Nursing Cracked Heels Back to Full Health
By Kath / June 30, 2016 / No Comments / Products
The summer season comes with a lot of great things, such as the ability to fully enjoy the outdoors, but some people often have to deal with a little residual issue left over from winter, that being dry, cracked heels. A lot has been said and written about preventing the development of cracked heels during winter, but for some people nothing seems to be effective in preventing their heels from cracking. No matter what you do, it just seems to be part and parcel of the cold winter season, even if you’re fully kitted out in thick socks and trainers throughout the entire winter season.
It’s just one of those things in life you tend to forget about as soon as your cracked heels heal by themselves, which often happens as summer draws on, but what if you want to speed the process up this time? The severity to which heels get cracked in winter differs greatly and it can get really bad at times, so bad that you have to put off rocking those cute summer sandals you’ve been looking forward to wearing.
Prolong Wearing Socks and Trainers
Even the worst case of cracked heels seems to find a way of curing itself, but depending on how you treat your feet during this healing process, you can either prolong the process or speed it up. Naturally you’d want to speed it up (unless you’re a sucker for weird-pain stimuli), so the first step is indeed prolonging the wearing of socks and trainers. The socks don’t have to be those thick winter ones as they can get really hot, sticky and uncomfortable when worn in hot weather, which can lead to other problems like nail fungus. Antifungal mineral clay for nail fungus can help rectify the issue, but if you don’t want the extra work of having to wash the socks and clean your trainers as well, just stick to thinner socks in the summer.
Walking around barefoot is a complete no-no, not even if your floor is all carpet and not even if you’re just quickly going to grab a snack or going to the loo. In addition to wearing socks and trainers, you should wash your feet regularly. Give them a good scrub with a pumice stone, taking care to remove as much flaky, excess skin as you can with each wash. If you can remove all the dead skin in one session, all the better because the next part of the remedy takes you a lot closer to getting back the smooth summer-worthy feet you so desire.
Dry excess skin may form as quickly as the very next day, so try to pumice it immediately as it shows signs of forming. If scrubbing the dead skin off with a pumice is too much hard labour for you, simply soak your feet in a mixture of warm water and mouthwash. Mouthwash generally doesn’t come cheap though, so…
When your freshly pumiced or mouthwash-soaked feet are dry, immediately apply petroleum jelly, not just targeting the calloused area. Then put on your socks and sneakers, but if you really don’t want to wear socks, then you can wear those soft Skechers which do a good job in replacing sneakers as adequate protection without the “heaviness” of typical trainers. Your cracked heels will be as good as new in as soon as a week or two.