Warts, or to give them their medical initials, HPV are highly contagious and transmitted through contact by an infected piece of skin with a non-infected piece of skin, either person to person OR to other parts of your body.
The presumption is that the non-infected area has to have a small, perhaps microscopic, break that allows a tiny amount of tissue from the infected HPV area to get into the non-infected area, allowing an infection to set up.
HPV unbelievably, is an even more common virus than herpes (and herpes type 1 which is cold sores, is very common).
And although they can strike at any age, HPV infections are possibly most present in the very young and also juvenile adults.
But is there an effective form of treatment for warts? Well, although there are many treatments out there, one thing to bear in mind is that no wart removal is guaranteed, your warts could return over time, therefore, it is advised that you thoroughly examine all of your options before making a final decision.
Wart removal is a generally painless process that can be performed in a quick office visit.
So that said, here is a run down of some of the different treatments available.
Laser genital wart removal or in fact any surgery to remove warts require the aid of a doctor or surgeon.
Lasers and surgical options are for external warts only while the cryotherapyis primarily for cervical warts.
Laser therapy genital wart removal uses a high powered laser beam to burn off the genital warts.
It also seals the blood vessels to reduce any bleeding that might occur.
If you have ever come across the treatment that is used for laser hair removal, well that is the treatment that is now being used in the procedure mentioned above.
Another form of wart removal is to freeze them off.
Although not extremely painful, this process can be very uncomfortable and again needs to be carried out by a GP.
However if you do not fancy having them frozen off you can always burn them off with acid.
Acid is in fact one of the most common methods of wart removal.
How this method works is that you apply a mild acid directly on to the wart.
This destroys the viral cells and allows normal healthy skin to replace them.
If you wanted to use this kind of treatment it is available through prescription from GP's, or you can actually by it as an over the counter treatment.
A final form of treatment, which is becoming increasingly popular, is holistic or natural therapy.
There are several ways of doing this, you can either visit a practitioner of some sort, such as a homeopath, or there are books you can read up on to learn about effectively curing your cold sores for good.
Personally I like the book option for the simple reason that once you have the knowledge then it is with you forever and you can control any wart outbreaks effectively straight away.