– This is Tom Biernacki. And do you have skin tags on your eyelids, in your armpits, in your skin folds? I'm gonna tell you whether
this is a skin tag, a wart, something dangerous. We're gonna tell you about
the deep underlying cause, the big secret, and how to
fix these things at home. And we're starting right now. (energetic instrumental music) Skin tags can be a very scary thing. They can be very common, but I'm gonna tell you the big
underlying secret to these. And we're also going to tell
you all the tips and tricks to start taking care of these at home.
Hey, you can come see a doctor like us, and it's fairly easy
to take care of these, but you wanna make sure you
get to the underlying cause and fix these things, because they can indicate
a lot of bigger problems that you should be more concerned about rather than just these skin tags. What causes a skin tag? It has some genetic components in a small percentage of people. If your mom and dad had 'em, you're a little bit
more likely to have 'em. There are some links
to a virus called HPV. There is a questionable concern here. It's not the biggest cause,
it's a smaller cause. What HPV does cause is warts. Sometimes skin tags and
warts can be confused. I see a lot of warts, warts are a little bit
longer to take care of. This is an extremely
important chart, a callous, a corn, and a wart versus skin tag.
So a callous gets created
due to wide pressure. A corn is very specific focused
pressure on a sweat gland, and a wart is the HPV virus. So on the left hand side, you
could see a callous is a wide, broad, flat surface. In the middle, a corn is a very specific, hard, rocklike substance. And a wart on the right
steals your blood vessels, because it's a foreign body, a foreign virus that's invading your body and stealing your blood flow. So this is what they
look like, flat and wide.
On the left is a callous. Central painful pit is a corn, and on the right hand side
is the pinpoint blood vessels of the wart. That's how you tell the three apart. A skin tag on the other
hand is very raised. It's barely connected to the skin. A very thin stock, as you can
see in these ones right here. Or it can get huge. If you see it get this big, probably a little bit more concerning. And I'm gonna go over the
skin cancer rules at the end, so very important to watch that. But you can see it's a normal stock that connects to the skin, and the consistency of
the skin looks similar on the cross-section, but it
can be pigmented or discolored. So right here, a callous is on big
widespread pressure areas. A corn is in very specific focused areas, usually like the toes or
underneath the toe joints. And a wart, you can see those
pinpoint black or red spots in the middle, which show
that there's blood vessels, as I showed in that picture before. Skin tags on the other hand,
neck, eyelids, armpits, the skin folds, and it's usually with the
symptoms I'm gonna talk about.
But if you wanna learn about foot corns, calluses, and warts, and
how to take care of those, I have specific guides down below, so make sure you check those out. If you guys are in Michigan
or close by, come see us. The links are down below. Skin tags are a little bit easier. You still wanna get to the
root cause of skin tags is the moral of this story. Before we get to the most
common cause, what is this? The fancy name for this, the medical name is called an acrochordon, is the fancy medical name for this. The good news is it's not cancerous, but removing skin tags does not remove what caused them in the first place. What's a cancerous versus
non-cancerous lesion? These skin tags are benign lesions. A cancerous tumor is
an out of control cell that's rapidly dividing. It can be localized, but it can spread to
the rest of your body. These are not that. I'm gonna go over why you
sometimes wanna see a doctor and in which cases.
Anything can become cancerous, even though this is fairly rare. They usually occur in
the folds of the skin, the neck, lots of places. In the armpits, they're very common. Here's the big secret, skin tags grow because of
metabolic syndrome and activity. This is strongly associated
with type two diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity. And this is all because these
lead to insulin resistance. As your body tries to put more insulin into your bloodstream, it's not as effective for
certain cells in your body to take up the blood sugar.
