This post contains verruca pictures and is probably NSFW. It’s certainly not safe for looking at when you’re eating your dinner anyway.
But I asked what you wanted, and what you wanted was verruca. So here goes.
The backstory
I’ve had a verruca for about two years. For ages it was tiny and I didn’t take much notice of it. Then it started to get bigger, and really sore. Eventually I went to the doctors, and when he saw it, he made that sucking-air-through-their-teeth noise that plasterers make before telling you it’s going to cost thousands to fix your ceiling.
He said, ‘That must really hurt, like walking on a pebble.’ (I should point out, the verruca is right on the ball of my foot. Where all your weight goes.) I’m afraid it didn’t occur to me to photograph the verruca at this point, so you’ll just have to imagine it.
He continued, ‘That’s really a nasty-looking verruca.’ He pointed to another tiny verruca I hadn’t even noticed. He said, ‘That’s a good size for a verruca. Whereas this one…’ Then he made that noise again.
These are not things you want to hear from your doctor. I thought, ‘But I’m supposed to be walking the River Trent, from one end to the other, in five months time. It’s 185 miles! I can’t walk them like this! I thought they’d be able to fix it. Bugger.’
He also told me the NHS don’t treat verrucas any more. Unless you’re pregnant. And getting pregnant specially seemed a bit excessive. He suggested I saw a chiropodist privately.
At this point the verruca was painful to walk on all the time, unless I was wearing my walking boots (which are heavily padded and I guess take the weight off that bit of your foot). Even in walking boots my foot would be painful after walking a mile or so. There was no way I could walk ten miles a day.
I decided I was desperate and phoned a private chiropodist, but it turned out she’s off work long-term with a bad back and didn’t know of any other chiropodists in the area. She said a lot of the medical treatments like liquid nitrogen and salicylic acid cause more problems than they solve. Then she said something I really wasn’t expecting.
She suggested I try sticking gaffer tape on it. I thought, ‘What am I? A piece of audio equipment with a loose connection?’ But out loud I said, ‘Gaffer tape?!’
She said, ‘No-one knows why it works. But covering it with gaffer tape seems to make them go away, for some people.’ So I googled, discovered she wasn’t just having a laugh and I tried it.
Getting rid of verrucas, the gaffer tape method
My tips:
The gaffer tape doesn’t stay on very well. The internet said use a piece that just covers the verruca, but when I did that, it came off straight away.
Then I tried using huge bits of gaffer tape, and going a bit round the sides of my foot. It’s lucky my boyfriend is a sound engineer and is therefore attracted to things with gaffer tape stuck on them.
Finally I came up with the plan of using a matchbox sized piece of gaffer tape, sticking round the edges with surgical tape to hold it on. (The stuff that’s designed to hold bandages on, that looks like white fabricy/papery sellotape. It’s a couple of pounds from the chemists.) This worked best.
Results:
The very first attempt with the gaffer tape, after about three days, I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer and took the gaffer tape off to look underneath. To my total amazement, the whole top of the verruca came off (it was stuck to the gaffer tape), leaving a kind of hole in my foot, with powdery dead cells in it.
This was a good result. But it was totally disgusting. Here’s a picture.
You can see the little one above it.
I eventually decided I should try to get as much of the disgusting powdery dead verruca out of the hole as possible. I picked it out with my finger as much as I could bear to. But it was the most disturbing thing I’ve ever done. I WAS PUTTING MY FINGER INTO A HOLE IN MY BODY THAT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE THERE AT ALL AND PICKING OUT DEAD ALIEN CELLS.
Ross made me wash my hands three times before he’d even touch me after that.
I had this hopeful idea that the whole thing was dead, and once the powdery stuff came out, it would just be my foot underneath and it could all get better.
Unfortunately, the verruca was a bit too big for that. I should explain, that by this point, my whole foot around it was really hard, and sore and achey. There was really built up dead skin surrounding it too – I guess the foot’s attempt to cushion the verruca and stop it causing so much pain.
I put more gaffer tape on and went on with the treatment. Every few days I would take it off and wash and dry the foot and then let it air for a few hours or overnight. I’d have a morbid look at it and you could see (once the powdery stuff was gone) that there was still definitely verruca there.
Sometimes it seemed as if the verruca was growing to fill the hole again, but I think it was more that some of the surrounding dead skin was coming away and the swelling going down, to the current size of the verruca. I guess less cushioning was needed now.
Here’s the verruca after a couple of weeks. It kind of looks worse, but that’s partly the dead skin around it all coming away.
I kept photographing it every time I changed the gaffer tape – out of scientific curiosity – but you probably don’t need to see all the pictures.
After maybe a month it seemed like we weren’t getting any more progress. And I still had a pretty big verruca. So I did a lot of googling for other remedies.
Here’s some verruca treatment links that had quite a bit of discussion. I decided to try various suggested remedies. What follows is an account of how I got on, along with my scientific assessment of most of the remedies.
http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/health-fitness/4236-wart-removal.html
http://www.themockturtle.com/Amock/viewtopic.php?t=10674&p=681146
http://www.patient.co.uk/forums/discuss/vinegar-vinegar-and-more-vinegar-you-don-t-need-to-p–8283
Getting rid of verrucas, the visualisation method
Several people talked about just wishing the verruca away and it going. Well, my scientist head said, ‘Maybe that was just a coincidence. What about all the people who wished it away and it didn’t go?’
But my scientist head also knows that the mind/brain and immune system are totally interconnected and that science has no idea why verrucas go sometimes and not others. It does seem like sooner or later your body decides to get rid of the verruca – or works out how to get rid of it. So why couldn’t your thoughts influence that?
So I tried:
Imagining little soldiers in my body, cutting the verruca’s supply lines with big scissors.
Talking to my foot (yes, I felt a bit silly) and telling it what a brave little foot it was and that we’d defeat the verruca together.
Massaging my foot. I realised that I’d been kind of avoiding the whole front part of that foot as much as possible, like it wasn’t part of me any more. I decided to reclaim my foot! If nothing else, this helped a bit with the achy soreness in that part of the foot.
I’ve no idea (and no way of knowing) whether any of these approaches worked really. As with so many things though, I think psychologically, the sense that there is something useful you can do (even if it doesn’t really make a difference), is good for your morale. And actually, immune system functioning is highly influenced by how you feel. So it’s worth a shot, if nothing else.
Getting rid of verrucas, the most disgusting method
(seriously, don’t read this if you’re squeamish)
More than one internet commentator mentioned an old wives tale that eating a bit of your verruca worked. Yes, I thought it sounded minging. But, again, my science head told me that,
a) Old wives tales often do work, that’s why they got passed on for so long. It’s called empiricism…
b) That there are antigen presenting cells in the walls of your stomach. Their job (if you’ll forgive my imperfectly-remembered undergraduate immunology) is to check the stuff in your stomach for any dangerous viruses or bacteria. And if they find any, to show them to other cells and get them to make antibodies to attack them.
So it made perfect logical sense to me that eating a bit of your verruca – with the cells full of verruca virus – would make your body start noticing it should be attacking it. So I did it. Only a tiny bit. And yes it was horrible to think about. But if you tried not to think about it, it was basically like eating a bit of fingernail.
This is another thing I don’t really have a way of saying if it worked or not, cos I was trying lots of different things at once. If I’d had lots of feet with identical verrucas, I could have done a randomised control trial. But I just have two feet, and one giant verruca and I just wanted to get rid of the horrible thing.
I’m afraid my desire to be rid of the verruca, especially in time for walking the whole of the River Trent on one of said feet, was greater than my commitment to the furtherance of scientific knowledge.
Getting rid of verrucas, the tea tree oil method
Several people online seemed to think that putting tea tree oil on the verruca would get rid of it, ‘in a week’. I think those people had smaller verrucas than me.
After the gaffer tape didn’t really seem to have much effect any more, I tried adding tea tree oil. I think it did help. Definitely for the first week or so, it did more dying and going powdery. Particularly (it seemed) if I left it open, instead of also covering it with gaffer tape.
Getting rid of verrucas, the nail varnish method
I was very sceptical about this. Someone online claimed it was because it stopped UV light getting to the verruca. But it did its most ferocious growing in the winter, I don’t think my verruca was very UV light dependent.
A friend of mine said she’d heard it was about cutting off its oxygen. Now that made sense to me. The verruca is a pretty undifferentiated mass of cells – it doesn’t have your blood vessels delivering oxygen like your legit cells do. So I assumed it’s partly dependent on oxygen diffusing in from outside your body. If you can cut off (or reduce) its oxygen supply, that will at the very least stress the verruca-infected cells, and make them more vulnerable to your immune system.
So, I put nail varnish on the big one, and also on the little one the doctor mentioned, which I’d mostly been ignoring. The little one was gone in about a fortnight. It doesn’t seem as effective on the big one, but maybe that’s just cos there’s so much to get rid of.
Getting rid of verrucas, the banana-skin method
As bananas have loads of interesting biochemically-active stuff in them I was prepared to give this a go. Particularly as they turn brown in air, so I assume they are reducing (i.e. they like sticking to oxygen). This fitted with the oxygen theory. So I tried it.
The internet said to take a small piece of banana skin and put it inner side onto the verruca. Then cover it with a plaster. Hedging my bets, I went for gaffer tape over the banana skin, and then the surgical tape. I thought it would be uncomfy, but actually, banana skins are pretty squashy, and you can happily walk around with a bit strapped to your foot.
I have to say I think this worked too. After a week of banana skin the verruca was noticeably smaller. It’s also a handy reminder to eat more bananas, and bananas are good for you, so that’s a good thing…
But my impression is that all of these methods had less effect as time wore on. So my advice would be to try them one after another. And don’t wait until your verruca is so big it makes the doctor gasp before you start.
I’ve still got a verruca, but it’s a manageable size now and I can easily walk ten or so miles a day on it, without any apparent ill-effects. So, in the race between looming Trent walk and verruca, it seems I have just about won. Thank god.
A verruca, yesterday
However, I’ll keep you posted as the walk goes on.
Tales from the River 
Grim yet fascinating stuff,Sophe!I couldn’t help being reminded of Veruca Salt-one of the obnoxious kids that got her comeuppance in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.Maybe there is a ‘salt’ that exists/did exist,historically,hence the etymology of the character’s name.Worth a try,eh?
The photos also made me think of ‘Walking On The Moon’by tThe Police!
Happy trails,dude!
hi I am going on holiday in September an have several verruca’s on each foot an two on my toe I now think I have one on my finger as looks exactly the same as the ones on my foot and is more noticeable when I’ve been in water but I didn’t think was possible to get one on your finger. I have tired all the creams an bazooka that verruca even had them frozen by my doctor twice but they only seem to be spreading an getting bigger, please help I don’t know what to do next an am so embarrassed about getting my feet out on holiday xxx
I’d try either nail varnish, banana skins or gaffer tape. Good luck!
Hi, my so had a nasty one on his foot right under his little toe. After trying many things, like banana skin, the medication that the GP prescribed( sallicilic acid lotion), freezing it…costing a lot of money…nothing helped!
One day I found at the chemist these medicated plasters for corns( the ones with sallicilic acid- basically aspirin). The cost is about £2 for a packet of 3 if I remember well. I used those and wrapped them with duct tape as well to suffocate the nasty thing, and guess what? In less then a week the verruca fell of living a little hole. Cheap and quick, please try it !
