What are warts?

Warts are caused by the human papilloma virus. They are benign and often called common warts.

Common plantar warts occur mostly with children and young adults up to age 16, yet they will appear in about 10% of the population.

They can appear on your hands, elbow, fingers, knees and when they do, they can be uncomfortable. They can also appear on your feet where they are known as plantar warts-more on them shortly.

For common warts, a quality-of-life assessment questionnaire revealed that:

• 81.2 % of people were moderately to extremely embarrassed by their warts
• 70.5 % were moderately to extremely concerned about negative appraisals by others for having them
• 24.7 % said that it was moderately to extremely difficult to play sports because of their warts.

So while warts are benign they are ugly and can prevent us from a full life.

Warts are considered cosmetic.

They account for about 18% of all visits to dermatologists.

A wart looks bumpy, and the surface is dry and crusty. The rough appearance of common warts can also bleed if the wart is brushed or rubbed.

Plantar warts are caused by the same virus as that causes common warts, but they appear on the bottoms of the feet.

They will cluster and can be noticed as small black dots on your feet. The black dots come from the plantar wart bleeding and then the blood drying. Plantar warts can be especially uncomfortable and painful as you walk or try to run.

The good news is that warts, while a curse, do not have serious risk to our overall health - and may, sometimes self-resolve if you wait long enough.

However, we should protect our feet and hands in public pools and wet areas so we minimize our risk of picking up the virus.

So, warts may affect most of us over our lifetime, but...

Warts can be treated!