Wart Testing

Alert: For those who don't want to hear about my ongoing battle to get rid of the warts on my left hand, you may want to skip this entry.

You'll recall earlier my theory that swimming in a chlorinated pool was what helped my warts to begin dissolving. Went swimming again today, so I'm going to see now if the remaining warts shrink at an accelerated rate, or if there's no difference. It's not exactly a controlled experiment since it's a different pool and we weren't in the pool for five hours as the last time, but we'll see if maybe a smaller dose will make any difference.

Ever Try to Breathe Through A Wart?

It’s the Curies! We must flee!

(Apologies it's not in English, but that's what the folks under attack by Pierre and Marie say in English.)

Ever want to feel like a fool? Research the ingredients on the homeopathic medicine you’re taking. Especially if you want to feel like a slightly radioactive, cobra-venom-poisoned fool.

First of all, you may ask, why take homeopathic remedies in the first place? Maybe because the lemon juice and peppermint concoction I took all last spring and summer meant only two days of mild allergy symptoms, no allergy pills that left my fingertips numb and tingly, all while others who suffer the same kinds of allergies I do reported an average allergy year. (We're scheduled to begin our lemon/peppermint regimen for this year starting this weekend.)

So that worked. But the jury’s still out on the wart remedy I’m taking right now.

I’ve been taking Tumorell for about two weeks now, and can’t say much of it. That is a short time, of course. I’ve used OTC wart-removal methods, ranging from the paint-on salicyclic acid compounds to the freeze-your-warts-off-and-save kits. Neither worked well. Oh, the warts shrink and seem to go away, but they always come back and, like Sand People, in greater numbers. We also went the lavender route while skipping down Homeopathy Lane, but that hasn’t seemed to work, either. So when Tumorell was recommended, we thought, what the heck. Can’t be any worse than what we’ve already tried.

Uh huh. Like I said, so far, no success.

What’s this stuff supposed to do, I wondered. So I did a little research on the active ingredients. What I’ve discovered is a confusing mish-mash that may leave me slightly more radioactive after all is said and done, but still with a warty left thumb. I am, however, willing to give this stuff more time before I pass total judgment.

Here’s what’s in the foul liquid I’m taking:

Scrophularia nodosa. First of all, not an ingredient to inspire confidence, as it sounds like a remedy Grampa Simpson might recommend. It’s from a plant called the carpenter’s square. They don’t really come out and say it, but it sounds like it’s valued for its alkaloid properties – which is fine, since the OTC wart remedies rely on changing the pH around the wart enough to kill the virus that causes them.

Then there’s acidium lacticium – lactic acid for the common folk. It’s a naturally-occurring acid found in milk. Seems OK, but counterproductive to the alkaloid in the first ingredient, since acids and alkalods tend to neutralize each other.

Then there’s this: radium bromatum. Radium bromide, for those familiar with chemistry. This is a radium salt that famously left a burn on Marie Curie’s arm that took more than a month to heal. And I’m taking this internally. Whee. It, too, seems to want to play with pH, but also introduce that radiation curative that did the Curies so well. Yes, radioactivity is used to battle cancer, but it seems a bit steep to take on mere warts. It’s also supposed to ward off much flatulence. So let me see, radioactivity or flatulence? Which should I pick . . .

Then there’s naja tripudians. I’m not quite sure what it does. I do know, however, that it’s derived from Indian cobra venom. Yeah, radioactivity and snake poison. I’ll either be cured or the butt end of a sad joke like this:

Lawyer: I’m suing a doctor on my client’s behalf.
Other Person: Why?
Lawyer: He went in to have a wart on his nose removed, and when he awoke, it was gone.
Other Person: What’s wrong with that?
Lawyer: Ever try to breathe through a wart?

Herbal Report

So Michelle and I went the entire summer without taking prescription or over-the-counter allergy medicines. Instead, we took twice daily a concoction of lemon juice, lemon oil and peppermint oil. And while others of our acquaintance reported an average to mildly severe allergy season, I know personally I went only three or four days when I felt that allergic tingle in my nose, only to have it fade away.

So I think we can call the herbal medicine allergy cure a success.

And it's not all from simply wishing it so. I purposely went a week over the course of the summer without taking the stuff, just to see what would happen. Gradually over that week, my allergic symptoms returned. They never got to full-blown strength, but I could certainly tell the difference that week I didn't take the lemon stuff. That's hardly a scientific proof, of course, but it tells me enough to suppose that the lemon stuff had some curative or preventative power.

