E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSGot a weird wart? If home remedies like acid or duct tape aren't working to annihilate it, try self-hypnosis. It's not as crazy as you think.
Though hypnosis has suffered mightily in popular culture (really, no guy with a pocket watch can make you dance like a chicken, unless you really want to) some doctors have found the mind-body technique helpful for treating problems like insomnia, migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, and, yes, warts. Though these ugly skin growths caused by the human papilloma virus generally respond to conventional approaches (and some may go away with no intervention, but it can take months, even years), recurrence is common.
Kids are wart magnets and some of the treatments can be traumatic for them, says Karen Olness, M.D., professor of pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. In a multi-institutional study of wart regression using hypnosis, published more than a decade ago in the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, Olness and colleagues found that kids who were treated with a standard topical remedy and kids who were treated using self-hypnosis techniques experienced equal amounts of wart regression. But after one year, kids in the hypnosis group who continued to use self-hypnosis techniques experienced fewer recurrences.
"We don't know why it works but we think it may have something to do with an ability to control blood flow. If the wart isn't getting nutrients, it's going to go away," says Olness, who begins teaching self-hypnosis by asking kids to name some things they enjoy. Once they're relaxed, she asks them to think of ways to "stop feeding" the wart.
Though most of us experience a trance-like state akin to self hypnosis when we're engrossed in a TV show or reading a good book, the deeply focused state of hypnosis can only be achieved if a person practices.
"People need a coach to help teach techniques, but then it's really up to them to take it the rest of the way," says Olness, who has had success in helping adults with warts, including a skeptical colleague who suffered with recurrent plantar warts. "At the end of the day, all hypnosis is self hypnosis."
Would willing away your warts actually work? Tell us what you think in the comments.
To read more Body Odd posts, click here. You can also find us on Twitter and on Facebook.
Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.
Leave a Comment:
As a child, my grandfather told me I could simply think my wart away. Each night before I went to sleep, I thought about the wart diminishing in size and a Pac-Man character chomping at it from the outside edge in. The wart actually went away! I did it twice more after that as a teenager. I was very surprised in recent years to find out that warts are caused by viruses. If I could get rid of a wart caused by a virus, why couldn't I cure other possible viruses? Seems possible.
I Like That Idea of Willing Away Other Possibles Viruses, However How Bout Cancer, Or Any Other Diseases. Bless The Ones Who Have Successfully Completed Their Mission.
Will Away People!
Scooter,
There have been a numbe of documented cases over the years of people fighting cancer with the power of positive thinking, as well as with hypnosis.
Stephen C. Parkhill, in his book "Answer Cancer" discusses not only how the mind can create illness in people, but also a model in which the mind can address illnesses.
The power of the mind as a tool for continued healing and improvement of quality of life is definitely a worthwhile field of study.
I don't know about hypnosis, but my Dad could remove warts from other people. I don't think he ever had one himselft, but I have seen him remove them by just rubbing them & telling the person (my husband for one) to forget it & it would go away. It really did. I asked him to remove one from my finger, but he said I could not because I was related to him & he could not tell me how he did it. Through the years he took many warts off. I asked how he could take them off & he said someone had told him how & he could reveal how he couldn't do it any more. He was born in 1899.
With your mind you make the world. - Buddha
Mind is the builder, your body is the result. - Edgar Cayce
As you believe... - Jesus of Nazarath
As a practicing hypnotist for over 20 years, I have witnessed fist hand the power of the subconscious mind to help individuals control, seemingly uncontrollable, body functions. Everything from reducing or eliminating pain, to controlling blood flow during surgury, to removing fears and phobias, and a wide variety of things in between.
As we become more open to the knowledge that we have more control over our lives, and our bodies, than we "believe" we do, I think hypnosis will be the method of choice for a wide range of self-help scenarios. Not replacing modern physical and psychological medicine, but acting as a viable adjunct to it.
I was surprised to see this artical. I had a few warts on my hands many years ago. I wondered if I could make them disappear by focusing on them and believing they would disappear. I showed the warts to a co worker before I began the process. I wanted a witness in case this worked. In a few weeks they were gone. I believe the mind and faith have great healing potential.
