7 Best Essential Oils for Warts & How to Use Them

Warts are a common and undesirable skin condition that can affect both children and adults. They can appear anywhere on the body, but they tend to be more prominent on hands and feet. Fortunately, essential oils offer a natural way to remove warts, so you can skip the salicylic acid and freeze wart remover kits.

In this post, in addition to listing the best essential oils for warts, we provide step-by-step instructions for how to use them for safe, effective wart removal!

Here are the best essential oils for warts:

Table of Contents

What Are Warts?

Warts are small, raised, rough, and grainy growths on the skin. They typically don’t cause any discomfort or pain. But when they grow on places that come in contact and cause friction with surfaces or clothes a lot like fingers, elbows, armpits, bottom of the feet, and genitals, they can become painful and annoying.

What Causes Warts

Warts are the most familiar manifestation and typical symptom of a human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. With over 170 different strains of the virus, it is said that every individual would catch HPV at some point in their lives. HPV can be spread through casual skin contact or shared items like clothes or towels.

The risk of getting the virus also increases when you use public showers, pools, or restrooms; when you’re handling raw meat; when you have skin lesions, wounds, pimples, eczema. Warts will also appear when you have a weak immune system.

HPV is also the most common type of sexually transmitted infection (STI), so being sexually active can make you more susceptible to genital warts, specifically.

Types of warts

There are several types of warts, and this is important to what kind of treatment, conventional or alternative, you may opt for.

Common warts typically grow on fingers and toes, but can appear anywhere on your body. They are greyer than surrounding skin and have a rough, grainy appearance with a rounded top.

Plantar warts grow on the soles of the feet, but instead of growing outward, they grow inwards, which can be very painful when taking a step. This inward growth makes it look like a hole appeared on the bottom of your foot surrounded by hardened skin.

Flat warts usually appear on the face, thighs, or arms. They have a flat top that makes it look like it has been scraped. While they are small and unnoticeable at first, they can have a pinkish, brownish, or yellowish color to them.

Filiform warts appear as flaps or bags of skin that grow around the mouth, nose, and neck areas that closely resemble skin tags.

Periungual warts grow under toe and finger nails.

Genital warts, as the name suggests, are warts that grow around, on, and sometimes, in a woman’s case, inside the genitals. They appear as bumps or a cluster of bumps and can range from looking like common warts, to having stem-like or cauliflower-like protrusions. These can be very painful as they cause severe itching and discomfort.

For these types of warts, it’s important that you seek a medical professional immediately as genital warts can develop into cancer.

Common Treatments

An HPV infection and the warts that come with it can typically resolve within a few months to a few years without treatment. There are a number of treatments to help get rid of them and facilitate the healing of scars.

Treatments include using salicylic acid patches or ointments, cryotherapy – liquid nitrogen is sprayed on the affected areas so the wart cells die and scab over.

Excision, electrosurgery or laser treatment surgeries can also be explored, although these are for cases when other treatment options have not worked.

Alternative Treatments

There are also a few alternative treatments you can look into.

The ‘tape occlusion method’ involves using an item you probably wouldn’t think is very effective in treating warts – duct tape. You cover the affected areas, changing tapes every 6 days, and it helps facilitate healing of those areas.

Essential oils are also a great option for treating warts, as they provide the effects of both removing the wart and speed up healing the affected area.

The Best Essential Oils for Warts

Frankincense

Frankincense – NOW

Using Frankincense essential oil for warts can be very effective. Frankincense can be used for a variety of skin ailments, and it is a common ingredient in beauty products and ointments. It’s antimicrobial and astringent properties make it a potent remedy for warts.

Tea Tree

Tea tree – Plant Therapy

With antifungal, antiviral, and antibacterial properties, tea tree is also another popular ingredient in soaps, shampoos, and cleaning agents. Aside from being a potent bee and wasp repellent, tea tree oil is also effective in treating warts.

Oregano

Oregano – Plant Therapy

You may know oregano as an herb used in cooking but its essential oil is actually also a very potent anti-inflammatory, antifungal, and pain reliever making it a great essential oil to treat warts.

Clove

Clove – Rocky Mountain

Used extensively throughout history for treating different diseases for its antiseptic properties, clove oil can be used to treat warts. It’s a great option to use on painful warts since clove also has a numbing effect on the skin.

Lavender

Lavender – Plant Therapy

Aside from being popular for its soothing scent, lavender oil is also a very potent antibacterial, antiviral, and anti-inflammatory making it a great essential oil to use on warts.

Cypress

Cypress – NOW

Cypress is known to treat wounds, headaches, muscle pain, and a variety of other ailments.With its strong antiviral properties, it is no surprise that it can also be used to treat warts.

Neem

Neem – NOW

Neem has been the stuff of legends and lore as it has an extensive history of being used for its medicinal properties. A popular ingredient in pesticides and cleaning products, neem oil is also a very potent treatment for warts.

How to Use Essential Oils to Remove Warts

Things to remember

There are several ways you can explore blending essential oils for warts. We recommend that you use high quality oils like those from our recommended brands to ensure best results.

Remember never to apply these oils directly on to your skin, as the last thing you want to do is cause further damage. Always dilute essential oils with carrier oils. Do patch tests first on non-affected parts of your skin and observe for at least 30 minutes. Once you show any adverse reactions, discontinue using the essential oil blend immediately.

When treating warts on kids, use essential oils sparingly and decrease the number of drops you need to blend on the carrier oil as kids can be sensitive to essential oils.

Essential Oil Salve Blend For Warts

Dilute five drops of the essential oil of your choice to an ounce of carrier oil, and then you may apply this to the warts and surrounding skin as a salve or lotion. Apply this essential oil salve on warts and affected areas 2-3 times a day.

You can dip this essential oil blend in cotton, put it on the warts and cover with a bandage or medical-grade adhesives. You may also do the tape occlusion technique and cover the essential oil salve-dipped cotton and cover it with duct tape.

You may also blend 2-3 different oils of your choice for a potent salve, maintaining the essential oil to carrier oil ratio.

Conclusion

While warts are not that serious and can resolve on their own, it is best to treat them before they get worse. Look into treating the warts immediately once you notice them growing on your body.

Remember that HPV can be passed through skin-to-skin contact, so it’s best that you stay away from others when the symptoms show. You can even spread the virus on yourself so avoid touching unaffected parts of your body once you notice you have warts to avoid more growths.

If warts become painful, persistent, and are appearing more on your body, seek medical advice immediately.

Essential oils provide a great alternative treatment for warts. Frankincense and Tea Tree oils are the most popular and recommended essential oils for wart removal.