Now, as for the rosemary on the warts -- less success. I still have five warts on my thumb. Part of that may be my fault, as I have not been as faithful taking the rosemary as I had the lemon. But I have to grant the rosemary this: It's at least as effective as the OTC anti-wart stuff I tried earlier. Sure, that stuff made the warts disappear. But they always grew back. The rosemary has slowly made them shrink. They're not gone, but they're not growing bigger, nor are they multiplying. So maybe there's something to it. It's not surprising -- rosemary has a salicyclic acid derivative that's similar to the acids in the OTC wart remover.

Side effect-wise, however, I have to give the herbal stuff full marks. With the generic Claritin I was taking for my allergies, I got tingly fingers and the occasional dizzy spell. With the lemon stuff, no discernable side effects. The OTC wart stuff never did cause any side effects, and neither has the rosemary.

That Lemon Stuff Just Might Be Working

All this week, the folks I work with have been sneezing, sniffling and otherwise complaining about their seasonal allergies. In years past, I'd have been right with them.

Not this year.

There may be several factors: Maybe the junk I'm allergic to isn't floating around yet. Or, just maybe, the lemon juice/lemon oil/peppermint oil concoction my wife and I have been taking for the past few months in anticipation of allergy season is working.

I can't say I'm symptom-free. On the days folks have been complaining loudly, I have had a slight tingling in the nasal passages, the kind I usually get when the allergies are going to kick in. But that's it. Usually, the tingling is gone by 10 am or so, and I'm not bothered by anything for the rest of the day. I could easily be imagining things, but part of me believes as well that this herbal cure is actually doing something.

I'll take a cure -- even one that's only in me head, Mrs. Tweedy -- over the modern pharmacological one I've been using. I use an OTC version of, drat, forget the brand name. Want to type Ritalin, but that's something completely different. Anyway, I use a generic version of a popular antihistamine that, though it stops the allergy symptoms, leaves me a bit tired and often with thingling in my fingers. I get all of the symptom easing with the lemon juice cocktail, but none of the fatigue and finger-tingling. I like that in a cure.

Rosemary!

We will continue to eat rainbows and poop butterflies at the Davidson household. My wife ordered more essential oils today for our continued dabbling into herbal remedies. The newest remedy that will be tried – on myself and our youngest son – is rosemary to cure warts. No longer content with seeking our gypsies or trying to home-paint or home-freeze these warts out of existence, we’ll now try rosemary and see if it works.

So, what is rosemary. It is, I've discovered, related to the mint family, and is an evergreen herb that has the following "active" ingredients: 1,8-cineole, acetic acid, camphor, carnosol, carvacrol, carvone, caryophyllene, chlorogenic acid, geraniol, hesperidin, limonene, luteolin, rosmarinic acid, salicylates. Most of which mean nothing to me, of course, as do most of the ingredients in the over-the-counter wart removal aids I've tried. Now the salicyclates I'm familiar with, as they're also the active ingredient in aspirin and the OTC wart removal aids I've tried. No surprises to find it there. Acetic acid is what gives vinegar its peculiar pungency, and rosmarinic acid is one of those magicl things called antioxidants. As for the rest, I don't know much about them. But through some alchemical combination, our resident witch doctor (not Dr. Thayne, but someone else who got us walking down this garden path) swears by it.

Lemon update: Allergy season is beginning to swing here, and, thus far, the only effects I've noticed is a slight tingling in the nasal passages that quickly fades as the days go on. I take that as a good sign, because in the past those tingling sensations typically meant I was goingto have a fair-to-middling day, allergy-wise. I still suspect part of my reaction is mental, but I'm as willing to give the lemon/lemon oil/peppermint cure the benefit of the doubt as I am the OTC antihistamines.

The thought of consuming (or at least applying) rosemary does bring up one concern: Rosemary Woods, or, more specifically, the Rosemary Wood Face, a longstanding family joke featuring a rather fake smile. I'm hopeful using Rosemary won't induce Joker-like side effects.

Holding on, Holding on . . .

Last week, I wrote about taking our son to see a "natural remedy" doctor to see if he could help him with a few medical problems, among them being a bout of constipation that has plagued this kid since he was a baby.

Sunday came the deluge. Sparing the details, I will simply say that our son went to the bathroom a lot, a week after starting treatment. He was uncomfortable, to be sure, but -- and this is a first for him -- he said he could feel his body telling him he needed to go. Most of the time in the past we had to tell him to go. So Sunday's activity, despite his discomfort, is comforting. And he's in school today, apparently functioning as normally as can be expected.

