Ringworm treatment home remedies, will you use these? If you are one of the estimated twenty percent of our population who is infected with ringworm, chances are you have, at some point, considered using home remedies to treat ringworm.
In my search to find the most effective ringworm treatment that's available out there, I recently posted a question in Yahoo Answers about home remedies "that actually work," to find out from real people, like you and me, what cure they would actually recommend. The question drew quite a few answers and these only prompted me to dig deeper into this topic.
After some more research in the internet and asking friends for their ringworm treatment "family secret recipe," I got a better insight into what folks would consider as fast and effective remedies. Prepare to be fascinated and surprised. All of the ingredients mentioned are ordinary household items some of us would never remotely equate with anti fungal medication.
Oh, yes, before I show you the list, a quick reminder. Ringworm, despite it's name, is not caused by worms. It is an infection caused by mold-like fungi known as dermatophytes. It is contagious and can be spread through direct skin contact with an infected person, an infected pet, or an infected object or surface. So, if you have an itsy-bitsy spot of ringworm, refrain from scratching it. The fungi will cling to your hands and you're liable to spread the infection to other parts of your body or worse, to other family members. And about contaminated objects - never share personal items with anyone. Clothes, caps, shoes, brushes, anything can be a carrier of infection. A friend of mine who has a three year old cute little daughter named Tracy, once brought home a bunch of second-hand toys from some garage sale. She thought she made a juicy bargain - the toys were still intact and the battery-operated talking doll actually still talked. To her chagrin, little Tracy had a rash outbreak the very next day, which her pediatrician later diagnosed to be ringworm. Lesson is you can't see fungi (well except under black light or Wood's lamp - they glow), so be careful in handling unfamiliar objects.
But enough of this. On to the list. If you want to read more thoroughly about ringworm and ringworm treatment, just got to my site. Please click the link at the bottom of this page.
First home-spun ringworm treatment - use of ordinary kitchen vinegar and a penny. Soak the penny in the vinegar and rub on the affected area. Some even recommend taping the penny to the ringworm spot. Others use vinegar without the penny. The reasoning of those who use the penny-vinegar combo is that the vinegar reacting with the copper actually serves as an effective fungi-killer.
The next home remedy, and this was suggested by a girl named "loveme..." in Yahoo Answers, was to use diluted bleach. Using q tips, you apply the bleach solution to the affected area until it dries out. Some suggested the ratio of one part bleach to six part water as the ideal concoction err...solution. Other people rashly recommend pure bleach for the treatment but a lot of people correctly pointed out that unadulterated bleach from the bottle is a very powerful agent and may contain lye (sodium hydroxide) that can cause severe chemical burns and scarring. Just swim and soak in a chlorinated swimming pool, if you want to get the benefit of bleach in treating skin infections.
Another fascinating folk remedy is the "paper method." People who use this, burn a crumpled sheet of notebook paper in a porcelain plate, and use the ashes or residue as salve for ringworm treatment. Imagine that.
Still another bizarre home cure is the use of colorless nail polish. Directions: apply a thin layer of nail polish on the affected area. Allow to dry and peel off with tweezers or wash with soap. Those who practice this method believe it "suffocates" the fungi and attest that their infection dried up the next day. Others suggest colored nail polish work just as well as the colorless type.
A guy from Canada vouched for sea salt as the ultimate ringworm treatment. Evidently, this gent worked in an airport and caught the infection from the counter surface he usually leans on at work. The ringworm spread throughout his body, including his face, and the poor bloke suffered for one whole year with it. After repeated (and costly) visits to his doctor, the recommended antifungal creams finally managed to clear out the ringworm in his body but not the lesions in his face. That's when he discovered the remedy of using sea salt. He rubbed a handful of watery salt into the affected areas in his moistened face for thirty minutes and repeated the process several times. The guy swears his ringworm dried up the very next morning. Sea salt or sea water, that's the ticket, he said.
Other items mentioned as effective medication are tobacco and Vicks Vapor Rub (suggested by "Rosie" in Yahoo Answers). Of course, a lot of medicinal herbs and plants were cited as effective cure too, but I will discuss these in another essay. Black walnut, grape fruit seed extract, fig leaf juice, and tea tree oil are a few of these natural remedies mentioned.
Would I recommend any of these home-grown ringworm remedies? Not today. It's the human body we're talking about here, after all. Caution should be the rule of thumb. There's no denying that many of these simple home cures actually work - for some people. But each of us has our own peculiar set of physiological traits and allergies, quite different from the next John or Jane Doe. Our bodies, or to be more specific, our skins react differently to different substances. What I'm saying is that the home-spun ringworm treatment that worked for your neighbor might not actually work for you.
If there's anything that I'd use myself, apart from the usual over-the-counter anti fungal medications, it's the natural ringworm treatment method. Using plant extracts. Green all the way. One hundred percent natural, one hundred percent organic. Tea tree oil, in particular. Numerous scientific studies have already established the efficacy of tea tree oil in treating ringworm. Powerful antiseptic, peerless anti fungal agent. And because it's natural - lesser chance of adverse allergic reactions for you. For a discussion about a company that produces natural ringworm treatment products in a modern world-class facility, please visit my site, link shown below.
Or you can always take a one-week vacation and hit the nearest ocean resort (sea salt or sea water, remember?) and have a week of fun, relaxation, and ringworm treatment.
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