That's essentially how
type two diabetes develops. Skin tags are related to this because those metabolic
pathways lead to hyperactivity. So the skin just continues to develop, and eventually they
develop these skin tags. The specific reason has to
do with your mitochondria. The insulin has a dysfunction
with your mitochondria. Not only does that cause energy problems, but it causes things like
these skin folds to develop. Really, the true cause of these skin folds is too much processed foods,
too much carbohydrates, too much simple sugars. And we have some great videos, if you're getting these skin tags, if you have type two diabetes, we have video titled "90%
of Diabetes Would Be Fixed If You Ate These Foods". And that's completely free down below, you don't have to buy any products. It's easy to do this stuff. And I wanna hear in the comments, as you guys start eating
less sugar and doing better, you start fasting, you
start getting on keto diets, do your skin tags disappear? The studies aren't very clear, but it seems like this is the
answer that most people say.
Tell us down below, as you get healthier, are
your skin tags disappearing? I think they do, in the cases that I. Put that down in the
comments if that helped you, I'm very curious to know. Some studies say there
might be a viral component, it might be genetic, but again, it's a smaller amount of cases. Skin tags are more common in women. They're more common with
higher levels of estrogen, and having more fat in women
can create more estrogen. And there's a higher risk of
these problems developing, like PCOS, diabetes, diabetes resistance, insulin resistance. That's the real cause of these problem. Lighter vinegar, when do
you wanna see the doctor? There's a method called ABCDE. And basically, when we
look at skin lesions, and I'm gonna go over this in a second, we can use this to tell
whether it's cancerous or not.
So I'm gonna talk about
something important to me. I love Dr. Ken Berry,
and he has a great book, which I'm gonna show in a second. But he basically railed on some
of the dermatology societies for grading everything as a cancer, scaring everybody as a cancer. The truth is it's probably a lot less than we're led to believe. And he goes over this
in his excellent book, "Lies My Doctor Told Me". And I'm gonna go over this in a second, but what happened to him was, the medical societies went after him. The people who make a lot of
money making surgery dollars, they all went after him. And essentially they fined him, the medical societies came after him, but everything he said is
rooted in scientific studies. So you guys go on PubMed,
research this stuff yourself. See who's telling the truth or not, because the reality is
medicine is led by dollars, and a lot of decision making
is influenced by dollars. So I'm gonna bust my butt
to get you the real studies and the truth, and not
stuff just rooted in money.
That's why it's so important
to share channels like this, and Dr. Berry's channels,
and get real true sources, and not people just
after it for the money. So here is the ABCDEs. This is how doctors generally
screen what's dangerous and what should be worked up more, and what can safely be left for later. Because there's three types of cancer. There's a basal cell carcinoma, which is kind of like the big veiny one. They're the least dangerous, least likely to cause a problem. There's a squamous cell carcinoma, which is kinda in the middle. It's definitely dangerous,
should be biopsied. And a melanoma, which
is the most dangerous. All three should be biopsied. If all three basically meet at least a few of the ABCDE criteria, then you should biopsy
with your dermatologist, or pediatrist if it's on your foot. So what happens with
all of these in general, is they go through the skin. So if they're just in the most
superficial layers of skin, there's absolutely no danger.
They could stay there for 20 plus years, which is the case with, say
most basal cell carcinomas. But when you start getting
into your stage one, stage two and more, this is
most common with melanoma. So, melanomas are the ones known for getting down into the skin. So those are those black plaques. And this can happen under your toenail, this could happen on your foot,
it can happen on your face. Now, some studies show that
it's not necessarily more common in people exposed to sunlight, and that's kind of what Dr.
Ken Berry was talking about. And there's a whole rabbit
hole you could go down there, so I'm gonna leave that alone because I'm not an expert
in that area specifically. But what is very important
here are the ABCDEs. Here's how you could do it at home. So A stands for asymmetric. If it's not circular, like a freckle, that's kind of like a
suspicious point there. So it should be pretty circular. The border, is it a smooth
border or is it irregular, poorly defined, scalloped? The more poorly defined the border is, the more dangerous it is.
Color, is the color consistent? So for example, a freckle so far is round, has a regular sharp border. Whereas the color here, see how it's a little
bit darker in the middle? So sometimes these could be bleeding, sometimes it could be
black, blue, discolored, red, white. And then next is
diameter, so that's the D. Usually melanomas are
greater than six millimeters. I usually say a pencil head eraser. Or then evolving. So when a doctor tells
you to keep an eye on it, that usually means they're not worried. But if it, say grows a little bit, and you're like, "Hey, this
clearly grew in a month," definitely get it biopsied. So in a podiatry office or
most family practice offices, if there was a concern, you could take a small little sample. Obviously, if it's a huge
melanoma or something, what I would do at that standpoint is send it off to a cancer specialist.