Part of this may be mental, as this is the first time we've had a doctor who recognized there might be a problem that stool softeners and time wouldn't cure (that's all we got out of our pediatrician, and the internal medicine doctors around here won't see anyone younger than 18 years of age). So chalk up at least one potential win in the column of Dr. Destin Thayne, BEP.

Going Herbal, Part Two

I mentioned a while ago that we were going to start trying some herbal remedies for the minor afflctions that ail our microscopic sector of mankind. You may also recall I promised to keep you posted. So here goes:

For the kids: Garlic pills. Really. I think they're to help boost immunity and help them ward off the vapors and/or coughs. I'm not really sure what "vapors" are, but when you're feeding your kids garlic pills, you need to add in odd words like that.

For the adults: As we're both prone to allergies, we're trying a concoction that's supposed to help detoxify the liver which, according to the local witch doctor, is the bane of allergy sufferers everywhere, since that's the organ that's supposed to be filtering out the allergens but can't because it's already sorting through the swill of other contaminants we readily take into our bodies with the air we breathe, water we drink and food we eat. Our concoction consits of a couple drams of freshly-squeezed lemon juice, a scruple of lemon oil and a dribble of peppermint. For those interested in a play-by-play of how the first one went down, read on:

I gulp the elixir (another word I get to use more often now, along with dram, scruple and dribble).

WHOOOOOOOM the lemon juice shoots straight to the basement, burning holes through my innards as it descends. Look out, toxified liver, that's all I can say. Lemon juice is on the way. The cold, burning feeling lasts for at least five minutes., as if I'd swallowed a lump of Icy Hot.

WHOOOOOOSH at the same time the peppermint screams up into the sinuses as if Amora, Goddess of Mustard, had climbed up the nose of the other gods.

Frankly, I have NO IDEA where the lemon oil went. Perhaps it serves as a lubricant to get the other ingredients to where they need to go faster.

Repeat, morning and night.

We're supposed to do this for three or four months, then see if it has any effect on our allergies. As far as side effects go, I suppose the burning and nose-climbing is at least different than the side effects I get from my OTC Claritin knockoff: occasional bouts of tingling fingers and dizziness, at least until I get used to the chemicals swimming around in my bloodstream. I have confidence, at least, that the herbal stuff knows where to go, as it arrived in the traditional problem area (the sinuses) and the alleged problem area (the liver) in five seconds or less, if my body's reactions are any indication. When I take the Claritin knockoff, I'mnot sure the stuff knows where to go immediately, which is why, I think, I get the tingling and dizziness. Of course, it also works to clear up my allergies. We'll see if the lemon/peppermint elixir can do the same.

Going Herbal

It appears, at the Davidson home, that we are going herbal. Due to a sinus cold that lingered for more than two weeks, and thanks to a lady in the neighborhood who has done her research into the world of natural remedies, Michelle is finally recovering from her cold. She's taken some odd concoctions -- garlic and parsley pills -- and she's been doing something or other with grapeseed oil. She confided in me tonight that the stinky pills she's been taking taste bad going down, but are even worse coming up.

It all has to do, or so says our neighborhood remedy researcher, to cleaning out the liver and helping it do its job of ridding the body of toxins, something I thought was primarily the duty of the bowel. Part of me can't help but to think of Tim Conway doing a bad imitation of Euell Gibbons, roaming about the set muttering "Many parts of the pine tree are edible" while taking bites out of chairs and tables. But this gal is going to hook me up with some pretty wicked lemon and peppermint oil, which, she says, is the cure-all for seasonal allergies. Given that the current allergy medication I take takes at least a week to kick in and occasionally leaves my fingers numb as it works its wonders on the sinuses, I can't say that I'd come out any worse, going the herbal route.

But it is a little comical -- because when I lived in France, just about every ailment is pegged to liver difficulty there. That reminds me of an Asterix and Obelix comic book, from which I've pulled a few panels for our amusement:


Here, Obelix defends Dogmatix's bone from the foraging Roman (starved into oblivion in a reducing spa where the food is limited to boiled vegetables) by threatening a "poke in the liver" in retribution.

That was inspired by this even, depicting his chief's illness (due to, his wife says, overeating) and sensitive liver:

Ouch! the chief yells. Obelix asks, "Can I try too?" with the predicted effect.

So I'll keep you up to date, sporadically, on our entry into the herbal realm. I'm optimistic we'll see some results. Why not let chemistry involving natural elements have an equal chance with chemistry brewed up in a pharmaceutical plant? Nature is where most of that stuff gets started anyway.