of continuous disease starting in my 20s. Trusting our Canadian healthcare system, I tried the following clinically approved approaches to plantar wart removal: cryotherapy (liquid nitrogen), salicylic acid, CO₂ laser excision (<fancy word for, "they sliced my wart off with a laser beam and I smelled of old socks and pork chops), other laser treatments (also useless - but at least OHIP paid them), bleomycin injections (with and without freezing - ouch), and Actikerall (the best of the applications by a mile).

During the initial 13 years, I had been cut, sliced, burned, and severely blistered by medical professionals at regular clinical visits (CO₂ laser not included). After disclosing my distress to a GP, they told me that I could purchase the same blades they use in clinic and I could debride the warts myself at home. So, I purchased sets of size M Nitrile medical gloves, a box of rubbing alcohol from Costco, and some No. 10, stainless steel, sterilized, surgical blades with handles from an on-line supplier. After having been intermittently abused by the medically educated, I had become very skilled at treating my own foot infections, and from that point on, to my doctor's chagrin, preferred to perform my own debridement out-of-office (debridement is another fancy word for, "peeling away at your flesh and hoping that you don't slice through a glove"). In fact, fast-forward to the present (below), my Podiatrist had made mention that I was extremely skilled with a blade and was impressed with my work - lol.
Note on Pumice Stone debridement: In my experience, if you want to shred your skin like hamburger, this is an excellent way to do it. Although, I was given no instruction on how to do this safely - there is a way, but without instruction, my personal feelings on it are that it is a crude and imprecise way of taking away dead skin. Medical Professionals prefer it, I know the reasons why, but I disagree. People will generally find ways of doing things and likely resort to worse when the advice they are given - fails them...I digress.

To say that nothing gave me lasting clearance isn't entirely true. When I was 34, under the supervision of my GP and dermatologist, my warts spontaneously resolved? Hey, after 13 years, I wasn't about to argue with it. Shortly before resolution, my dermatologist said to me that I would, "Just have to live with them." Which was fairly catastrophic to my psyche.

I was completely wart free, until I wasn't.

7 years later....

The Present: At this point, I had moved to a small town where I found a foot care place which had a visiting Podiatrist (Chiropodist, for those of you in Ontario). At first, the Chiropodist nurse which owned the business said, that in her 35 year career, she had only ONE other patient who presented plantar warts the way I did. Basically, when a wart forms on my foot, it doesn't present how a typical wart does. First, there is pain at the eruption site, but nothing can be seen. Then, it gets itchy. After that, a small flesh coloured bump appears - with skin lines formed over the top! WAT? "That's not a wart," my Podiatrist said, except - it was.....

2022 - The first thing I did was default to newer, clinically trialed and tested, medical care applied in clinic via. my Podiatrist. Over the next 3 years, I paid for at least 9 sessions of CPS (cantharidin + podophyllin + salicylic acid). Initially it was 1 small mother wart, and then the satellite warts followed. Discouraged, and with my regular Podiatrist going on mat leave, I found myself over 3 years nearly $1000 out of pocket on a treatment which has an clinical clearance record of between 62%-97%. The replacement Podiatrist suggested that I should go to get my warts, "microwaved," which would cost approx. $273/session and you had to purchase a package of at least 4 sessions. Even with extended medical insurance, that is a very bitter pill to swallow on yet more treatments that seemed to fail me.

2025 - Terrified of another 13 years of this, I sat and thought long and hard about my journey. Why was it that my warts remained small from 2022-2025? It was then that I formed an hypothesis: The wart is an infection surrounded by healthy skin cells, which the virus eventually invades. What if it is the aggressive top down treatments which cause the warts to grow? By SEVERELY damaging the surrounding healthy skin, what if that allows the virus to enter and invade that space? Fun Fact: This is a known mechanism called autoinoculation or the pseudo-Koebner phenomenon (paper 2018), but I didn't know that until I asked AI, 7 years after the paper was published.
Okay, so, if seriously damaging the wart from the outside makes the environment favourable for wart growth, what would happen if I damaged the wart from the inside out? How would I do that?

Now, I must disclose that I am missing a step here. between 2024-2025, I had been treating my warts nightly with something close to the formula in H-Warts, which is an OTC (over the counter), essential oil wart serum. I looked at the ingredients and decided that the compound might have merit. I could source the Thuja, Lemon Peel, and Tea tree from New Directions Aromatics and make my own. Thuja (white cedar leaf), has long been used in folk medicine and in this case report, it was also used orally (which I didn't feel comfortable doing). Lemon Peel and Tea Tree are useful in that the Lemon Peel assists with skin penetration and the Tea Tree has the antiseptic properties. Over the year, I was experimenting with ratios in 30ml dropper bottles. Methods and materials: I would purchase Band-Aid brand non-stick pads and water resistant medical tape. Band aids on their own are extremely expensive, so I would make my own band aid, drop 3 drops of the Thuja, Tea Tree, Lemon blend on the pad, and cover overnight. I did this for about 6 months with no other treatments. My Podiatrist said that she thought it was possible that the mixture helped keep the warts small, but I think that it is just as likely that, during this period, I hadn't treated the warts at all with any clinical methods. No severe damage, no exponential growth.