Hi all,
my two boys have had verrucas similiar to yourselves. We found that the homeopathic route was the only successful one using Thuja tablets. For more details check out my post Verruca trouble on my blog
arewethereyetmammy.wordpress.com
Don’t worry go to your holiday just when swimming or near water wear protective footwear you can buy swimming socks from your pharmacy
Hi
Can I just say I had a verruca on my foot for over a year,my friend suggested grey/silver coloured duct tape.Iput it on my foot every night and changed it the next night for over a month.You also have to file it and it worked,give it a try!good luck.
Try cider vinegar at night using cotton wool and a plaster over it to keep it on. I’ve got rid of a couple using this method
I know this must sound gross but I’d suggest what I’ve done in the past both on me and family and have luckily been successful in getting rid of, killing verrucas. I’d disinfect a needle (boiling water, alcohol, antiseptic) and get comfortable then slowly pick at the verruca, pick away all the skin, as you pick away little bits of skin, getting deeper into the verruca, you come across little black dots and if you carefully grab the end of these, you can pull them out like little threads. Somehow if you get them and also pull away and pick out all the dead skin surrounding it, a couple of treatments and verrucas almost always go – 4 times out of 5 I’d say based on my experience with my mum, sister, niece, self, friend. Good luck x
bye eck that’s troublesome foot saga, glad you’ve got it to the point where ya can do the story march x x
Cheers Stu and Pat, it’s getting even smaller now. Maybe I should do a daily verruca update pic for the blog as we go along?:-)
just use a silver nitrate pen, itll burn off in a few days. it doesnt hurt. its a caustic pencil . 2quid from chemist. make sure its silver nitrate
I used a whole box of silver nitrate pens, didnt help at all, Salactol helps more. The verruca fell off once and grew again.
I,m trying the banana skin, just used it once and seems to be working. Forgot to say , my 8 year old got the verruca. I,m desperate, so I booked an appointment with a podiatrist next week, hope she,s good.
Good luck, people with your verrucas, they,re really nasty things!
Get well to your daughter
I got rid of mine with dandelion juice-snap green stem off and it should have a little bit of white milky juice around the edge, apply daily.
Ooo, I’d not heard that tip, cheers! We are definitely passing plenty of dandelions, I’ll give it a try.
It is true, is working!
Haha, thank you for sharing your verruca story Sophia. Very honest and amusing! I’ve been using the bazuka gel for months, picking off the layer, filing it and putting a new layer on each night but mine still hasn’t gone away. I’m now trying Thuja (homeopathic) tablets and someone has said the gel works best if you don’t follow the instructions and just keep adding layers of the gel every day without picking them off until the whole thing falls off. Fingers crossed. I’ll let you know if I have any success!
Loved your story, I have tried the gaffer tape and banana skin methods and had similar results to you. Trying the banana skin method again at the moment, day two today. Good results after the first day in softening up the verruca and its already left a huge crater in my foot. My verruca or planter wart is in my heel, goes in about half an inch…disgusting! Had it for over ten years. What method have you used for getting rid of the thick dead skin on your foot around the hole?
I found that as the verruca got smaller, the built-up dead skin around it started to come off too. You can see in (I think) the second photo how the skin was sort of breaking up and flaking off. I think the gaffer tape and banana helps with that, cos it softens it up.
Good luck!
I have had my vuruca since I was 3 I am now I am 13 and they still haven’t gone also I am going to try the banana skin and I have used ever other treatment if you have any other ideas plz tell me
Good luck, hope the banana skin works!
I’ve read your story and I hope you get rid of it! I’ve had 9 on the ball of one foot for about 5-6 yrs. 😦 Not good. And I’ve tried BAZOOKA- a non worker, cutting tioll it bleeds, and soaking in sea salt and vinegar- made it smaller. I’ve tried putting tea tree oil and covering it with tape but it just made it ache. I even gave honey a shot! After that didnt work I found your site and I’m giving the whole nail polish thing a go. If that doesnt then Maybe i’ll try the eating part of it thing. 😀 Thank you so much for your help!!
I had about a dozen on my foot from the age of 7 until 21 and tried just about everything! Banana skin, duct tape, freezing, salicylic acid etc all had a short term effect but no lasting results. Then, about 2 weeks ago, I developed a bit of eczema just above the verrucas so applied some Fucibet cream (fusidic acid/betamethasone) which I had been given for another patch of eczema months previously. The verrucas started to get smaller and smaller after that, so I began to apply the cream to them directly and now they are completely gone. It feels so insane that I’ve been plagued by them for most of my life and now they’ve gone so quickly! I don’t usually comment on these sorts of things, but this is such a sensitive subject for me as I have been so paranoid and embarrassed about my feet for years. So I’m trying to spread the word for anyone out there in the same position – try Fucibet!
An extra tip, worth knowing, thanks!
Hi,
After reading about your remedy I began searching through my medicine cupboard as I have suffered from Psoriasis for many years. Sure enough I found some Fucidin Cream, which includes the ingredients Fusidic Adic. That was 2 weeks ago, I have been gradually removing the dead skin and parts of the ‘thing’ each day with a blade scraper so I can get to the ‘thing’ and adding new cream. I am pleased to say the cream seems to be working! It has reduced significantly in size and the pain is subsiding.
Much appreciated you took the time to write on here and I hope my comments helps someone else.
I’ve only just seen your comment after randomly remembering this page – I’m so glad it worked for you! I have recommended it to a couple of friends who I recently discovered also had verrucas and theirs went quickly as well! Now to spread the word even further..!
Have been reading your bit on verruca with much interest.I have a grand daughter with one large that that looks like yours at the moment trying corn pad removers she plays sport hard to keep anything on so like the thought of trying the cream. How is yours now!!!
Mine was completely gone about six weeks after writing this, and I’ve never had one since. Touch wood:-).
I wanted to just reply to say thanks for this, it worked on my HUGE verruca that I have had for years and years. You just have to be patient. Amazing tip, thanks for sharing. I finally have lovely feet!
try with your own piss, use a piece of cotton and let it work all the night
or try with the swedish bitter, a mix of plants. here you have the link to maria treben’s book. http://www.amazon.com/Through-Pharmacy-English-Maria-Treben/dp/B0006NZPLK
i’ve tried the swedish bitter. you have to go on and on with it for about a month or so. also take care to use some hand-cream around the verruca, in order not to damage your skin. the bitter contains alcohol.
good luck
monica .
Keep up the good work! I’m just rid of two 10 year old veruccas after 12 months of treatment. I too tried all the above – I wanted to share what worked so that others might see it and ‘keep the faith’!
1) Is it a verucca?
‘Thought mine was just hard skin. Turns out callouses maintain the subtle pattern of your skin surface – veruccas don’t. Also, once you’re through to the verucca, salicylic acid will turn the infected tissue black.
2) Not all veruccas are one solid thing – mine both turned out to be patches of infection approx. 6cm x 3cm quite deep in the skin. Good reason not to try the ‘hack it out’ cure…
3) Maybe the folksy ‘cures’ do work, but try keeping them up for a year! Here what worked for me:
* Apply once-a-day strength salicylic acid gel TWICE a day.
* Cover with ‘self adhesive wound dressings’ – way superior to plasters.
* Once dead skin has built up, gently slough it off in the shower using a hard skin ‘foot sponge’. Don’t be tempted to scrape away – you’ll just make it bleed and risk spreading the infection.
* If the area isn’t too weepy, reapply the gel. If it is too ‘raw’, dress it and let it heal for a day, then carry on with the gel.
* Repeat until not even a few tiny black specks remain in any layers of your skin.
It will hurt.
You will get bored.
You will not spread the infection if you take all the recommended precautions (separate towels and bath mats, keeping it covered, etc.) though I always made sure I was last in the shower!
Okay, I’m guessing that both little white well-like holes on the bottom of both of my big toes are verrucas 😦 thanks for the article, it’s VERY helpful.
*off to trying all these weird and wonderful tips*
Good, luck, hope it works!
I’ve got a couple of big ones on the top of the side of my big toe and the one next to it where they touch, and I’ve had them for about 3 years now. I want them gone by the summer so that I can wear flip flops and sandals without being completely embarrassed. Thanks for the tips – gonna try them all out.
Great i now know how to get rid of mine. Ive 21 and im bloody sick of them. The nailvarnish doesnt work for me but im willing to try banana as i am currently trying to lose weight. Yum healthy
Well just read this and it looks bit like my case, I got my 1st at 14 in 25 in less then a week and that same varruca, plus lots more are still on my feet, I’ve tried the acids, the freezing, the bathing and filing, the gaffa tape and they’re all still there… I also have 1 on the ball of my foot which is by far the most painful and pretty big, fed up I went to my doctor who said I’m very unfortunate as they usually go after about 2 years and there’s nowt more then can already do and and advised me to cook it up on the Internet… So here I am… Has yours fine now? Which treatment worked best in the long run or which have you continued to use? I’ve had enough of mine after almost 11 years I want them gone!
Hiya Maggie, yes, I should really have told everyone, but by the time we finished doing Tales from the River, my verrucas were all totally gone.
I couldn’t say really what method worked best. As you can see from my tale above, I think several methods worked a bit.
I think once the verruca was getting a lot smaller, my body had just got the hang of fighting it really.
The ones I would def recommend people to try are probably:-
1. Gaffer tape plus banana skin
2. Nail varnish
3. Visualisation & talking to it (I know it feels a bit silly, but what have you got to lose?)
4. Eating a bit of it (sorry, I know it’s disgusting, but there’s solid biological reasons for thinking it should work, and it only takes a few seconds).
hi everyone. i’ve seen a video on youtube with a girl that is using the vinegar to get rid of her verruca. i actually have 5 and i’ve tried with vinegar. it works. but… you have to do it every single day. and after 3 weeks i stoped the treatment. i also use now “bitter from Sweden” , a mix between plants and alcohol, during the night, as i sad before. i’ve seen it works on my bf’s verrucas… it also works the it’s own urine during the night. maybe all work, but… it takes time. about 45 days but continuously??? i’ve read that the verrucas appears because of a weak immunity and because of the stress…. good luck everyone
Sorry but why would ANYONE eat their verrucas that could just make you sick ugh ugh GROSS!!!!!
I thought I’d explained pretty thoroughly WHY in the post. But, to summarise, it was to encourage my immune system to notice the virus and attack it and get rid of the verruca.
Why do you think it could make me sick? In what way?
Hello – have been reading through the comments and am unsure which method to adopt. I have had verrucas since I was about 15 (now 21) and it started off as one. Now I have twelve across both feet as well as 7 warts on my fingers. I have tried bazuka and freeze kits. I have been to the doctor who told me the NHS do not treat them. They gave me salictic acid which did nothing. I have been to the chiropodist who did nothing but rip me off, cause me a lot of pain and aggravate them which resulted another three to grow. At this point does anyone know what would be the best course of action?
Thanks.
Rebecca! I had two warts; one on my arm and one on my left knee cap. It took two weeks to get rid of these. Get bazooka (the red box) File down the wart until it bleeds then add the bazooka. It’ll sting like hell, but only for a few seconds, keep doing for a few days, it really doesnt take long to go doing this. Peel the white stuff off. It’ll take the top off of the wart and it may be pussie but if you leave it for a few hours then re-apply the bazooka it’ll work, reallt well. I have the smallest scar from my warts that I can’t even see anymore.
Hope this helps! Just don’t mind the pain.
I’m fourteen and this only worked with my warts, not my verrucas.
Hi Rebecca, that sounds really annoying! See my answer to Maggie above.
The thing to remember is your body can get rid of the verrucas. Really it can. It just hasn’t realised it should be doing it yet. Sooner or later it will, so don’t give up hope!
I’d probably start with gaffer tape or banana skin, cos they aren’t that difficult to do. And stick with whichever method you’re trying for at least a couple of weeks to see if you see any effect. It took me about 8 months altogether to get rid of my biggest one.
