I mentioned in passing a couple of weeks ago that I bought thuja, a homeopathic wart remedy, because my 2.5 year old has several very small warts that I wanted to take care of. But thuja actually wasn’t my first choice of remedies; it was more like a back up because I ran out of what I really wanted to use.
I’ve read a number of idea to take care of warts, and they all seem to be based on the same principle. Cover the wart with the substance of your choice, cover it with a cotton ball or bandaid, and repeat daily until wart is gone. The ideas I’ve seen suggested range from those I wouldn’t be interested in using – cover it with nail polish or duct tape (ouch!), to other ideas that seem like much better options. They include covering the wart with: oil from vitamin E caps, raw apple cider vinegar, or a slice of cut onion. But what I used and was very impressed by was vitamin C, in the form of powdered sodium ascorbate.
We made a paste of the powder with a tiny bit of water, covered two warts with it to test it, and then covered it with a bandaid. That night, when we peeled the bandaid away, the warts were almost entirely gone! It was really amazing. Okay, they weren’t huge warts, but they were warts, and I didn’t expect anything that fast. One more application and they would have been entirely gone. But we used the last scrapings of sodium ascorbate (SA) that we had to do this (and I don’t recommend using the commonly found form of vitamin C, citric acid- I think it would be too acidic), and since I buy the SA online, I knew I couldn’t just run out and buy more. (I buy the medical grade sodium ascorbate from Bronson Lab, in the kilo container – I don’t know if they have smaller containers or not.) Hence my purchase of the thuja.
When I was about eight years old, I had a wart on my foot, and my mother got rid of it by applying nightly poultices of hot cornmeal. I don’t know where she got the idea from – I thought she told me years ago that she saw it in Back to Eden by Jethro Kloss, but when I looked it up there recently, I didn’t see it. Anyway, wherever she got it from, it worked. I seem to remember that she heated the cornmeal with some water, until it was very hot, and then put it inside a bag. She put a towel over my foot, then put the hot cornmeal poultice over the towel (it would have burnt the skin without the towel there), then covered it with a towel again. She left it on for a few minutes, until it started cooling down, I think. Amazing how so many years later I can remember it. Anyway, I don’t remember how many applications it took, but the wart disappeared and there’s absolutely no sign to show there was ever anything there.
On the other hand, my sister had warts when she was about ten or eleven, and used over the counter wart medicine which was supposed to burn it off; it was painful for her to use. I remember it leaving white marks on her skin, and after it all, the warts came back. I definitely would try any and all of the above natural remedies before using any over the counter wart medication.
Believe it or not, I keep forgetting to order the sodium ascorbate, which is an important anti-cold ingredient around here – I must order some more!
Avivah
