Liquid nitrogen is a simple, effective treatment for removing warts and moles commonly used by dermatologists. You can learn to do it yourself. The best way to learn is to see it done. This article describes the procedure. Provided for informational purposes only. Not a substitute for qualified medical diagnosis or treatment.


Steps
How It Works

1. Warts are fed by blood vessels. If you can damage and kill these blood vessels by freezing them, the wart will die. Eventually it will fall off. Liquid nitrogen is cold enough to bring about this localized freezing. We want to restrict the tissue damage to the smallest possible area.
2. A blister will develop a few hours after freezing the wart. The wart will be raised slightly, redden, and you may feel a slight burning sensation.
3. Do not break the blister. If the blister breaks, tissue underneath is likely to be re-infected so that the wart grows back.
4. If you freeze the wart just the right amount, a small but visible blister will form. After some number of days, you will notice a reddish tint inside. Slowly the fluid of the blister will be re-absorbed. The blister will change to a darker color. As it dries out the skin will seem thicker.
5. Resist the temptation to pull off the dead skin. If you do, the wart is more likely to grow back. Just wait and wait. Even if you always pick you scabs and squeeze your pimples, you can learn to wait in order to be free of your warts. When the dead skin and dried up wart core sloughs off, you will have closed healthy skin below.
6. An advantage of this technique is that when done properly, the outer layer of skin is never broken, greatly reducing the infection risk compared to other techniques.

Procuring the Liquid Nitrogen

1. This is easier than it sounds. Look in the phone book for suppliers of welding gases. Call them and ask if they can supply you with a small amount. If they ask for the reason, just say it is for a science experiment, which is truthful.
2. Their next questions will be how much you need, and whether you have a Dewar Flask to transport it. The answers are "one litre" and "yes." A common vacuum flask (i.e. Thermos) will serve as your Dewar Flask and is a perfectly acceptable storage vessel for liquid nitrogen. Any quart-capacity vacuum-type glass or metal thermos will do.
3. You may as well use the cheapest one you can find, because sometimes the liquid nitrogen leaves a stinky residue behind.
4. When you go to the gas supplier, be sure to act nonchalant. It will be easy because they will also be very casual. It is no big deal to them, because compared to the other gases they handle, liquid nitrogen isn't much danger. You can expect to pay less than $10. Many places will give it to you for free.
5. There is only two precautions you need to remember to transport your liquid nitrogen safely home:
6. Close the thermos using only a giant wad of paper towels. If you want to use a screw-on cap to hold the paper towels in place, be sure you screw it on loosely. You must allow the vaporizing gases to escape or your thermos will become a bomb.
7. Keep the thermos upright.
8. If you follow these steps your liquid nitrogen will make it safely home. You can keep it just like that for a couple days if necessary. Obviously if your friends have warts they want to get rid of, they can take advantage of your supply.

Preparations

1. Probably you want to observe basic hygiene, even though you are not planning to break the skin. Wash thoroughly.
2. Before beginning, spend plenty of time looking at the wart. Pinch in the skin from the sides and below, so you can get an idea exactly how deep the core goes and how big around it is. Not the dead shell on top, the living core inside. Pinch it and feel exactly how big it is underneath. If it's on the bottom of your foot, it may just appear as a small bump, but the core goes in much deeper. This first step is important, because you need to know how much tissue to freeze.
3. To apply the liquid nitrogen, use a regular cotton bud (i.e. Q-tip). You may like to tie or wire it on a longer stick for dipping into the thermos.
4. You can also twist the tip of the Q-tip to make it a little pointier. As you get more experienced, you may want to tie some extra cotton wool around the base of the cotton bud to hold extra liquid nitrogen, which will save you from having to revisit the thermos so often.

Applying the Liquid Nitrogen

1. Pour a small amount of the liquid nitrogen into a polystyrene cup. Don't dip the Q-tip directly in the thermos, because you may contaminate it with viruses which can survive deep freezing and may spread more warts, especially if more than one person shares the flask. Let's assume it's a small wart. Apply the Q-tip right in the middle of the wart. Start with a light pressure. Apply the Q-tip several times, until you start to see a frozen zone--it will be white in color. What's tricky is that while it may be frozen white on the surface, you need to think about how deeply it is frozen. So keep applying the liquid nitrogen, doing it in such a way to keep the frozen zone from spreading into the healthy skin around the wart. As you freeze into the core of the wart, you'll be using a bit more pressure. You'll notice that the tissue has hardened, and if you pinch from the sides you will feel that there is frozen tissue between your fingers.
2. After the wart seems frozen enough, give it rest. The color will slowly return. If you think it may not have been frozen deeply enough, you can repeat the process. There will be some minor spikes of cold pain. In general, the cold deadens the nerves, so it isn't bad. Obviously any major pain is a sign you're doing too much.
3. Put a bandage (i.e. Band-Aid, sticking plaster if you're British) over the wart to protect it if you like.
4. If the wart is bigger, you may try just freezing half of it the first time, and then do the rest in a few weeks' time. You want to keep the damage small enough so that your body can heal it safely, without infection, even if the blister breaks, opening the skin. Obviously if the wart is very big you may want to do it in more stages. Or just go to a doctor.
5. If you have a bunch of warts, you can do them all at once. You may need to repeat the procedure later for any warts that come back, but now you will be experienced. It is easy and cheap.

Warnings

• This procedure may involve minor pain or discomfort. You may prefer to request the services of a dermatologist.