I'd like to see the study. Their warts went away at the same rate but the self-hypnosis kids had fewer come back - how many fewer? Was it even statistically significant? Also, this study was 10 years old. Why is this being printed now? If it truly works, why are mainstream practitioners not encouraging their patients to follow this as a course of follow-up treatment. Without seeing the study, how it was conducted and what the conclusion was, I'm not buying it.
Thirty years ago I was advised by mainstream physicians at RI Hospital to use hypnosis.. you can read the results in my posting about my daughter who tried chemicals and nitrogen with no results and then found success with hypnosis. I am only a sample of one but there are many others who report the same thing and you cant just ignore them,,,or can you?
I am not ignoring anything. It is clear from the postings here that there is a fair amount of anecdotal evidence however anecdotal evidence does not hold up to the scientific method; it is a starting point not a conclusion. That's why I said I'd like to see the study. I have read many studies and I find that they are often severely flawed or that their results are not statistically significant but yet, people get hold of them and use them to spread erroneous information. I find that to be unethical or even fraudulent. I do not doubt that you used self-hypnosis and your warts disappeared. I DO have doubt that the self-hypnosis was the cause of them going away. Warts often go away on their own and it may well have been coincidence that they went away after you started hypnosis. Only a properly devised study would be able to show if self-hypnosis had any real impact.
I just wanted to say everyone used to think I was crazy when I would tell them I thought my warts away. I used to have several on my feet and one on my nuckle. Everyday I started this routine of thinking it as being gone and rubbing around the area. After a few weeks they started getting smaller and all of them eventually disappeared. I have had more since that time and every time thinking them away with a rubbing technique and they have disappeared everytime.
It works doesn't it? Isn't that crazy? I'm glad they are bringing this to light but I'm afraid most people won't understand it still.
When I taught biology in a community college in Georgia, a student said if you rub a small pebble on the warts, place the pebble on the ground at a fork in the road and walk away, the wart would disappear. At first I expressed doubt about the effectiveness of the method until I remember removing a wart from my hand by rubbing it on a rock when I was a child. I was running full tilt down a gravel road, stubbed my toe, fell to the ground catching myself with my hands out stretched. The wart disappeared...bled like crazy but it was definitely gone! Rubbing a wart on rocks does remove the wart!
A French Creole descendant pressed a penny over the wart and on my hand and told me not to worry and that the wart would disappear. There is a saying (spell) that was also said, but she assured me that the real cure was mind over matter and the spell helps to ease people's minds so they can forget about their wart. I didn't believe any of it, until my wart disappeared a month or two later. Before this, my wart had survived several over the counter remedies and a doctor's triple application of frozen nitrogen with no sign of improvement.
Sometimes the body just needs to help to heal itself. I'm sure there are a lot of old remedies that are out there and some of them work. It just seems like we don't have time to wait for them in our busy lives. Perhaps someday we will see more of these remedies or as aids in helping conventional treatments.
As a child I had many many warts on my hands. It wasn't much of an issue in school but as you could imagine as I progressed thru elementary I became more and more aware of them. In 5th grade we were notified that many of us were being transferred to another elementary school for the next school year.
At this point I was very concerned about the warts as I wanted to make a good impression, I so wanted them to go away. I have no explanation to give you, but by the time 6th grade started they were all gone, every one of them.
My step-father used to hypnosis to get rid of my brothers warts all over his hands. It really worked!
Ah, the statistics of coincidence. This is why, even with what one would classify as a reasonably controlled experiment, ANOVA can be misleading absent a proposed mechanism (hard to properly control out the desired leverage and hence isolate its efficacy). These types of macro observations are simply not well controlled. If we want to establish a cause-and-effect, it seems we ought to be examining links between brain function, blood flow and some determination of viral activity (macro appearance is only one aspect). I see nothing here about EEG/MEG, functional neuro-imaging, blood chemistry, intermediate topical behavior, etc. And what, exactly, is the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis? (One wonders if one could publish, oh, "The American Journal of Clinical Leeching" , for example). I know the New England Journal of Medicine and might prefer a peer-reviewed article on this technique there, for starters.
Mark my vote as "No; awaiting better clinical data"...
Thanks for your rational response, I was feeling lonely for a bit there.