What you could do, as you’ve got several on both feet, is a scientific experiment! Try one method on the ones on one foot, and one method on the ones on the other foot, and compare after a month. Take photos of the verrucas before you start (and maybe every week after that) so that you have something to compare it to to see if there’s any change. (Otherwise you find yourself staring at the verruca going, ‘Is this bigger, or smaller now?’)
Good luck!
Awesome blog! One of my sons has 30 on his right foot, 8 on his left foot and numerous on his hands! He has 3 massive ones, like your large one on his right foot, poor lad. He is 19 years old and had them for 9 years. My 22 year old son had 6 months of cryotherapy from the docs (yes, they went all guns out for him, and far more than recommended), but it had no effect, so he still has them. Now my 8 year old has just got one! Aaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!! Interestingly enough, the 19 year old had warts on his hands when he was tiny, but they disappeared completely for about 3 years, and then more grew! I don’t think their immune system is sluggish either, as they are so healthy, and my youngest two havent had a single day off school for three years. Going to try the banana skin method. We get through multiple bananas every week, and I figure we have nothing to lose. Wish us luck!
Incidentally my husband, myself and our 9 year old are free of them, and the whole family walk round bare foot. Maybe we are immune?
We used the banana skin method on my son. Took about six weeks but worked!
Hi Sophie, Just reading through this and i found it very interesting so thank you for this! My feet have been terrible! I caught my first verrucas when i was about 15-16 from the local swimming pool. I’m now 18 and they have almost completely gone!They spread themselves in the same place as your but on the other side so it was very painful, i also had one growing in my little toe (I was worried it would grow right through!) …They then spread themselves to my heal about 3 of them huddled together…Then they decided to spread to my other foot! This must have been from getting out the shower/bath with wet feet and standing in that pool of water. A nasty wart grew on my toe next to my big toe, I started college last year and in the summer i would put a little plaster over it when i wore sandals/flip flops because i would be really embarrassed. I started to get really self conscious about them and it would make me cry. I worried a lot if my friends saw them. I soon found out that if you stick a plaster over them to hide them…they spread more. So round my toe i had one big nasty wart and a few little ones, i couldn’t bend my toe it was so painful. Throughout all of this i was using bazuka extra strength but it would cancel out the warts/verrucas and peel my skin away. It was really depressing me because i had all these verrucas and my skin was in tatters from all the acid burning at it, so my mum had enough, she took me to the doctors and the doctor had a look. He drew me a diagram of what happens when a wart buries itself in your skin. He said your immune system thinks they are meant to be there so they don’t bother fighting them off. He also said but eventually your immune system realizes they’re not. He drew a straight line with what looked like a semicircle in the middle (like a dip) He said the acid in Bezuka just burns off the top layer of the verruca and doesn’t reach the core, which results in your verruca staying. He suggested i make another appointment with him to have them cut out which would be very painful and i wouldn’t be able to walk on it for a while, this would be a massive problem for me as 1. i had loads and 2. i was still in college and being a hairdresser i’m on my feet 24/7. He said i would be recovering for about 1-2 weeks. The interesting point to my story is, he gave me a couple of sheets suggesting things i should try on my verrucas, for example, soaking your feet in a bowl of vinegar because it had a lot of acid in it, squeezing lemon juice on them and applying a small plaster, again because of the acid, The juice from a dandelion stem on them and applying a small plaster, he had no idea why he just told me that can work. He said verrucas need ultraviolet light in order to grow, so he suggested getting a freezing agent from the supermarket, freeze all verrucas, apply black nail varnish and stick some duct/gaffer tape over it! I thought.. whaaaat!? So… for a couple of days i would file down my verrucas and use the scholl freezing agent, apply it for about 30 seconds to a minute, which was very painful! After a week of doing this, i painted on some black nail varnish and stuck tape over them, yes my feet did look ridiculous but they were hidden from my socks luckily! A week passed and i took the tape off, amazingly, the group of verrucas on my left foot had vanished! They are completely gone now as well as the little one on my toe. On my right foot they also disappeared. My toe on the other hand was a little more stubborn, yes all the verrucas round my toe had left me alone but the wart was still a major issue. Where i had been freezing the verrucas and wart, my skin had burned so much its now peeling away at my feet, i decided to leave it alone for a while so my skin would grow back. I used those scrubbing stones for hard skin so it wouldn’t peel away like a madman. I noticed a few weeks ago the wart started to get smaller, i could have cried i was so happy. I soaked my feet in a bowl of vinegar for about minutes. Today the wart is completely gone but my skin still carries on peeling away. From having millions of verrucas and a big nasty wart to nothing, i am so happy! I can now go out wearing flip flops without having to cover my feet in plasters! So a freezing agent, black nail varnish and tape really works! I hope this was helpful to others and im glad im not the only one with this embarrassing problem, using these bizarre remedies! xxx
Very interesting.
Many different methods.
My wife has chronic verrucas on her feet to the point she struggled to walk. She tried all the various creams and potions.She works in a pharmacist so she got good advice.
Eventually she went to the doctor and had three or four sessions with the liquid nitrogen burning them out.
It just made them more painful.
She was attending a course at a local hospital on skin disorders given by the local consultant. She asked him after the lecture what she could possibly do.
He recommended banana skins with duct tape.
She was taken aback as I had already researched on the web and came to the same conclusion.
She tried it religiously for 2 or 3 months and it really worked. We were amazed. She had them for 2 years and gone in 2 months.
My daughter soon got them and she tried the banana skins and they went also, after time.
Now however I have got them so I will be our houshold experiment number three.
I hope it works for me….
See, bananas are magic! Glad it worked for your wife and daughter. Good luck getting rid of yours, they are nasty little buggers.
Wow! Might try banana skin. I have 4 verruca’s on my heel, normal-ish size, maybe a little bit bigger, and it often hurts when I don’t have my heel on the ground. First started when I got a very small stone stuck in my foot, stupidly got it out with a safetypin, and the next day, had a verruca! That went after two years, then came 4 more! So I’ll try nail varnish and banana skin. Thanks for helping!
Thank you very much for this information. I have about 7 tiny verrucas and one giant one. I tried the nail varnish on it and now I wait. I am expecting the smaller ones to slightly or hopefully completely disappear, but you never know. This verruca is very painful nowadays as I wear my shoes all day and am constantly on the move. It is late and I will see what has happened in the morning 🙂
Hi, thanks I might give the banana’s a go – I have had surgery twice, the first time on both feet about 7 years ago. I chucked out all my socks/shoes after to eliminate chance of re-infecting myself and they came back on one foot 4 years later. The patch was bigger and all joined together, deep and painful so I convinced the surgeon to go really deep (would show you the picture if you tell me how to upload it) and now only 4 months later another is back. I am devastated.
I saw the surgeon today who was gobsmacked and now he is referring me to a dermatologist and told me to use salicylic acid/duct tape whilst waiting. I have tried acids before, liquid nitrogen, aldara cream, all didn’t help. I used to cut they out as much as I could myself with a blade but it was like pruning roses.
I have nothing to lose so will try some of your ideas, don’t know if I have enough guts to eat some – a friend had a chemo drug injected into the back of hers and it fell out, might consider that too if it is still there by the time I see the dermatologist.
Wish me luck……….
i’m trying with the banana skin and it’s working, i feel the surface of the verruca changing… i had enough of vinegar, still it works fine during the night. good luck to you!
I have a smallish verruca on my foot. Will the banana thing work in 3 weeks? Its because I have a residential trip with my school then. Please help!
It took months to get rid of mine Maryam, but that was pretty big to start with. The little one went in a couple of weeks. Depends how big your verucca is.
My daughter has 2 small ones on her heel. We’ve tried the freeze method and that seemed to just turn her skin hard and white. So we’re now trying the Bazooka gel (we’re at day2) – but they have gone even whiter but you can see the centres. I have no idea how to tell whether they are gone or not as I can’t see anthing black in there now. Any idea how long we go on applying this stuff?
By the way – meant to say that this is by far the best and most useful information on the www that I have found about verrucas. Thanks ever so much Sophia for starting it off. 😉
It still makes me laugh that of all the sensible, grown up, professional things I’ve written in my life, it’s this post about my disgusting verruca that gets the most hits. But glad to be of service!
No idea I’m afraid, I didn’t find the bazooka stuff that useful.
Hey, i have 2 verrucas, one on the little pinkie toe on my left foot, and one on the big toe on my right foot, and today i decided to give myself a mini operation on my little one…. not the best idea. Also, Bazooka gel just burns off the top of the verrucas – they don’t completely go, they just get very sore then come back again later. I suggest freezing them then painting them over with black nail varnish, and I will try this later because i find verrucas really sore and unattractive. They really bug me and now i have done the mini op on my pinkie, it is just bleeding everywhere and it hurts. so bad. Oh and just a quick fact… I’m 11.
Sudo creme. I had one about the size of a penny and I had it zapped and cut out and was on crutches for a while even, until I put sudo creme on it to soften it at night, so it wouldn’t be as painful the next morning, it killed it and now it is gone.!!
Hi Sophia. Amazing blog! You are the verruca guru!
I’m eager to speak with people who swear by a home remedy! I work as an Assistant Producer on a new Health Show and we have heard of lots of people having success with these and other treatments. Like duct tape for warts, banana peel for verrucas, vodka for athlete’s foot or liquorice for corns and calluses. We’d love to speak with you and with anyone who is keen to share their home remedies! Just email: health@outlineproductions.co.uk
Mine is massive as well. Last year I tried a series of liquid nitrogen treatment (extremely painfully) and in the end when that did work resulted in electro surgery which didn’t hurt. Unfortunately it came back and just as big now. So I’m now on duct tape. Will try banana if this doesn’t work
Thanks for the information in both the posts and the comments. For anyone considering eating a bit, perhaps I can recommend the recipe at the bottom of this page: http://www.secretsofnaturalhealth.com/verrucas.html
Sounds delicious! 🙂
Maybe the banana peel does the trick because it’s radioactive; http://chemistry.about.com/b/2011/07/10/bananas-are-radioactive.htm. If that is the case, the results may be faster with a slice of brazil nut, since they contain approximately five times the radioactivity of bananas!
Anyone want to give it a try?
Try taking per day one each of vitamin c’ cod liver oil and calcium tablets works for warts may work for veruccas
Hi Sophia,
I would love to talk to more verruca sufferers, following on from Paul’s comment. We love the idea of natural remedies, and we’re looking to put together a team of volunteers to test them out for a TV programme.
For more information and an informal chat, please get in touch at graceo@outlineproductions.co.uk.
Thanks so much,
Grace x
Hi everyone,
These people from Outline Productions are making a TV programme about home remedies. One show will be about feet (or maybe just verrucas?). They want people who’ve got verrucas who are willing to test out one of the remedies above and appear in the TV show.
If you are up for that, get in touch with Grace.
Good luck with getting rid of your verrucas!
Cheers,
Soph
Thank you!
It’s me again
I’ve found an easy two week way of getting rid of warts, as I told Rebecca.
But my verruca’s just won’t go!
Need help, will try eating them (Still havent brought myself to do that yet)
CheersXx
It worked! The damn thing fell out leaving a deep crater on my foot. Awesome!. Question is now how much longer should I keep the duct tape on?
Awesome! I dunno. I found with mine, a load of it fell out, but there was still some verruca there. So wait a few days and see if yours is the same.
Will do. Def a lot less hassle than when I had electrosurgery. And cheaper.
A randomised control trial has just concluded that gaffer tape works better than freezing them – for warts, on children’s arms. Seems likely the same would be true for verrucas.
http://t.co/ygdk0YJ37t
Actually that trial is over a decade old – although there has been a much more up to date one in 2012 – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22972052. It reviews all the bazuka type treatments.