So here's what the major advances are now that a plastic
surgeon can do for you. If you have a big
suspicious cancerous lesions that's been confirmed to be cancerous, step one, you cut out most
of it in the operating room and you take a sample. The pathologist will tell
you if there's any left, so then you cut out some
more, but not a ton more. And then you take another sample,
the pathologist tells you, "Hey, you got it all, or
there's still some left?" So you keep cutting in
smaller little pieces until you know you have it all. It takes an hour or so, so you can go out in the waiting room. And once your sample comes back, you could either know that
you can go home safely, that you 100% got it all, or you have to go back in
and take a little bit more. That's what most surgery is. You're here for the remedies. This is a countdown from the
worst to the best remedies.
And a little tip is
surgery fixes it overnight, remedies can take a little bit longer, although ideally they're pretty quick. With all these, you wanna take a Q-tip, you wanna clean off the area with alcohol. Number one is tea tree oil, tea tree oil has antiviral
and antifungal properties. I go over this a lot for my nail videos and my athlete's foot videos. Tea tree oil can work very well. You can dilute it, but just
stick a Q-tip in there, and just stick it on your skin tag. First wash the area, use that Q-tip. Place it, a band-aid overnight, after you apply the tea tree oil. And for several nights in a row, the skin tag usually
dries out and falls off. Another fun trick is a banana peel. Don't toss away your old banana peels, especially if you have a skin tag. The peel of the banana
can help dry out the skin. This might be partly due to the antioxidant
properties found in them. Just take a band-aid or some tape, and take a little piece of banana peel. So I'd use some scissors,
cut a little piece out, tape it over your skin tag, and do this every night
when you go to sleep until the skin tag falls off.
Apple cider vinegar. Clean off the skin, take a Q-tip, put this apple cider
vinegar on the skin tag, and basically that skin tag falls off. Only do 15 to 30 minutes. So while you're watching
Netflix episode or something, take a little bit of apple
cider vinegar, put a bandaid. And repeat this for a couple of weeks, the skin tag gradually does fall off. The idea here is the acidity of the apple cider vinegar
removes the skin tag. There's another combo that another doctor, Dr. Berg uses here, but he recommends iodine
and garlic extract. So just crush up some garlic,
put some povidone iodine. But realistically, that's probably not something
most people have at home. Most people have apple cider vinegar, most people have a banana peel.
That stuff works really well. Tea tree oil can be a bit more expensive. But essentially, this can
take a couple of weeks. It can happen quickly, or the skin tag dries out and falls off, but it can take longer. Number two is skin tags
are different than warts. There's some connection
with HPV for skin tags, but warts are pretty much
always associated with HPV. I have a long video on how
to tell apart your warts, but essentially warts are a lot harder. I see most cases go away
before they come visit me, but sometimes we have to
trim them with a scalpel, and apply some medication
like cryo freeze, like acid. These can work extremely well, especially when they're on
their foot or the fingertips. For both warts and skin tags, you can buy cryotherapy kits
and acid at the drugstore. I put some links down
below for some great kits, if you don't want to do
the actual home remedies. For warts and for your skin tags, you can use some of these
remedies, they work fairly well. And the original remedies
can work well for warts too, especially the apple– The big secret to summarize this is, the more your weight's up, the more your insulin resistance is up, that's what really causes these skin tags.
As your weight gets down, as your metabolic syndrome gets improved, as your insulin resistance decreases, your skin tags in most
cases will disappear completely on their own. Don't just keep going to the doctor for the rest of your life, getting us to remove those skin tags, make sure they stay away
and use it as an opportunity to get healthier for
the rest of your life. So if that helped, I have
a lot of great wart videos. So if you have corns, calluses,
warts versus skin tags, here's videos on how to take care of that. And here's the video on
diabetic insulin resistance and how to take care of that..