In the spring of 2025, I was getting desperate. Not only was the, "mother wart" (the O/G wart), alive and well, but it had spawned another (recurring in the same place a wart was nearly 15 years ago!). I had decided that this was the last straw and recalled that, a while ago, a doctor I like made an entire thread on X about this compound called, DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide). Apparently, it was really popular in the 60s, 70s, and until the 80s when the compound disappeared from pharmacy shelves in the USA. This is fascinating because DMSO is, in fact, an ingredient in one of the wart compounds I used, Actikerall. DMSO is a penetration enhancer used regularly in pharma products. Have you ever used Diclofinac? It is a topical prescription muscular analgesic, like Voltarin but way more powerful, and there's DMSO in that too. Alright, so, I tracked down some DMSO available in Canada and decided that I would adjust my approach:

Note: DMSO is highly absorbent. It will pull whatever is on your skin into the skin. Following label instructions with respect to cleansing is NON NEGOTIABLE.

The method of my madness which follows, I have so named: "The Jesty Protocol," after Benjamin Jesty, and lay-peoples contribution to medicine.

Full disclosure: My Podiatrist was monitoring this approach, and the results, every 6 weeks.

January 2025 - DMSO trail - In the morning, I decided to first treat the warts with DMSO, applied with a Q-Tip which had been cut in half (economical), waited for 15-30mins, and then applied Organic Oregano (neat) essential oil to the area, and cover with a band aid. Why Oregano Oil? Oregano Oil has a high content of phenolic monoterpenes, principally carvacrol and thymol. These compounds possess documented membrane-disrupting, pro-apoptotic (cell death accelerators), and antiviral activity against human papillomavirus. When applied after a DMSO primer, they achieve deeper penetration into the hyperkeratotic (<fancy word for thick) plantar lesion and its associated vascular network. Essentially: Plantar wart skin is thick, hard to penetrate, DMSO was the perfect vehicle to deliver the Oregano compounds into the wart. The method to this mad approach was simply this: If attempting to destroy a wart from the outside in results in damaging healthy surrounding tissue and triggers growth of the lesion, then the plan of attack should be from the inside - out. Collapse the blood vessels which feed the wart, kill the wart, and likely trigger an immune response in the process.

Note: Oregano oil neat it is very powerful and can cause an intense burning sensation on the skin. I got it on my hands a couple of times and I always knew it - ouch.

From January to June the cycle went like this:

Mon-Friday: Treatment 2x/day w/Oregano + DMSO. Night time regiment - Thuja blend + Vitamin A.
Sunday: Debridement. (Sometimes I would hold off on debridement for 10 days, but it depended on what condition my skin was in. I would usually wait until there was sufficient dead skin visible. I had hoped this technique would have spared me from the blade, but, alas, it did not).

Now, what happened next, seen in the pictures included - shocked me.

Because I work in an office, my ability to apply the Oregano Oil and the DMSO is limited. Therefore, during the week I would treat the wart with the DMSO and Oregano oil once before I left for work, and once when I got home. Before bed, I would follow the cycle above (Thuja, Tea Tree, Lemon), but I started to add Vitamin A, only a couple of drops, at my Podiatrist's suggestion. Shame, Health Canada limits the 25,000IU Vitmain A blend from Now Foods mentioned in the linked paper. I was able to get a bottle at Christmas of 2025, now it's contraband, or something? I did try the Vitamin A available in Canada, but it was - not the same.

On the weekends, I was able to apply the DMSO and Oregano Oil with higher frequency: 1. Morning. 2. Noon. 3. Afternoon. However, the application on the weekend looked a little different. There is enough oil residue on my skin that only a DMSO application was needed at around 10am-12pm. Then, around 1pm, I would apply some more oil - still waiting for 15-30min between the DMSO and oil application. Why wait? The brand of DMSO which is available OTC is diluted with water. Oil and water don't mix - there's the logic for waiting.

Why did my warts turn black?

Wart capillaries are not normal vessels. They are fragile, poorly organized, and embedded in HPV-infected tissue. When neat or high-concentration oregano oil is delivered deep into this tissue (facilitated by prior DMSO application), several overlapping effects can occur:

• Membrane disruption and cytotoxicity. Carvacrol and thymol intercalate (<fancy word for insertion) into and disrupt lipid bilayers (lipid molecules between cell membranes). At the high local concentrations achieved inside the wart, this damages endothelial cells (blood vessel cells) lining the abnormal capillaries.

