Healthy Living Series, Video #4 of 4: Warts

Please enjoy Dr. Pelto's video # 4 of 4 in his Healthy Living series. This edition is about warts.

Transcript Below

hi we're back to healthy living with dr.

pelt oh and we're going to answer a

question that I get from people every

summer when they go to the pools and

then they go to the beaches and they

actually use this for treatment is a

duct tape can you guess what it is it's

how to deal with plantar warts plantar

warts are warts on the foot and the

question I get is why do I get warts on

my feet and how can I treat them to

understand about warts let's look at a

picture of a wart you can see here on

the skin there's these little black dots

and these black dots are actually the

blood vessels that feed the wart and the

whole goal is to develop an immune

response against the wart what is a wart

award is actually a virus very similar

to a flu and if you have the flu can you

take medicine to get rid of it

not usually you have to let your body

defeat the virus over time and that's

the same thing with a virus in your foot

that's called a wart now award is just

happy to live forever in the top portion

of the skin it can live there for months

it can live in for years sometimes it

goes away on its own but sometimes it

gets bigger and causes pain now you have

to be aware though do you have a wart or

do you only have a callus in this other

picture you can actually see what a

callus looks like and these are two

different types of callus there's one

that's very broad and large and there's

one that's very small and both of these

can be painful when you walk in people

many times they come into the office and

they think well do I have a wart or is

it only a callus the easiest way to tell

is the trim off with a razor blade the

top of the skin and if there's little

areas of pinpoint bleeding you most

likely have a wart if you don't it to

callus another thing that you can look

at is the skin lines if you look at the

skin normally the skin has lines that go

through a callus but the lines don't

usually go through a wart so what are

the treatments one of the treatments

that you could try at home would be duct

tape some people think they can tape a

penny to the bottom of the foot some

people use acid

treatments they use freezing sprays they

use everything that you can find

over-the-counter but I want you to be

careful especially if you have diabetes

or if you have poor blood flow because

if you have one of these two things and

you're going to use these acid

treatments every time you use an acid

treatment on the foot it's going to

slough away one layer of skin and it's

going to make it really white and really

we call it macerated which is just a

damp kind of reminds me of dishpan hands

so if it gets really damped that's going

to cause a cut in the skin and it could

become a problem to you be aware if

you're using the acid treatment don't

use it every single day you want to stop

a little bit what happens if you decide

you want to come into the doctor's

office there are some advanced

treatments and I find that the two most

effective in my hands are either

removing the warts or using laser

therapy on the wart well how do you make

the difference if you have it removed or

if you use the laser therapy if you're

going to remove the wart it's usually

because there's only one or two that are

very small that you can remove them in

the office some people we have to

actually take to the operating room to

remove a big big portion of the warts

and in the operating room now with the

laser the laser remember the other

picture I showed you before of the the

little black dots

well those black dots are actually blood

vessels and what the laser does is it

actually shoots laser and heat at the

blood vessels and causes them to

coagulate

and become kind of like charred blood

and they develop a scab when you come

back to the office a few weeks later

that scab can be popped out and a good

portion of the skin is replaced and you

see that a portion of the ward is

destroyed and usually you have to do

that a few types of treatments are there

other topical treatments for example for

children that don't want it removed or

other people that that are just scared

of the laser there are some other

treatments award is a wart so if you

have another type of treatment you could

use something called alvera or Care Act

these are just technical terms for other

types of topical treatments they're not

really as effective but they can help

people and how about to prevent warts

let's say you've had warts in the past

and

want to get them back well let's say you

don't want to get works where do most of

the people get their words from the most

common place is actually the pool

because in the pool people are barefoot

they're walking around they get little

cuts in their skin and that little cut

can cause a viral infection from a ward

so be careful wear flip-flops when you

go into public restrooms in public

showers and also to the pool because it

can be contagious so there are some

treatments for treating warts if you

look on the internet there's probably

thousands of treatments that they're

talking about you know why there's

thousands because there's not one that

really works well so if you'd like to

learn more about the laser treatment and

the other treatments you can go to our

website at drpelto.com and there's a

portion on there that talks about how to

treat warts thank you

Author

Dr. Donald Pelto Dr. Donald Pelto is a Podiatrist at Central Massachusetts Podiatry, in Worcester and Westborough. Author of several books on foot health, he also speaks Portuguese and Spanish. He likes to go on family hikes and loves learning and talking about health related topics and healthy life hacks. Watch some of his interviews about health and video lectures on youtube.com/drpelto.

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