The problem is all these trials show that no one method is better than any other. Which doesn’t leave much hope for sufferers! The silver nitrate pencils got rid of mine in the end.
Aha, my mistake, I didn’t see the date. Thanks!
Omg I have the same verrca on my foot same size I must of had it for as long as I remember about 7 years. It never bothered me until about a year ago when it go really big and I started getting others. I now have about 6 on my feet. Doctors gave me Salactol it looked like it made them abit better but still didn’t go and am still using it every night since I have been taking Salactol I have got more smaller ones. I have just read this and I have put Salactol on banana skin over and duk tape. It’s really getting down as I can’t wear the shoes I want to over this matter. Thanks for blogging this!
I had a horrible planters wart when I was a teenager, I tried everything possible to get rid of it. Someone told me to have my preacher buy it, I know, sounds crazy. One Sunday after church, ask my preacher if he would buy it, one week later it was COMPLETELY GONE. I know, if it didn’t happen to me I would also say that is the dumbest thing I had ever heard. I now am 41, had 7 on my feet about 3 months ago. I asked my fiancé to buy them. Of course he thought I had lost my mind but still gave me a penny. All disappeared within a week except for one. Maybe if he would have believed, ALL truly would be gone. Cannot hurt to try.
I hate to be a banana basher, but we have been taping banana peel to our 3yo’s toe every night for a week and it hasn’t really made any noticable diffrence at all, apart from the black oxidised banana that he peels off in the morning. The only good thing about it has been him eating the fruity part from the sliced banana each time (not the bit with verruca on it) so at least he was getting a bit of his 5-a-day.
We are now trying a plaster (band-aid for those of you in the U.S) evewith a couple of drops of tea tree oil on it (from the bodyshop) instead. Will post an update if there is any noticeable improvement.
Verruca Veteran of 11 years. Not sure what actually did it out of this lot but keep doing all of the below until they’re done;
Thuja (homeopathic) available from a well known UK High St health store). Taken internally.
Soaking verrucae twice daily in apple cider vinegar and taking a shot of same vinegar with orange juice internally (not the same stuff that you soaked your feet in though!)
A clove of garlic (one segment from a bulb) chopped and taken internally (or the supplements bought in supermarkets).
Alcohol hand gel (medical grade) bought from online stores and rubbed on them thrice daily.
Tape it up with black plastic tape.
Spent a small fortune on freezing kits and bazooka and they didn’t work.
Good luck friends and scope it out as a year long project if necc’. Hopefully not though!
Had a very small verruca on my foot (between my heel and instep)12 years ago that I got liquid nitro treatment on. Unfortunately it made it spread in a ring around the original site. Tried salacylic acid and developed a food intolerance to salicylate as a result with no improvement, had them surgically cut out……grew back, lasered out…..grew back, bleomycen (skin cancer drug) injections…….grew back (probably the most effective but must have missed a few cells). I’ve also tried cider vinegar, Aldara cream and tea tree oil……..and it’s still there as big as ever!
My 2 sons now have a couple of small verrucas each which I’m trying Thuja (spelling) treatment on. I’m so fed up with these things and like many others feel very self conscious about them. Perhaps I might give the banana skins a try next.
Have to wonder how we can send a robot to Mars but can’t get rid of these blimmin things!!!
Hello there! last night, i basically picked my verucca off, because it was black and squishy. it was a little painful, but what is left now is MUCH more painful. a big hole thing is there, and i dont know how to get rid of that. so i just put on my socks this morning. i dont have any gaffer tape (i dont really know what it is!) and i was just putting on clear nail varnish. should i put nail varnish in the hole? this is on my big toe and its been there since september/october. im 14, and i havnt really told my mum (oops), as i want to try to get rid of them myself and not bother her. what should i do?
I wouldn’t put nail varnish on the hole just now. Gaffer tape is what you might call duct tape. I would try putting some banana skin on it now. Tape it on with duct tape if you have it. Or with a plaster. It keeps it soft. The hole will start to close up quite quickly.
Good luck! (And well done for picking it off – v brave of you!)
Hi Sophia. Firstly, awesome blog! Really well written with loads of ideas. For me it’s broken down some of the mental barriers with verrucas to see so many other people suffering too.
I am so embarrassed about my feet. I used to have lovely feet, had my own podiatrist I saw once a week ( due to a foot injury playing sport). I had verrucas in between my toes aged 7, had then frozen, didn’t feel a thing & they disappeared. Then I tried to get fit again after my A levels aged 18, went swimming & caught a verruca. My podiatrist noticed it right away, we tried freezing & acid but it wouldn’t shift. 12 years on I’m 30 and it’s MASSIVE.
At uni I scratched it with my thumb and it spread there too. So 11 years with that one. I now have 3 on my left foot, the original on my right foot along with about 6 forming a huge mosaic. in the last 3 months a wart on my finger & last month one on my big toe. It’s making my life a misery. I haven’t had a pedi or foot massage for 10 years after a therapist pointed it out and totally humiliated me.
I’m taking thuja, vits C&D, glucosamine & zinc. Trying gaffer, acid, home freezing & nail varnish. Very minor success so far. Just wanted to ask, from your blog when you got them smaller & managed to do your walk to them disappearing? did you keep treating? and if so which one(s)?
thanx so much x
Thanks!
It was about seven months from starting trying to get rid of them in earnest, to the biggest one being gone completely. The smaller ones went really quickly, once they’d started to go.
The biggest one was still not completely gone when we did the walk but it wasn’t hurting any more. It was small by then. Then about two weeks after we finished the walk I got pregnant, which kind of put everything else out of my head. The next time I thought to look, my verruca had completely gone.
And I think that’s terrible someone pointing out your verruca and making you feel bad. If no-one had anything wrong with their feet, podiatrists would be out of a job, surely?! They should be big fans!
Also, anyone can get a verruca, it doesn’t say anything about you. But they are obviously rude and thoughtless.
Hey, my plantar verruca is possibly the same size as yours (if not larger)! I’ve had it for a good 10 years if not more now. Like yourself it just became unbearable because funnily enough it’s in the same place as yours! I’ve been using salactol and gaffer tape for just over a month now, the verruca remained large but softened and created a hole in my foot. However, today I noticed that inside the hole there is showing pinkness I’ve pealed away the surrounded dead skin and it seems like a pink blister of sorts is underneath the dead skin? Do you have idea what this could be? Is my verruca going crazy because I’m trying to get rid of it??? Any help would really calm me down! Many thanks (in advance)
Hi, just to keep you guys updated I went to A&E to check out what my verruca was doing and everything is cool and calm!!! He said it was granular tissue so means the skin is repairing itself! My doctors says a way to remove it would be to cut it out but I am too much of a softy to go through that kind of pain! He said stop using the acid for a week and see how it looks and start again later. However, I might try eating a bit (kick my system into shape) and then banana peel (the more homeopathic approach I suppose)! Thank you so much for your advice, I will keep you posted!
Try banana skin now. If you don’t see any improvement in a few days I’d try going to the doctor and see what they say.
How I cured one bigger than yours: (2-3 that ended up gathering as one)
1. the gaffer tape technique, but I put clay onto the verruca and then gaffer tape on top (so the verruca can’t breathe or whatever the real reason is, but I think it works because of humidity) I make a thick paste (using no metal) using a plastic cap, mineral water and mixing with a toothpick
2. have a cheap dollar shop stanley knife just for this
3. After a couple of days, scrape the top of the verruca just after removing the gaffer tape.
4. Let it dry for a few hours, and then use an OTC cold freeze/nitogren verruca spray
5. Leave to dry/recover for a few hours
6. Repeat gaffer tape process with clay again. This time renew every two days a few times, and scrape if it doesn’t hurt.
7. Once you’ve gone through the cycle of not hurting once or twice, you can use the freeze spray again.
8. And so on.
Took 3 months of this to get rid of it, and I’d try to get rid of it with dermatologists for more than 10 years.
I’m sure that putting some of those salicylic acid verruca removers on somewhere in the cycle wouldn’t hurt but I would make sure the skin has been aired for a few hours prior to using it.
PS: I did praise the fact that I was single at the time.
Thanks so much for all this great info. Must be lucky mine is still quite small right in the fleshy part of the heel. I cut away some of the hard skin, squeezed it till got to painful and was able to pull a big chunk out. Without even thinking, my natural reaction was to eat it, wasn’t that gross (compared to Fear Factor)!! Thanks for explaining gaffer is duct tape, will try that & fresh aloe vera for a trial, good luck guys
I had a really stubborn verrucca once which took over a year to shift – a few tips. If you remove as much dead skin as poss (try paring knife specifically for feet to remove soft white dead skin). Apply corn pad around it and drop in salicyllic acid then cover with plaster – remove each day and keep doing this so that you are concentrating on that part of the skin only. Also, if you live near a sandy beach – walking in the water and grinding the part of your foot where the verrucca is in the sand also helps. If all else fails, cryosurgery may help but be warned, it is quite painful (same principle as putting your hand in the freezer and it sticking to your skin)! Good luck x
Get some nail scissors..and dig. Get a needle if you have to. Cut off as much skin as you can and dig at the black dot untill you can pick it up on the needle. Always worked for me. Hurt, but worked 🙂
My wife had a large cluster of them on her heel for year’s. Tried the freezing, acid gaffer tape none with much success, until one day we just tried using the gel from an aloe vera leaf squeezed onto the area. Not sure how long they took to get rid off but went they did, also removed the warts from her fingers. We’ve used this aloe vera gel on our 6yr old’s feet and it removed a 5mm verucca in about 2 weeks (applied every day).
where did you get the aloe gel from? was it a health shop? I’ve tried everything; acid, gaffer, freezing, podiatrist, cutting them out, banana. they’ve just spread again & now I’m getting desperate 😦
Hi I have tried everything bannana skin tree tea Olli buzuca vuruca freezing scraping I have had my vuruca s since I was 4 years old and I am now 14 and they have spread more I had 1 I have now got 15 and there on 1 foot and 1 was on My other foot I am feeling imbarrised by this and upset to share it with any one other than my family but not online or anything.I need your help though I will try anything else rather than duck tape graphs tape freezing oil tee tree bazuca vuruca nail polish banana skin filing and other things to
This story is so funny but extremely helpful! My foot is currently soaking in a bowl of vinegar & i can feel the veruca if thst makes sense? (has its on pulse) i had one years ago n went to the drs to get it frozen but hed constantly tell me to just cover it with a plaster for a few days which did work in the end as it peeled off beautifully but i do think the freezing helped too! But now ive been using bazooka which had improved my veruca but it isnt getting to the root so first thing tomorrow im buying duct tape & bananas! Thanks for the advice!
Hi Sophia,
I just HAD to comment immediately! My 7 year old daughter just came running into my bedroom this morning so excited. I thought it was because we are getting a dog today, but she was shouting “it’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone!”. Then she showed me her foot and I was AMAZED!!
She got her veruca at a birthday party in a kid’s gym that had a compulsory bare foot policy. Ugghhhh. I wasn’t happy about it, but what was I going to do? Tell her that she had to go home instead of going into the party? So I reluctantly let her take off her socks. She has been swimming for years and I’ve always been careful with her to wear flip flops in the shower and changing rooms. I know she didn’t get it at the pool because I had taken a break from swimming after having my youngest child. So anyway, I was extremely annoyed after taking all that care to avoid a veruca that she got one so easily at a party.