No worries. And you are spot on about anecdotal evidence, and the sway it tends to hold on people because of an emotional need to reach closure. The fact that science acknowledges the unknown seems to bother folks, but there's a reason for that...
I had many many warts as a young child of 7 or 8. I had a staranger that noticed them one day in the cashier line at a store. He asked me if I wanted them gone. Of course I said yes. I do not remember exactly what he did but I do remember I had to give him a penny and he whispered something while rubbing my hands. About 2 weeks later they were ALL gone and never came back.
I am glad to see Ajvenom experienced a similar cure. I thought I was the only one for all these years. I am 52 now.
As a grade school child I had 9 warts on my left thumb. One day I came home crying because the other kids had been calling me names associated with warts. My wonderful Dad came to my room that night and offered to buy my warts from me. I told him he could have them for free, but he insisted he had to buy them so I would really give them up. He paid me a penny a piece and helped me put the money in my piggy bank. The next morning all the warts were gone! I truly believed in my Dad. Talk about mind over matter!
When I was young (1950) my aunts father was noted for being able to "rub away warts" He would rub the warts and say a few things and they would soon be gone. He did this for a numbe of folks. I would assume that the power of suggestion worked.
The power of the mind is enormous and sadly for the most part untapped. I BELIEVE.
About thirty years ago my daughter had warts on her fingers and the hospital actually suggested hypnosis as the first thing but I was skeptical and as long as I was already at the hospital and going to the hypnotist meant more waiting, I said No.
So they first tried chemicals but that did nothing. Then they used liquid nitrogen and that failed. That was tough because the warts were right where the nail meets the finger and so they could not give her some kind of shot to kill the pain but instead had to give her a pill that made her very groggy. She was only about ten at the time. Finally they were about to try to burn them off!! .. all without anything to kill the pain.. so at that point i took her to a hypnotist. We were both skeptical and after the first session she told me nothing had happened and the entire thing seemed like a joke.... but I took her again and after two or three sessions the warts were totally gone!
I would never have believed it but it made a believer out of me!!
Good luck on that technique. Don't hold your breath while doing it!
Warts are caused by virus's not the mind.
Brian 352902. Something made them go away. Seems coincidence that is was right after hypnosis or some one "talking" them off. The power of the mind cannot be underestimated or completly understood. So I don't think you have any evidence to say these methods didn't work.
Can self-hypnosis make my ex go away?
Both my grandmothers used to "think" warts away, and taught me to do the same. I can't stand using wart medicines, and right when I got my engagement ring years ago I had a wart on my left hand. I didn't want people to be looking at the ring and see the wart. I finally tried "thinking" it away and within a couple of weeks it was gone. This recurring wart that I had had since my early teens has never returned, and I'm near 40 now. It's the only remedy that kept it away for good...all the other ones would see a recurrence in a few weeks, even a doctor removing it.
So many stories and testimonies of this type of healing/relief, it would seem to warrant further investigation of the possiblities. Is the human body programmable? Or are viruses, especially those that have infected the human body and are thereby 'part' of that body, programmable by the brain? If this is factual, is this a placebo effect, or something entirely different?
While I am no fan of New Age thinking (smacks too much of occultism), I do think that mind/body interactions such as this should be explored, preferably with some rigorous clinical studies.
Take two thoughts and call me in the morning.
I don't know about hypnosis, but my Dad could remove warts by just rubbing & and tell you not to think about it and it would go away. Hhe did it many times. A lot of people doubted it (my husband for one until my Dad removed a wart from his foot). I asked him to remove one from my hand & he said he couldn't because I was related to him. I asked him how he did it and he said he couldn't tell me or he wouldn't be able do it any more. He did tell me before he died that he would tell someone, but as far as I know he never did. He was born in 1899.
moving subject here, and mind over matter stuff is positive, but hello.....warts are viruses. and will go away eventually anyway when the virus dies. sona, your dad emitted antibodies different than your husband that could kill the virus.
When I was a child I had a wart on my finger. My Mom made a Dr.'s appt. for me. I dreaded going and was wishing that my wart would go away. Right before we left for the appt., I looked down at my finger and the wart had completely disappeared! I always wondered how this could have happened, and now I know why.. I willed it away. Wish it was possible to do this with all illnesses. It would certainly be a major breakthrough in the medical field.