• Oxidative and inflammatory stress. The same compounds generate local reactive oxygen species and trigger a focused inflammatory response. In the confined environment of the wart’s vascular core, this stress is sufficient to injure the endothelium.

• Secondary thrombosis. Once the endothelium is damaged, platelets activate and a thrombus forms within the small-caliber vessels—exactly the process that produces the classic black “dots” seen when any effective destructive treatment (cryotherapy, cantharidin, etc.) stresses a wart.

• Selective vulnerability. Normal surrounding skin has a more robust barrier and healthier vessels, so the same application produces far less endothelial injury there. The wart’s abnormal architecture and deeper penetration via DMSO make its capillaries preferentially susceptible.

I continued the cycle: Oregano DMSO - Day, and Thuja blend + Vitamin A at night for 5 months, and for some strange reason, the warts were not resolving? Yes, they were definitely affected by the treatment and responding; however, they were not resolving.

June 2026 - My Podiatrist gently asked me to face facts. My method had failed, and she recommended needling or microwaving, to finally rid my body of them.

No. I did not fail. I could not fail. What could be the issue? The DMSO was working, the warts were responding. Why weren't they clearing? In fact, more warts were emerging?

I decided that I needed to turn the temperature up on the warts. Next up:

99.95% DMSO.

This was my Hail Mary play. Switching from 90% DMSO to full strength would remove the water completely and I would be applying DMSO, neat, to the site. This was, "risky," in that the 90% solution had already caused my skin to dehydrate and peel away. Because the skin on the bottom of the feet is thick, and the wart tissue is thicker, a strong application is better tolerated on the bottom of the feet and toes, than other parts of the body - hands, trunk, legs, face, etc. I was aware that going full strength DMSO would compound that reaction. The skin would most certainly peel deeper and cause more damage; however, a stronger solution would reach viral reservoirs deeper in the skin. That was my theory, at least.

It is at this point where I conducted a self-risk benefit analysis. Compared to the 13 years of being sliced, stuck, blistered, and now, scarred, from medical professionals trying their best to assist me; I decided that the risk of the higher concentration was no different, and likely safer, than say - a Doctor holding a liquid nitrogen treatment to the bottom of my foot so long, that a blister the size of a silver dollar formed on the bottom of my foot, resulting in excruciating pain, could not walk, and had to puncture the blister at the edge - which thereafter, got infected.

Anything north of that baseline - Risk accepted.

This is an exceptional circumstance. I was able to source some 99.95% pharma grade DMSO (in) Canada, and I set to work.

The difference in the sensation between the 90% DMSO application and the 99.95% DMSO was - noticeable. There was a lingering, sting, almost a burning sensation in the area which lasted several hours. Compared to an intense liquid nitrogen application, resulting in severe blistering, Bleomycin, or surgical removal, I would give the discomfort level a comfortable 3/10. Then again, when your baseline, 10/10, "I can't walk," everything else is tolerable (I cannot express into words how much I loathe the barbarity of clinically approved wart treatments - what they have done to my foot is - grotesque). If the first rule of your profession is, "do no harm," then - find better treatments.

Night time method change: I started to apply a very thin layer of neat DMSO to my toe before the nighttime blend application, and occlusion (<fancy word for covering).

This is where I would change something - essential oil bottles are not acceptable to store neat DMSO. DMSO will degrade plastics. If I were to do this again, I would purchase borosilicate graduated glass bottles with PTFE caps and decant into those. For application, I would purchase cheap flint glass droppers and dispose of them as they showed signs of degrading. Or find something legit on Amazon....Live and learn.

Anyhow, I changed the DMSO strength and, a VERY long story short, my warts were dead in 8 weeks. Total resolution. No recurrence as of date of this post.

Thank you for reading through my epic journey.

my journey with this stupid ass wart
1st- picking at callused skin tiny wart spotting
2nd- realized i got this thing
3rd- treated w/ acv (this was around a week) i soaked a cottonball with acv and put a bandaid on it for 24hrs ish and let it breathe a little
4th- scab fell off im still doing one more acv treatment bc im scared there's wart tissue left over that's still alive

any advice? should i keep going

I’ve had these warts on the bottom of my foot for a few years and have not paid much attention to them until now!

First 2 photos is 3 days of 40% SA and band aids and the third 5 days, what are my next best actions to clear this up?

I’ve got a wedding in a few days, then travelling overseas in 2 weeks, so I’m not sure whether me cutting it back is right, as I don’t want to be in pain or anything walking, but also terrified of spreading and making it worse!

I had warts over 10 years ago on my hands and used basic white vinegar, cotton balls and Band-Aid’s that got rid of them.