So in January this year she told me she had a spot on her foot. I took one look at it and thought “oh no!”. I brought her to a chiropodist who pared back the hard skin over it and confirmed that it was a veruca. But she couldn’t freeze it and told me that over the counter methods would be best, because the freezing method would be too frightening for her. However, I knew my daughter would be ok once I told her it would hurt. So I made an appointment to have it frozen off, but in the meantime I spoke to another mother who told me that she had used wartner on her son’s foot and it worked. So I cancelled the GP and tried the wartner. At first, we didn’t do it regularly enough, but then did it every two weeks. And she was growing more scared of it over time and it was causing so much upset.
Then in June I decided to look on the Internet and see what remedies there are. That’s when I read your blog and we all had a laugh at the thoughts of my daughter eating part of her veruca. She thought I was mad putting tape and banana on her foot, but after about a week of it, her foot was looking very irritated and she was having an allergic reaction to the tape. It also gave her athlete’s foot from all the sweatiness it created. So that was the end of the tape method. It did make the veruca black but didn’t do anything else. Then I decided to try the nail varnish. The darkest colour i had was a deep pink colour nail varnish, so we used that. We applied it every night for about 6 weeks. About two weeks ago it looked like the skin was growing over the nail varnish so I used a foot file to take all that hard skin off then applied the nail varnish. Last night it looked like dry skin falling off and this morning it has completely disappeared.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! So much. I wouldn’t have known about using nail varnish if it weren’t for you. I am so grateful.
Kind regards,
Catherine
Aw, that’s fab. Glad to have been of service!
That’s brill, glad to be of service!
Can i jus say thats the most funniest thing ive ever herd in my life and it takes a lot to make me double in laughter in pain tears rolling out i just laughted like i never have laughed in my life im pain,ever word ya discribe the way you said it brilliant so funny you dont it well done perfect
Well, we seem to have found a solution that is working for my daughter. I thought that since veruccas are viral, perhaps an anti-viral treatment might work. So we applied some zovirax, or whatever cold-sore ointment we had in the house and it is doing the trick! She had 4 of them on her feet, but 3 have died and come out completely – just the larger one to go. Having tried the freezing and bazooka methods for months with no effect, this seems like the magic bullet that has worked for us.
I’m trying this on one of mine too after having the same thought! There’s not much about it online but it’s painless so I thought no harm trying. I have 6 on my feet and two on my hands.
Trying a number of methods. I’ve found different ones working for different warts. Possibly it depends on old/deep/stubborn they are? Reading online the virus lives in the 3rd layer of the epidermis out of the 5 layers so pretty deep.
1. alcohol hand gel- completely shrunk the small wart on my hand. It’s still there but tiny. Only had it since April so hoping it will go soon. However had no effect on the 11year old one on my thumb. It’s so painful and right under the nail and really noticeable too 😦
Tried crushed garlic over the weekend then pre chopped garlic today as that comes in white wine vinegar. Had to cover it lots cos it stinks!! But it’s starting to go black slowly.
2. Tried crushed garlic on 2 on left foot. Excrutuating! Pain lasted for about 12 hrs then stopped. Took one of as it was pretty sore, starting to see something but it’s also blistered the healthy skin. Took the one off my little toe tonight & good results, has gone quite black so will clean & re-apply!
3. Tried vinegar on my original but it kept me awake all night & took 2 days to be able to stand on it. It’s quite big and I think maybe near a nerve. I’m a personal trainer so not being able to walk properly not really an option!
4. Trying banana skin on ‘the original’ now. Too early to see any results yet. However banana has really cleared up my mess that was my mosaic on about 6 verruca. It is very large covering nearly half the ball of my foot. Put bazucca on and it burned the hell out of it. Became a weeping swollen mess. So painful I had to take a day off, couldn’t even stand. Banana has healed it really well. Now have a new piece on to see if it will attack the virus!
I am gonna try this for one I have had for over a year. It is extremely deep and painful. I have used the compound W and it will remove the top hard layer and make it easier to walk but never seems to get the core. Does it kill the skill on top, then do you remove what you can of the skin? Could you please give a little more detail of the process?
I have tried almost every remedy i have come across apart from eating some of the verruca haha, I decided to get a scalpel and just cut it out myself, The dead skin around it can be cut away easily but the living skin and root hurt a bit, NHS piss me off, They treat self inflicted drug/alcohol users and even give the odd boob job but when someone can barely walk through no fault of their own they refuse to help
Well I think that u are very lucky because I read ur post and I tried everything u did and they still haven’t come out yet
Hi I have just read all the comments on this page and now feel very optimistic about getting rid of my verruca. I first had lots on the side of my foot 20 years ago ( im now 48) and had treatment from a chiropidist using freezing and acid treatment, they went no problem. Then when I had my daughters they caught them from swimming, after a couple of years each of them got rid, one by using very strong acid stuff which is no longer available the other daughter went on holiday swimming every day inthe sea, they then disappeared within 2 weeks! Lucky for them
They are now both grown up not had any since.
Unfortunately 6 years ago a got a big one on the side of my toe, I tried
1 having it cut out and salicic acid applied, but couldnt afford to keep going back to chiropiodist
2 putting tea tree oil it, it seemed to shrink but I didnt keep it up
Recently I have decided to take in interest in my toe after ignoring it for about 5 years. Went to podiatrist last saturday had it scraped and frozen then salycic paste on (couldnt drive for 2 days really painful) then everynight put bazuka extra on.
Went back to see her this morning she scraped it and then froze it again.etc etc She also suggested getting Thuja as I now understand it is a virus and my immune system does not recognise, Im a bit worried about taking things so will be looking it up in a minute.
I am soooo pleased to learn that I am not the only one with a massive one of these horrible things , but do count myself lucky that it is not on the sole of my foot as that would be really painful.
I have got photos but dont know how to post it.
Here goes a long road but at least I have the right attitude to keep at it unlike 5 years ago.
Thank you everyone on here for all your tips and advice you dont know how much it helps.
Kerensa x
Oh, i have about 20 verrucas all in a group i can walk on them fine but i badly want rid of them they dont hurt me or anything but when i went to the doctors they told me to put duck tape on it and that didnt work then banana skins and that helped a bit im still using that now
Tried them all over the last 6 months (except eating). I’m now trying to burn it out on a sunny day with a magnifying glass (VERY PAINFULL) seems to be working. Its been hurting me so I’m hurting it !!!. The weather is too cloudy at the moment so I keep duct tape on, Everything helps a bit for a while, its down to a penny size from 5cm. I will try about ten times more to burn it (if the sun comes out).
I had one for about six years and finally had enough with all the otc remedies and decided to try some old wives remedies. The best remedy I had that truly worked was soaking a cotton ball in apple cider vinegar, applying it to the spot with duct tape or even a bandaid and keeping it there all day and changing it every night until it was gone. It took about six weeks to disappear and new skin to start growing back and even soaking your entire feet in apple cider vinegar with warm water helps. But the key to it was keeping it on and completely cover the spot or spots. It did get quite painful halfway in, but the goal of it being gone was too sweet to give up on the method. i would air it over night when it seemed unbearable but would slap the cotton ball, the bandage and duct tape back on when I got up. But it was similar to the audio tape you had going but adding a soaked apple cider vinegar cotton ball to kill it. It’s disgusting but kills it. I have been free from it now for a year. Thank goodness for smelly vinegar.
I never tried the vinegar, but have heard positive reports of it. Glad it worked for you.
Hey guys,
I read this a long time ago, trying to clear my verrucas. I’ve had a lot of them, feet and hands, for over ten years!!
I tried all the banana peel etc stuff, but nothing worked….that is until …
I started taking a multi-vitamin.
Two weeks after I started they have gone almost completely, it’s incredible.
It could just be coincidence….but I don’t think so and wanted to share because it’s so nice to finally be rid of the ugly blighters!
Interesting. That kind of makes sense – certain vitamin deficiencies will make your immune system less effective, so fixing the deficiency would free your immune system to get to work on the verruca.
Although I wouldn’t usually recommend vitamin supplements as most of the vitamins are not absorbed so you are just making expensive wee, and it’s much better to get a balanced diet.
A surgical approach may be the only way….
I had a large wart on the pad of my finger when I was 13. Months of paint type treatments, filing etc and it wouldn’t go. The Dr wouldn’t freeze as I was too young and it might have lost my finger tip.
In the end I resorted to quite brutal ways, a sharp pen knife and I dug it out (to the bone which I could see in the wound) but that got rid of it….at age 15 this was a desperate descision i took after the nhs failed me.
I had another wart appear in my 20’s again on the back of my hand, this time i got rid use a silver nitrate pencil (but again i had to ignore medical warnings and use it more than advised to burn away into the ‘good’ flesh to get the root out).
Both really painful but did get rid….your veruca seems a similar case
Thank you so much for this information. Could I ask how the verruca spreads to hands …well more importantly how to make sure it doesn’t..If I eat it could I get sores or blisters in my mouth?
Also specifically how is nail varnish used. How much of an overlap around the verruca Does it go on everyday, one layer after another without removing it between applications? How many days/weeks months
When should it be removed?
Picked off/sanded down bit by bit or one massive clump?
After a verruca has gone is there a big crater?I saw that on your photo..Has it filled in?
You say it took 8 months to go…if you had just used bazuka ….simple method rather than mushy methods …for all that time might that have worked? Expensive I suppose…
I went to the chiropodist yesterday who pared down the area and the skin has to be left for 24 hours and by 4.20 I’m on with it. Just have to pick a method….
Thanks again
PS the piss method made me laugh out loud
Supposedly it cannot spread to your hands – the verruca virus only lives on the soles of your feet. On your hands it would be warts, caused by a related but slightly different virus. But I’m only going by what I’ve read – am not an expert!
The verruca crater goes quite quickly, as the verruca shrinks.
Nail varnish – I put a big blob, covering the whole top of the verruca and overlapping with the normal skin around. After a few days I would pick it off and bits of verruca would often come with it. Or it would wear away on it’s own – what with the banana skin and the gaffer tape, etc.
Bazooka – I just found it wasn’t that effective. And that their instructions were quite fiddly – do it at the same time every day, etc – so it was a lot harder to stick to.
Glad to be of service:-).
Thanks for that
I have been washing my hands with all sorts of potions!
I know what you are saying about Bazuka but I had already bought it and I am not too precious about the same time every day just EVERY DAY is my aim.
After the tube has been used I shall reassess but if it takes 8 months in your case it looks like many tubes will follow. I may give this a try with vitamin supplements which cant hurt….unlike these flipping verrucas.
Happy healthy feet to you
I find that the freezing stuff from the chemist works pretty well on really tiny ones, but had no effect on anything bigger. Duct tape and banana skin (both individually and together) both did *something* to the verrucas, but I didn’t stick with them for too long (about 6 weeks max) as I found they would come off the verruca and stick to a different part of my foot, and I was wary of ending up with even more of the blasted things.
Read your post about three months ago, though, and the eating thing actually kinda made a little sense, however icky it was to think about it. So tried it and nothing happened (pretty much as expected, but worth a go).
However, I noticed a few days ago that the biggest one had all but gone, and now the second biggest is on its way out too!! I can’t say whether eating it did anything, as its been about 3 months since I did it, or whether my body just did it of its own accord, but I’m really pleased either way!
I haven’t used any other kind of treatment in a very long time, so I think they can be mostly ruled out, anyway.
But wanted to drop in here and say thanks, in any case!! 😀
Glad to be of service. And glad I’m not the only one who ate a bit of my verruca:-).
Interesting stuff!!!
So I have one these blighters and going to go for the gaffer tape. My question is what do you do when you shower/bath? Do you change the dressing as mine keeps coming off
I just changed it every time it came off. But sometimes if you are having just a quick shower it stays on.
