John Geisse MD

If you look online right now and search for skin cancer remedies, you will find many products that have no scientific basis to support their use.

Most of these products cause a severe reaction in the skin killing anything in its way.  These are caustic agents that literally burn a hole in your skin.

Most of these products cause a severe reaction in the skin killing anything in its way.

Standard Skin Cancer Treatments

These treatments have been studied and researched and have been proven to be effective ways to treat skin cancers.

They each have positive and negatives, and those differences will be explained in another article.

• Currettage and Electrodessication
• Excision
• Mohs Surgery
• Prescription called Imiquimod
• Radiation

Currettage and Electrodessication is a way to destroy a skin cancer by scraping the cancer with a special tool and burning the skin.  This procedure is done by a dermatologist with years of training. The dermatologist can treat the cancer with 90% certainty.

Bogus Skin Cancer Treatments That Create A Burn

These are caustic agents that literally burn a hole in your skin.  Just because an ingredient is found in nature doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous.

Burning a hole in your skin cancer doesn’t necessarily cure it and can make things worse by hiding bits of cancer underneath a scar.

This can lead to dire and drastic disfiguring surgery when these cancers show up again, sometimes after hiding underneath scars years later.

Black Salve and Indian Mud

Some of these products such as black salve and Indian mud have zinc chloride paste in them.  Zinc chloride paste was the chemical Dr. Frederick Mohs used in the 1940s through early 1960s to treat skin cancer with something called Mohs chemosurgery.

This chemical will eat right through the bone and into the brain if you allow it.

These are not to be used in unskilled hands, and you should avoid trusting what you read online over your board certified dermatologist or dermatology provider and their advice.

Do you know what you’re treating?

We have had a number of cases of partially treated skin cancers that have produced disfiguring scarring from these products including some patients who never really had a definite skin cancer.

They used this chemical on a skin lesion without any professional advice as to what they were treating.

This can lead to terrible over or under treatment of potentially benign lesions or very serious cancers.

For instance, one would not want to treat a malignant melanoma with this chemical which could lead to your death.

Proper treatment of melanoma, particularly early diagnosis by a board certified dermatologist or dermatology provider, is critical to prevent death from this disease.

You May Be Treating A Benign Lesion

There are many unusual growths that occur on the skin which do not need treatment at all.

Using these sorts of chemicals is unnecessary on these lesions.

Any changing lesion, whether it is brown, black, flesh-colored or red, should be examined by an expert prior to embarking upon any sort of treatment.

Natural Remedies for Skin Cancer Do Not Work

In summary, avoid so-called holistic or natural remedies for skin cancer.  These have not been studied; they essentially are like putting acid on your skin and kill cells in an indiscriminate non-specific way resulting in scarring and sometimes disfigurement and do not necessarily treat the cancer completely.