I once suffered from plantar warts which manifested as thick calluses on the balls of my feet. Sometimes there would be pain. The warts were thick, unsightly and sometimes hurt. I probably picked up the virus that causes the warts because of being a lunch time exercise runner who used the workplace communal showers, at one point, without flip-flops.
I would spend a lot of time trying to get rid of the warts. I used salicylic acid in various forms to try to get rid of the calluses and warts. I would be able to get rid of a lot of calluses but they would always come back. I searched online for solutions. Putting duct tape on seemed to be a favorite on-line remedy. I tried that with no success.
During an annual checkup with my doctor, I mentioned the warts and asked if he had any solutions. He said he didn’t. He said the body usually gets rid of them on its own through the immune system. The immune system usually will eventually kill off the virus and the callus goes away. He then asked if I had tried duct tape. Ha Ha. No help there.
Life went on. I kept on removing callus without ever making progress.
Years later my wife, at the time, who has since passed away, was having medical problems. She had had hairy cell leukemia some years back and had fought it off, but was experiencing other issues. She would do a lot of on-line research into health and tended to like naturopathic remedies when possible. She learned that monitoring one’s temperature during the day could help in determining if you had certain issues and she started doing that. She would take her temperature as she woke up, and thought it would be supportive if I did that too. She had a relatively low temperature at that time and it might be a symptom of something. So I started taking my temperature also. Surprisingly, I was measuring even lower temperatures, at times, than my wife, which I thought odd. It could be as low as 97.3. I seemed healthy, though I also had a report from a dance class partner that I had cold hands. Both these things made me wonder. I normally never have cold hands.
Not too long after this, my wife read a book by a naturopath who had a lot of good ideas. She wondered if she could get help from this doctor and looked in the back of the book to find where this doctor lived. Out of sheer luck, he had a large practice, something like 20 miles away. She tried to make an appointment. He was so well known that he could not see new patients, but there were other naturopaths at his clinic who were familiar with his work and were available. She made an appointment for both of us. She had plenty of things to talk about, but I could find little wrong with myself except the slightly low temperature and the warts on my feet.
We visited the doctor. He was a naturopathic doctor and a biochemist who had done a lot of research and was currently running research programs. We talked to him about our problems. He was especially interested in my wife’s previous hairy cell leukemia. All doctors were interested in hairy cell leukemia since it was rare and usually no one we met with had seen it before. When we got to me, I mentioned my warts and the low temperature. My complaints seemed lame. I offered to show him my warts. He wasn’t interested, but he said he thought he knew what the problem was. He wanted to run a couple tests. He had us both tested for heavy metal contamination and for thyroid function.
The tests results showed that we both had significant heavy metal contamination and my wife especially so. The thyroid tests seemed to be normal. The tests include the TSH, T4, and T3 hormone levels. TSH is what stimulates the thyroid to produce T4 which goes into the body and somehow converts to T3 which is the active hormone that revs up all sorts of things in the body. One of the things affected is the metabolism/temperature and another is the immune system. The doctor presumed that our problem was with T3 since it helps maintain temperature and also stimulates the immune system. A problem with T3 would explain our low temperature and why my immune system was not taking care of my warts. But the T3 value was normal!
He then told us that he was currently running a scientific study on the effects of heavy metal contamination affecting T3 in the body (how lucky could we get). He said that when T4 goes into the body and is converted to T3, it appears that heavy metals can interfere and that some of the T4 would get converted to reverse T3, which is the isomer of normal T3 that is biologically inactive in the body. The standard thyroid test measures total T3, both normal and reverse or, in other words, active and useless T3. His thyroid test for us included reporting how much reverse T3 there was as part of the T3 total. In both our cases, it was considerable.
He suggested some chelation therapy to rapidly bring down the heavy metals in the blood and tissues, and we also started supplementing with Chlorella, an algae that absorbs heavy metals in the digestive system. In addition he started us on small doses of prescription bioidentical T3 hormone to boost the amount of working T3 in our bodies. We monitored our temperatures as before. After a week we would consult with the doctor at which time he would up the dose slightly if our temperatures had not reached normal. It took a month or so to get the right dose and have our temperatures return to normal. Meanwhile we were chelating to get rid of the heavy metals and the need to supplement with T3.
After some span of time, I happened to look at my feet. I cannot remember why I looked, but I found the bottoms of my feet completely smooth and soft like a baby’s bottom. I was floored! I was ecstatic! I couldn’t believe it! It was like a miracle! The doctor had predicted it without so much as having a look at my feet. My immune system had apparently killed off the virus that had been causing the warts.
My wife and I only did a couple chelation sessions, during which they infused a chemical into the blood that binds with the heavy metals, and comes out in the urine. We continued with the chlorella (a slow form of chelation). At some point we ran out of t3 supplement, but our temperatures were staying close to normal without it. Problem solved!
In case you have similar symptoms, google reverse T3 and always request the reverse T3 number as part of any thyroid tests you get done, if you suspect that you have a problem.
It is now 2021 and I last had plantar warts in 2014. I occasionally now get some callus and sign of a possible wart (a little pain), but it goes away soon on its own.
With today’s hi tech environment, it’s a good idea to be careful of heavy metals, and it behooves us all to check our thyroid and the reverse T3 if needed. Every day I take 5 little chlorella tablets to help sweep heavy metals out of my gut and therefore slowly remove heavy metals from the blood and tissues. Heavy metals will migrate from high concentration areas to low concentration areas (a law of physics) so if you keep the gut concentration low, you pull the heavy metals from the blood, and if the blood concentration is low, you pull heavy metals from the tissues.
Out of curiosity, I looked up “normal temperature” on Google and found:
“Most people probably grew up being told it was 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (or 37 degrees Celsius). That widely accepted number originated from a study done in the mid-1800s. But newer studies suggest the average person today actually runs a little cooler than that – somewhere between 97.5F and 97.9F.”
I wonder about this. Does the “normal” person have more reverse T3 now causing lower temperatures and maybe a less active immune system? Are we all being poisoned and compromising our immune systems?