About Mild Ringworm with Pictures
Ringworm infections can vary in severity from mild to acute. The state of a person’s health and whether they have an existing infection are two factors that contribute to how bad the skin disease will be. Most healthy people, though, will only develop mild cases of ringworm.
What is Ringworm?
The official name of ringworm is tinea. It is a fungal infection caused by dermatophytes that live on the skin and in warm moist areas like showers. Ringworm is not a life- or health-threatening condition but it does cause itching and minor pain and can negatively impact quality of life.
Ringworm causes include:
- Touching people who have the infection
- Handling or using contaminated objects like clothing or hair styling instruments
- Contact with contaminated surfaces like shower floors
- Petting animals with ringworm
- Rarely, coming in contact with contaminated soil
- If you have an existing ringworm infection, you are more likely to develop it on other areas of your body
The arms, legs, stomach, chest and back are the most common places for the telltale rashes to appear. However, the fungus can infect any part of the body including fingernails and toenails, hands, feet, scalp, and groin area. People can even get mild ringworm on face. It is a hardy fungus that lives on dead skin cells. This is the main reason why it can continue to survive on inanimate objects like combs and shoes.
Symptoms of Ringworm
You can get a sense of what ringworm is by looking at pictures of ringworm rashes on the Internet. To self-diagnose whether you have this skin condition, look for the following symptoms:
- Ringworm of the body: a rash that is red and raised; sometimes accompanied by small bumps or blisters; itching
- Ringworm of the scalp: the skin under the hair will become red and scaly; crusting; small black dots, hair loss; children may come down with a fever
- Foot fungus: intense itching or burning, particularly between the toes; peeling skin; skin redness; moist between toes; bad odor
- Jock itch: itching or mild pain; red rash that may be accompanied by blister-like bumps
- Nail fungus: Nails will turn black, brown, or green and become misshapen including lifting completely off the nail bed
Depending on the location of the infection, it can take anywhere from 2 days to a month for the symptoms of ringworm to appear. Once you discover you have the skin disease, treating ring worm is essential for avoiding passing the infection on to other people and preventing it from spreading to other parts of your body.
How to Cure Ringworm
Mild ringworm infections are usually treated with a topical ringworm cream or ointment that contains terbinafine, clotrimazole, or miconazole as active ingredients. Severe infections may require treatment with oral ringworm medication such as Grifulvin V or corticosteroids. No matter if it’s a prescription drug or an chemical based over the counter ring worm medicine, most of these treatments cause side effects like liver damage that no one wants to deal with while trying to get rid of ringworm.
Home remedies for ringworm do exist. Applying apple cider vinegar to the rash once per day is one natural treatment that has worked for many people. Be prepared for some discomfort, though, as the vinegar can sting. Another home remedy is to mix equal parts tea tree oil and lavender oil and apply to the skin twice per day until the infection goes away.
It can take a while for these remedies to work, although they tend to work faster than pharmaceutical options. If you want to eliminate ringworm quickly without experiencing side effects, check out the top ringworm treatments we have found on the homepage. These products are made using natural ingredients that have been proven to obliterate ringworm fast. On the homepage you can read our reviews of these products and to view before and after photos of people who have successfully treated their ringworm infections.