I tried that freezing stuff. But I’d had this thing for over a year so I think it was too tough and deep rooted to work. Even when I went against the instructions and repeatedly zapped it. So now I’m using Bazuka which I used on a wart on my finger years and years ago. I remember it eating into the skin till it revealed what disgustingly looked like little white onions or bulbs in the hole it left. So I very painfully pulled them out. I’m expecting to have to do the same to this at some point but not sure if verruca are the same as warts. Fingers crossed for it as I’m sick of the thing.
I do hope you get rid of the verruca. I had one and got rid of it usin apple cider vinegar. It actually worked. This is how I did it. I would get a cotton ball slightly bigger than the verruca and soak it into some apple cider vinegar and squeeze the access out of it. Then I placed it on my foot and applied duck tape over it. The next day I did the same. When I would shower I would use a pumice and scrub away the dead skin. I repeated the apple cider vinegar on my feet until it was gone. Hope it might help you.
Since I posted on here in September I have had a result using Duct tape. My verruca was on my big toe a big cluster covering the whole of the underneath, the whole area was raised so covering it with duct tape just over the affected area and wrapping surgical tape round the toe meant that it stayed on for at least 3-4 days even in the shower.
I did this for 4 weeks, each time i took the tape off a bit of skin came away with verruca on it leaving clean skin underneath. I put bazuka under the tape each time but I think it was starving it of oxygen that killed it off.
It has completely gone now after 8 years!!!
I feel I have to join in this intriguing blog. My 8 yr old is in yr 2 of verucca ownership and I’ve battled with Bazukka gel and freezing (provides two week respite) but still there. Now attacking with organic crushed garlic, corn plasters and gaffa tape. It stings but fingers crossed!
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”
― Hippocrates
I have had a Verruca for about a year and a half and have tried the usual Bazooka gel and freezing treatments with little effect.
A few days ago I tried a new treatment and using a sharp scalpel cut back about 3-4 layers of dead skin over the verruca, each time removing a neat circular section of skin. I was probably a bit over enthusiastic as it started to bleed a little.
I then applied a hot tea bag (Green Tea) and pressed this firmly in place over the Verruca for 10-15 mins, then soaked the tea bag again in hot water and reapplied. I repeated this about 3 times.
I’ve read that Green Tea has been found to contain compounds which inhibit the growth of the HPV virus which cause Verrucas.
I’m going to keep using the Green Tea poultice for a few weeks to see if it has any effect. I’ve used a good quality whole leaf tea bag, there is a more powerful form of Green Tea called Matcha which comes as a very fine powder, it’s quite expensive though, but might also be worth a try.
Perhaps a foot bath made of strong Green Tea would be worth a go and just soaking your feet in the hot Green Tea would help.
I’m also wondering if cutting back the dead skin over the Verruca might result in some particles of the virus entering the blood stream and thereby alerting the immune system to it’s presence. The virus is supposed to be quite good at hiding itself otherwise.
Please note I make a cup of tea with the tea bag first and then re-use it for my treatment. I strongly recommend not doing it the other way around.
Hi ive just found 5 small ones grouped together on my foot and as im pregnant have just tryed the nail varnish for now, hope it works
Hi,
Your blog is very interesting. I have gone through almost all apart from actually eating your verruca. My verruca started when I was in secondary school and I had it for a whopping 12+ years. I remember times it would pain, I tried cutting it, nail varnish, banana skin, over the counter medicine etc.. I have also tried freezing it by going to the doctors every week.
What we need to understand about these horrid warts, our bodies can’t really detect them as its dead skin. Until the body fights the bacteria, its very hard removing.
However, for me, last year 2013 was a miracle. I managed to get rid of this haunted verruca. I brought myself a carving knife used for paper/card. Similar to this: http://elsita.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/10/09/xacto_knife_copy.jpg
I found after bath when the skin almost gets most the verruca skin risen up, it’s easy to slice off. Literally I would neatly slice of the verruca. Bare in mind, over doing it might lead to actually cutting yourself. You do not want to do this. This takes time and patience. After slicing the verruca, I tried keeping my cut area clean and away from dirt. I did this everyday for about 1.5 weeks and I was lucky as my skin was growing back under the verruca, the actual verruca was just rising and easier for me to slice off.
Verruka’s in general are so time consuming, if you one treatment, you must stick at it religiously. Like yourself, I had the verruca powdery effect.. to this day, I still don’t know if that was a sign of improving.
12+ years on, I can recommend you neatly cut the verruca off with a very clean knife. Do this every day before you go bed so the skin starts rebuilding at night.
Good luck, I am sure you’ll get the results soon 🙂
Thought I would share a success story – I had two verrucas one small one and one roughly button sized and after trying loads of different methods (including bazuka, apple cider vinegar & duct tape) with not much luck, I eventually managed to get rid of both of them using the nail varnish method! The best thing was that it was so easy, all I did was apply a couple of coats of clear varnish about twice a week and then debride about once a month. I didn’t even have to debride the small one as it had disappeared after about 2 weeks – I just carried on applying the varnish for a while after I couldn’t see it anymore just to make sure it didn’t return. The large one took a lot longer (around 4 months) but I could see it gradually shrinking and healthy skin returning so I carried on and it has finally gone! The large one has been my irritating companion for about five years so it is so great to have finally won the war!
http://www.bupa.co.uk/individuals/health-information/directory/w/warts-and-verrucas Although there isn’t much evidence to show that it works, placing duct tape over your wart may help to get rid of it. Cover the wart with duct tape for six days, then soak the wart in water and rub with an emery board or pumice stone to scrape off the dead skin. Keep the wart uncovered overnight and re-apply duct tape the next day. You may need to continue this cycle of treatment for up to two months before the wart disappears. This treatment is not recommended for verrucas.
Am going to share this with my mum she has had her verucca for over 7 years and has recently had it cut on by paying privately for it. Any way it was unsucessful to say the least. Shes gutted, maybe your tips will help
Is there any specific type of nail varnish??? Colour? Clear stuff??? Please reply!!!
Ive had a verucca for about 8 months now, and of late the pain is unbearable and can hardly walk, limping as Im walking on the side of the foot! It became big like the one pictured here and the hard skin around it also become raised and painful. Been to drs and nurse there sprayed with nitrogen once. going back again this week for another dose. dr said to keep using pumice stone daily but not to do it too hard. I was determined to get rid of it as so painful and keeps me awake at night that i ignored the dr and scrubbed as hard and as long as i could stand with pumice stone and then it bled. got out of shower and took a close look and it was half out, so got a tissue and gently pulled it out with ease. Left a big gaping hole about 0.5cm deep, so this is how thick the skin is around it. Altho i could now sleep and turn my feet anyhow i like, i still cant walk properly on it. Its covered with plasters now, but worried it might get infected. I doubt the nurse will spray with nitrogen now that the verucca is out, but do i carry on using pumice stone on hard surrounding skin, as i got to be careful of the hole.
Thanks for any advice
I though this was very funny in away,but I have a question. I take a shower once every 2 days and did you go in the shower with the tape or did you take that off?🗿
I got my verruca when I was eight years old, I did manage it well for a decade or so, but it came back in full a couple of years ago. I will be thirty two years old this year. I have been treating it with bazucca and it has helped a little but they have now appeared on my thumb! Thank you for all of your advice, I did not realize that there were so many ideas. I will be thirty two next year so I really pray that this 25 year saga ends soon!!
Really enjoyed your post!! Great to hear you beat the Verrucca!
I have had a similar one on foot for 19 years! Only in the last 9 years have I have tried quite a few things Vinegar smelling feet, the nitrogen freezing from some NHS nurses, lots of scraping and trying to ‘cut it out myself’ at one point.
But was that Chiropodist being truthful about no competition in your area? I could not make a choice there are so many chiropodists cashing in on Verrucas that spread like wildfire due to the rubbish treatments out there that help you spread veruccas around more the country.
Other (maybe more recent) options I had been considering Electrosurgery £300ish meant to be quick and painless. Or MPT around £170. I have forgotten what that is but I think a more intense freezing/therapy.
I don’t want to pay that much, but its been 19 years and I have had enoug – I’m paying a local chiropodist for about 4 sessions £32 each and praying it works. She has put some mystery ointment on it and a plaster for 5 days to start with to get rid of the top….
This article helped me to ‘come to terms with what we may not ba able to change’ in the past! http://will-self.com/2010/09/22/is-nick-clegg-the-verruca-of-british-politics/
Been trying to get rid of mine for many a years, will try the methods on here.
I have found if you can get it soft and powdery a long barefoot walk on a sandy beach really clears it out. You find at the end a big hole filled with the course sand.
Hi hope your foot is better? Does anyone know how to get the hard skin (callous) off a foot after the veruka has gone! My daughter has had this hard skin for over 8 weeks now? Any1 pls and thanks
I’ve had a verruca on the ball of my foot for like 3 years now, it’s a resistant little creature I tell you!!
I’ve tried most things, only just started with banana peel. It seems easy to get the skin to go soft and the top of the verruca to come off but it always comes back. I have recently been literally carving the top of the thing off which has many times bled, A LOT! Sometimes I ended up going so deep it would be agony but hey I figured I was just getting deeper. These are the lengths people will go to to get rid of these painful things. I would usually do this at night so it was fine by morning and I could walk on it properly again, so for a week or so it was worth it but it would be back to normal soon enough. The saga continues, I’m thinking thuja cream might be worth a go. Honestly I’d have it burnt off, cut out, if it meant I was sore for a week but then it would be gone I would do it, but it always comes back 😥
Just thought I’d add my story after reading everyone elses’s. I have had a very big verruca on the bottom of my foot for over ten years and over that time tried every method going. Freezing it, gels, Duct tape, nail varnish, banana, apple cider vinegar, thuja tablets and hacking at it with nail scissors. Some seemed to have some impact but none got rid of it. I tried really hard last summer (and first read this blog back then ) and persevered for months with the thuja tablets and vinegar method. Then gave up and have not touched it for over 10 months now.
Imagine my surprise yesterday when I was trying on some new shoes and looked at my foot and there was nothing there! No hole, no verruca, nothing! Even the patch of hard, dry skins that surrounded it has gone.
Now I have no explanation as to what happened and I read that they will eventually cure themselves but I had long ago stopped believing that!
I thought that I had to write this and share as I am so surprised and pleased but I am driving my husband crazy by claiming that I am a “miracle”.
Hi I was very interested to hear your methods that you have been trying! I have had two verrucas that look just like yours for 7 years now!
I have just started the vinegar method using cider vinegar, you soak a cotton ball in the vinegar and place on the verruca then cover with duct tape fur the night then in the morning you remove it shower as normal then leave uncovered for the day and then repeat at night…
Its only been two nights for me so not sure if it’s working but might be worth a try!
Jay.
Salicylic Acid Worked!!! I had a verruca on my large toe since I was little…can’t remember not having it. I went to the Dr to freeze it off which didnt work and obviously tried the Scholl home freeze treatment a few times = nothing. After roughly 18 years of having this damn verruca it started to spread! I ended up with 3 more plus some others starting to form – i panicked and bought every remedy under the sun and the one that finally worked for me was Salicylic Acid. I cant remember the brand but it was in a little brown glass bottle with a brush to paint the stuff on. After a few more months of this voila! They all cleared up 🙂 happy feet plus it only cost $15. Job done
Thanks for the info Sophie, my other half picked one up, he’d never had one before. I got rid of his by a home freezing kit in one go, approximately £21 from the chemist. I however have a nasty history of 21 on one one foot as a child and noticed a tiny dry dead area of skin on the ball of my foot not long after I treated OH’s. Dubious I went to the pharmacy who confirmed it was a callous and to file and moisturise it. it developed over a few months to what I knew was a verruca! I’ve been trying freezing and bazooka constantly for the last year to no avail, I’ve tried nail polish, done self surgery, digging the bits out as my mother did when I was a kid, still no improvement. I’m trying the banana skin at night with cider vinegar for the day both covered by gaffa tape. I’m hopeful. Thanks for sharing your experience. Happy future walks 🙂
Any idea which method recommended if you are pregnant? I’d like to try the nail varnish one?
