cecily's natural home remedies

I'm a bit embarrassed to say, but I have a plantar wart on the ball of my left foot. I, who never get a wart (apart from those two in high school which I killed with the aid of a trusty potato), have a wart of the worst variety. Plantar warts grow deep and hurt.

Being a bit of a natural remedy freak, I thought I'd try and knock this wart off without resorting to liquid nitrogen, freezing, or cutting holes in my foot, starting with the potato remedy. I know this works, because as I said above, I've killed warts in the past by slicing a thin piece of potato and rubbing its juice on the wart morning and evening. Over the course of a few weeks, the wart turns black and starts falling apart before disappearing completely. When we met, Frank had a whopper wart over a knuckle, and no amount of freezing had worked. Potato presto - the wart was gone and has never returned.

The trick with killing a wart with potato is liberal, frequent application. Since the bottom of my foot is not a part of my body I often look at, I kept forgetting to do it, and so the wart remained. Next stop propolis. I had no idea if this would work or not, but I love propolis. It kills tinea in a trice and is just a nice, natural remedy I keep for all sorts of cuts and abrasions. If it kills tinea, I figured it was worth trying it on my wart, since a wart is a benign skin tumour caused by a virus.

And it worked. The wart started turning brown, and (with some barbaric, DIY help from needles and tweezers) slowly fell apart. It's a gradual thing though. The hole left in my foot, as wart chips fell away, ended up being about three millimetres. So yes, plantar warts do indeed grow deep. Another truth of plantar warts is they are tenacious. While my foot was gaping with a three mm hole, the wart still clung to the outer edges and would not give up.

This called for the big guns! I overheard someone at work saying dandelion sap also kills warts. Too bad I pulled a whole bunch of dandelions out last weekend. I managed to sniff out a few down the back of the yard, and dutifully plucked a few leaves and rubbed the sap on the wart.

If you want to see something pretty impressive, rub dandelion sap on a wart. Within minutes it will turn black. So now I have a black hole on the sole of my foot. Mmmmm, nice. But it seems to be working - more of the wart is dropping out at every application. Before I know it, that nasty old wart will be gone. I hope. (And I still think it's better than going to a podiatrist!)