I had tried everything over 10yrs suffering with my verucca’s & gave up. Collegue suggested Green organics vitiality powder for general well being with cell vitality drops mixed in water. My husband & I can’t believe it, haven’t felt majorly vitalised but within 4mths as a side effect I guess our verucca’s have disappeared, wish I could go on tv about this as it’s a miracle cure!!!! You only have to take for a few mths, I wish podiatrist would recommend it but suppose they will be out of business. Pls give it a go forget suffering with anything else. It comes from US and is powdered healing herbs etc. Certainly healed us!!!!
Hi I have two verrucas on my left foot and I don’t know what to do! Should I try the banana skin method?
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I have four very deep and extremely painful warts at the soles of both feet. After many unsuccessful treatments from which the warts became even more painful I had them surgically removed. The procedure was cruel and very painful with severe bleeding for several hours. All the warts reoccurred, and they are much more painful than before the surgery. Walking on them causes excruciating pain and I am limping like an old woman (I am 47). Any method failed, and I was told that my warts are too large and deep seated to get successfully removed (in fact each is larger than Sophia’s wart). Since the surgery I suffer unbearable pain, and the warts hurt even with rest in bed.
I know that there exist different kind of plantar warts, and not all are as painful and deep as mine. Therefore I would like to get in contact with people who suffer from similar painful plantar warts to exchange experiences with them, as I am really desperate. Please write to GabiK67@gmx.de
Thanks!
Hi I am trying duct tape on my third day.Foot is aching as its on the ball of right foot.going to try banana skin method.Thanks for all the info keep you posted.
One question … how often do folks file their verruca/use a pumice stone on it? I see that some web-sites say to do it weekly, others never, to avoid spreading it.
My son’s verruca never looks any different with all these treatments unless he soaks it a long time and we file it away. Is filing essential (as he hates it – says it hurts)?
Meanwhile it just gets bigger after Bazuka, duct tape and tee tree oil.
hello all. my self is yogesh bansal. i am also suffering with verruca on my right foot’s second finger. On thing which i sure is that it is not a good idea to get surgery on verruca as if we go for surgery it will grow at other place.. Please validate my point am i right or not.
Secondly can any one plz show with a picture how to use banana skin.and also tell me did you change banana skin twice a day or what is the frequency,
Third i found mix opinion about tape method. some people suggested to suck that verruca first with vinegar and then put the tape on it and some directly applied tape… can u guys tell me the exact method to use this
Kindly help me as am scared now after reading that people suffered with this verruca for +10 year..It would be a great help to me…
I had 3 veruccas for 15+ years. Stubborn buggers that wouldn’t respond to any home remedies or over the counter treatments. After years of trying I gave up with the resignation that one day I’d have to have them surgically removed. As they never grew bigger and they they were never really painful I never landed up having them removed. A few months ago I started a low carb high fat (LCHF) diet and low and behold my 15+ year old veruccas have disappeared into thin air. Could the problem perhaps lie in our diets? I’ll probably never know, but it’s food for thought.
This has got to be the most entertaining thing I have read on the Internet about getting rid of verrucas, I laughed so hard, I even spoke to my verruca telling it that soon an army will come and you will be expunged from my foot.
But overall very cool how you dealt/dealing with it. I will try the above methods after my one stops bleeding from me trying to cut it off with a nail cutter ( home remedy bad idea)
Brilliant! Thank you everyone 🙂 I have a 5year old with a huge verruca picked up from school swimming. It’s really painful especially as she has to wear orthotics everyday as well. So we are about to embark on the banana skin and gaffer tape method both of which the GP has just recommended!!! Failing that the nail polish method more up the street of a pink loving 5year old girl. Then we shall try the Fucidin approach as I too have psoriasis and I have some in the medicine cabinet. Fingers crossed and thanks again for the fantastic stories and recommendations. 🙂
I have had 2 varookers at the top of my foot for almost 2 years. They have never realy bothered me until now. They are starting to run as I walk and hurst. Every morning and night I am using tea tree oil which wasn’t working until I kept on applying it about every 2 hours. They are getting smaller. I heart that vinegar is a great treatment and duct tape. I am going to try a bit of everything and let you know how it goes xx
hello, i’ve wanted to find this blog and post a message for a few weeks. i had a verruca for about 10 years. It grew extremely big – 1 cm wide and 3 cm long on the ball of my foot despite years of trying different treatments. I experienced severe pain and discomfort and was embarrassed ever to have my feet out. But after getting engaged in August last year I was absolutely determined to get rid of it by my wedding day and came across this blog. Having tried almost all the treatments and failed previously, I gave the gaffer tape treatment a go and was absolutely committed to sticking with it. And it took determination! I changed the gaffer tape dressing daily for 6 months, applying salicylic acid and cutting away all dead skin before reapplying the gaffer tape. And low and behold 4 months before my wedding and at the start of the summer I am finally verruca free! Thank you to Sophie because it was seeing the difference in the pictures on this blog that really gave me the determination to continue and I would say is do not give up. Being verruca free has made a real difference to my life and I would recommend perseverance with the gaffer tape method to anyone.
Thanks Sophie for this blog, it renewed my determination to get rid of a verruca on my heel.
I’d had it frozen a couple of times in recent months. This worked for the verruca I also had on the ball of my foot, but not for the heel one. The podiatrist said verrucas on the heel are more difficult to get rid of because the skin is thicker and what freezing does is stimulate the body’s immune response. In the thicker skin the body is less able to recognise the verruca virus.
I’d tried tea tree oil, a special mix of other essential oils, Bazooka, gaffe tape all without much change.
The podiatrist had also said the virus makes your skin grow quicker and cornify. Hence the thicker skin and being able to dig out the verruca crater. He said it was good to remove as much as possible when using topical applications.
So having given up on various methods, found your blog and started again.
Salt is meant to work, so I filed off and gently dug out what I could, filled the hole with salt and taped it with microcode surgical tape.
Just in case Sophie’s light theory was right I kept it covered at all times and replaced the salt daily for about a week. This seemed to be working a bit, the verruca seemed a but smaller. But that wasn’t quick enough for me, so I changed to banana skin.
I cut a small square of banana skin, maybe 6mm x 6mm, and taped it onto the verruca using surgical tape.
It was surprisingly comfortable as the peel squishes flat.
I kept it on for a couple of days, then removed it, filed and dug out what I could and taped a new bit of banana skin. I never left the verruca uncovered.
This worked really well and after two weeks the verruca has gone completely.
I am so happy. I’ve had the verruca for about 4 years and now it’s gone.
How can you tell your verruca has gone? The podiatrist taught me that you know it’s your own skin not the verruca when you can see the whorls of your ‘finger print’ (is that called a toeprint when it’s on your foot?).
Good luck to fellow verrucees!
By the way, I also heard warts and verruca can be a sign of vitamin B deficiency. Years ago I had several warts and when I took Brewers yeast vita B supplements they went in days.
The lengths people go to LOL. I’ve had 2 on my right foot for about 7 years (along with a fungal nail, my right foot is very attractive). I’ve tried freezing them off a few times (at the Doctor’s and home), and the duct tape method, which also didn’t work. I’m currently using a product called Verrugon which has 50% salicylic acid. Been using it for about 6 weeks now and both have nearly gone. Only issue is that it also kills the skin around the verruca so my foot is a bit of a mess, but if it works I’m fine with that!
Ok so i’ve had varuccas before. They come and they go, it’s because you pick them up in public places and they spread around, it’s not a reflection on personal hygene it’s one of those things. I looked at my feet yesterday and i’ve found some, i have no idea how long they have been there, and i don’t know where i caught them from.
However, what I did last time, is get a cigarette lighter and torch the bastards a bit. Then I put on superglue, which bonds over the skin so it can’t breath. Don’t worry it’s safe to use superglue on skin, cyanacrylate was invented for medical reasons, so it’s fine for medical uses like varuccas as it stops it spreading too.
Eventually, it finds life so inhospital through regular flaming and reprival of air that it comes off. Takes a few weeks, but it’s more effective than using the pharmacy creams.
Protip: it’s painful but if you want fast results burn the skin until it blisters, then the varucca will come off with the top layer of skin. If you do it right, you can be rid of it in the time it takes the skin to blister, which is a few days.
I’m confused is this a man or a women writing this? I thought it was a women by the foot but the hairy legs are confusing me.
I’m a woman who doesn’t shave her legs.
Thank you so much for this post which gave a lot of pointers about what to do with my stubborn verruca. I’ve a big one on the sole of my left foot and it has spread to other areas of that foot, right foot and fingers. It caused me discomfort with walking, and I’m determined to get rid of them once and for all, to the extent I admit I have eaten bits of it. I’ve put duct tape on the big ones and medium sized ones, and I wonder if I should put nail vanish on the smaller ones. The reason I’m unsure is because I thought the small ones may go away with nail vanish, but you also said we should use one method after another so maybe I should save nail vanish, banana skin and tea tree oil for later?
Thank you again. I admire your effort iin getting rid of the warts and your courage in sharing your experience and lessons with lots of people!
Hooray, my verruca has gone!!!
It took a few attempts but I finally got rid of the horrible thing.
So I used corn removal plasters with gaffer tape (the stuff I used was called gorilla tape) over the top for about two weeks and soaked my foot and filed in between changing the dressing.
The verruca went dead looking and white, a bit like your pics Sophia but the black dots were still visible.
I then used just the gaffer tape and filed and filed my foot and eventually (gets a bit graphic here) I was able to peal the top layer of skin with the black dots away. I had a bit of a crater in my foot but with some more soaking and moisturising it’s healed.
I’ve got my foot back hooray!
Ps – could be coincidence but I also started eating two kiwi fruit a day as I heard the health benefits for another problem I had, yes I think I’m falling apart but at least I’m verruca free!
I’m going to start trying duct tape, I’m already soaking my foot, sanding it down with sand paper (the really rough stuff) and then applying Bazooka. This post gave me hope that there is a veruca free future for me out there!
Also, hairy legs is a human trait not specifically a male trait!
I had a huge annoying verruca for 9 years, during that time I tryed all treatments possible until I went to a new doctor he said it was the biggest verruca he had seen and said cutting it out was only option, after 2 years after it was cut out it came back again same spot on foot. I got it cut out again 3 years ago it hasn’t come back but I am left with hard skin where it use to be, off to see the podiatrist tomorrow about hard skin, these things are a work in progress good luck people
Hi there. Thanks for posting this. I’ve had a huge deep one on my right foot for over 15 years now, it’s so painful, and I now have a large one on the palm of my left hand which is just horrible and really noticeable. Now a teeny one has appeared on my left pinky finger too. I am trying the bazuka gel twice a day and am not peeling it off. I am instead covering that in a clear nail varnish. Does it matter if the nail polish is clear or coloured? I am desperate to get rid of them, especially the ones on my hand as I get married next year and they are really noticeable. Thanks.
when I was younger i had a huge one under my big toe, after many attempts to get rid, i scraped it with nail scissors, held a lighter to it as it was that big I had no feeling in it and then put nail polish remover on it afterwards. A few days later it peeled off and all the other little ones just died! Not a traditional method but it worked!!
Hi Sophia,
This blog seems to be verucca central so I thought I’d tell my sorry story here in case it helps someone.
I have had veruccas for 8 years. As I’m an engineer I took a rather empirical approach to removing them and these are the results of my tests:
Duct tape: looks great – the top of the verucca bursts like a big blister so it looks like something is really happening. Unfortunately it seems it only removed one verucca this way and after that it never worked again no matter how many times I tried it
Bazooka: Absolute disaster. Avoid this approach. The problem with it is the emery board they give you to rub the verucca down. It gets covered with infected material and with the best will in the world you cannot prevent it infecting other parts of your foot. The dust of dead skin is also infected and can get on other parts of the foot. The fresh veruccas take a while to appear. Bazooka caused my three veruccas to spread to about 15 eventually! I think Bazooka might work for very young children because the skin on their feet is not so thick, so it might be man enough for the job. Generally I think Bazooka is a great con trick for the manufacturers – you might get rid of one but three months later you’ve got a dozen!
Freezer Spray: No effect whatsoever, although it does work well for warts on the hand because it doesn’t need scraping/filing.
GP liquid Nitrogen freeze treatment: This was another disaster. The nurse used a scalpel to scrape away the skin above the verucca (your foot bleeds slightly). The scraping and freeze treatment was very painful and made it difficult to walk for 24 hours. The scraping caused the veruccas to spread until I had about 24 of various sizes. Not one verucca was removed after 6 x treatments at 1 month intervals.
Banana Skin: This turned the verucca a bit black but it didn’t kill the verucca. I got the impression that the blackness was merely particles of banana that had gone rotten – there was no sign that the verucca itself was affected.
Tea tree oil: Tea tree oil is a mild anti-viral, so this should have some effect. I found that it turned the veruccas brown and cleaned up the skin so they looked smaller, but didn’t actually kill the verucca. It did get rid of a small amount of fungal nail which was good (I think athletes foot and fungal nail often go along with veruccas mainly because you end up fiddling with you feet a lot. Tea tree oil is probably good to clean the feet when you have a verucca but be careful – it’s nasty stuff and I got a tiny amount in my ear and it caused me to have balance problems for weeks. Tea tree oil made my feet smell absolutely gorgeous.
Regular cleaning with bleach: Didn’t work.
Dabbing with kettle cleaner: This is a stronger acid than Bazooka but it didn’t work
Jabbing a match in after just blowing it out: Didn’t work. Although it didn’t hurt as much as I though it would either.
Jabbing the verucca until it bleeds: Didn’t work. I think it is likely that the blood clots before the white blood cells can have any effect on the verucca virus in the surrounding skin, so after the skin heel the verucca just grows back.
Wait and see/Immune system approach: I was told that there are several hundred variants of the verucca virus and we are immune to about 50% of them. I was told that the immune system will eventually develop antibodies to the verucca and kill it off in maximum 8 years. This did not work. I am of the opinion that the verucca lives in the very thick skin on the pads of your feet and is untouched by the bloodvessels so the immune system cannot reach it. The wait and see approach might work for very young children with soft feet but not grown adults that have done a lot of walking and have thick pads of skin on the heel and ball of the foot. The verucca is happy to chew away at that lovely thick skin and if it gets too near the bloodvessels it turns back before it gets hurt.
A-Z Multivitamins: I’m 50 years old so its a good idea at my age anyway. Helped keep the colds at bay but no help with the veruccas.
Salt water: This was based on hearing that some people had gone on holiday on got rid of them. It was either exposure to sunlight (UV is both skin penetrating and sterilising) or the salt water. Since a UV lamp was difficult to get hold of to sun-tan my feet, I soaked my feet in a solution of 4 tablespoons of salt in 1 pint of water poured into an old baking tray. I did this with a fresh mixture for four hours a day for 5 days. This seemed to start to remove the veruccas but I had to stop due to travelling for work – but a month later three mid-sized veruccas had completely gone without trace. I have now tried it again for 1 week and all the smaller veruccas are gone leaving me with just three large veruccas which are already smaller than they were.
Conclusion: Prolonged soaking in salt water was the best solution for me. It was easy and pain free, cheap and guaranteed not to spread your veruccas no filing or scraping). I would definitely recommend giving it a go at least. I have also heard good things about soaking in apple cider vinegar – this is basically a mild acid like the kind used in bazooka so i should imagine a good long soak in that (without scraping or filing) would likely work for many – however, it is very painful apparently.
Sadly I also conclude that the medical profession hasn’t a clue when it comes to curing veruccas, so I’m not holding my breath for a cure for cancer or HIV anytime soon.
Hey! I was looking at your blog a couple of weeks ago because I have heaps of verucas. I used a special type of spray/water that kills it away slowly. I used it every night and morning as the spray said and once a week did a scrub with it and pumus. I’ve notice in two weeks (note I’ve had these for seven years) that they’re dying some sujestions you use it! It’s called premium ionic colloidal silver. I just got it at my local pharmacy. If you need anymore info on this spray just email me – Kaitlyn.mallinder@gmail.com
Thanks!
I has verruca just like you and The funny thing about verruca is that it surrounds itself with deadline skin cells to protect it from our bodys natural defense aka white blod cells. So what i dis to get rid of this tricky fella was to man up and nick holes in it so it rally bleeds. Now this is not for The weak hearted but ones you expose The verruca to your immune system the White blood cells should so the rest. Worked for me but, btw writing on Phone so forgive my spelling.
Hi all! I found this post while researching for my six year old who got a wart this summer after we went to a beach vacation in Sicily. I never knew how dirty beaches could be until reading about all of the things you can pick up from visiting one. Anyway, his was a real problem and it just kept getting bigger. I have to say it, this thing was freaking me out. What finally worked was a combination approach. The first two weeks was cleaning it with alcohol and getting the thick skin off, freezing it with the home kit and then covering it and the circle around it in three layers of black nail polish. Each layer of the polish has to dry before the new layer is added. After that he could just wear normal socks. Every two days I would have him take a bath and we would redo his foot. This has been going on for well over a month and tonight while peeling off the polish with tweezers I noticed that the middle of this thing seemed a bit spongier than usual so I grabbed it and pulled….it came out in a large chunk leaving a hole surrounded by the circular callous that built up around it. Just to be sure I cleaned it up again, put Peroxide in it, cleaned it again and filled it, hopefully for the last time, with more black polish. Nail polish works but it has to be done in such a way that no air gets in and so it stays on for at least two days in a row.
I’m a little late for this party, I have no idea how I even stumbled across it, I don’t remember searching for verucca! But I found it interesting, and a useful subject for many.
In my youth (around 14) I cured two, one much the same size as your big one.
I used a combination of surgical spirit and that awful stuff the doctor used to prescribe for cystitis. Potassium citrate. Urgh. Makes me shudder just thinking about that stuff. Anyway, I put the mixture on cotton wool, then surgical taped it to my foot overnight. By morning there was black on the cotton wool. The verrucas gradually fell off as you describe. Took about two weeks of every night. Have never had any since thankfully.
great article and I had a similar monster of a verruca that I tried everything pretty much to get rid of. Professional cryo, banana skins + garlic treatment, OTC salicylic acid (5-10%), tea tree oil, filing etc. I had this thing for about 3 years.
In the end I tried something on amazon called Verrugon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thorpe-Laboratorues-Ltd-VERRUGON-VERRUCAE/dp/B001RYUG5W/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1459116610&sr=8-2&keywords=verrugon+complete+6g). I applied lots of it in to the middle of a wart plaster placed over the verruca and then put a large plaster over the top to protect it. Every day for about 12 weeks, I changed the dressing and re-applied. When I could I removed as much of the skin and reapplied. After about 10-12 weeks (I lost count) I thought Id let it heal a little and see how it got on. To my total amazement it totally healed over. My last hope was laser treatment or having it cut out in surgery.
Cant recommend that stuff enough and no, I dont work for them or promote them. Its the only stuff thats strong enough to kill stubborn veruccas that Ive found.
Walk as much as you can barefeet,don’t use shoes
My doctor helped me get rid of my verruca by burning it with liquid oxygen. It has -200 degree, but is burning exactly like it having +200 degree
Probably you should repeat the process twice
Cider vinegar soaked tissue or cotton wool. Keep it on overnight. Then scrape with a razor. Definitely works, got rid of a horrid mosaic one. Keep at it, and a few weeks it will be gone completely! It will take off a small one in a couple of treatments.
I have something that can work in just a few weeks. I used duct tape on my foot and bathed it in apple cider vinegar at night twice a week wearing the tape during the day. Seven years of verruca’s gone in 3 weeks!!!!
I ahve had one for about two years u could say it was because I didn’t notice but I did and it was to embarrisunb so I thought it would go but it didn’t they spread and now I’ve got four and I’ve got sores around the original big own help I got so self Confucius I filed it with a dead skin scraper it made it smaller but did don’t go away help is the sores normal ?
I’d had a vile verruca for 8 years that I couldn’t get rid of. I finally came across silver nitrate pens. It doesn’t hurt, makes the skin go black, but the verruca was gone in a couple of weeks. Extraordinary. I now always have one available to get rid of any that spring up on my kids.
I’ve lived in the UK for nearly 16 years now and I’m still amazed at people walking barefoot in public changing rooms & showers. In Spain, where I come from, some swimmingpools don’t allow you to walk barefood at all – everyone is required to wear swimmingpool shoes (i.e. flipflops that never touch the outside street). The reason is people don’t want to catch athletes foot and verrucae. And in fact I never knew anyone that had one (despite doing swimming classes for years) and yet I know quite a few people here that do (including my husband who has had both for decades together with pitted keratolysis). Also he never soaped his feet in the shower – only armpits & genitals & hair. What’s that about!… He started soaping his feet (& every bit of his body after I pestered him) & starting using flipflops and for the first year in nearly 30, he’s not caught athlethes feet. As for his verrucae & pitted keratolysis, we will be trying everything in your fantastic post & in the great comments and tips people have added.
But we really really need an awereness campaign in the UK about swimmingpool/gym & changing room areas & a swift in working practices & completely eliminate, both, outdoor footware & walking barefoot in those areas & we’d get a hell of a lot of prevention out of the way & people wouldnt have to endure these horrible foot infections.
Hiya, I just read your post…while my big verruca snuggly throbs on my poor foot.Lol How long did it take for your one to.go…assuming you are now rid of it.
Sophia
I think it took about 10 weeks to be completely gone. But it got a lot smaller in just a couple of weeks.
Thanks for your amusing commentary on your verrucca situation…I have similar, both plans and verrucca..wanted to walk the Pyrenees this summer but this has been thwarted by the painful crater on my sole!
Enjoyed reading this. Very funny! 🙂 and like your approach! Interested to know if you still have your verruca, 8 years on? I have had mine at least 7 years and have tried all you described (though a bit half-heartedly) with no success…about to try pee, as have read that can work …🤔 😅I just need to get it managable and less painful (which is a new development…) Just read some of the other comments and see you said it was still getting smaller 🤞
It’s totally gone now and has never come back. If I had to guess, I’d say the gaffer tape and the nail varnish had the biggest effect.
Wow lucky you – mine are still there on the one foot – very painful still! Will try the nail polish and gaffer tape again!
Great! Thanks good to know 😊
I have no idea if you still check these comments but I had a huge verruca for around 20 years, similar in appearance to yours. I’d visited this blog post a few times looking for cures and eventually used a mixture of salicylic acid plasters, crushed up aspirin and trimming it right down until it finally gave in and beggared off. Hope you managed to sort yours in the end!