Foot care

[blandana]

How do you deal with hard skin on your feet and how do you make them soft and pretty?
I had this electric foot file thing which was pretty good but wondered what else I can do (inexpensive).

Just went to a private podiatrist for a bit of a tidy up and some advice and she basically said your feet shouldn't be soft really - the hard skin is just your foots protection.
But mine were excessively dry with a lot of hard skin and deep cracks and splits. She said magic is in the motion not the potion - use a decent, but not necessarily premium, moisturizer regularly. I'm using flexitol at night and E45 body moisturiser in the morning. She also said not always be barefoot - wearing socks will help stop feet drying out.
2 weeks in I'm still wearing sandals when out but socks at home, and doing the twice a day as much as possible and splits have healed and the mildest bits are soft again. The heels and ball of foot are still a bit gross looking but I'll persevere!

Agree that feet shouldn’t be totally soft but like you I have (sometimes painful) cracking, especially around the heel.
Had forgotten about flexitol, thanks - used to use that for my rough hands years ago (but don’t have that problem any more, it’s migrated to my feet!).

Profoot Intensive Repair Cracked Heel Cream 60ml - Tesco Groceries
worked for me

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CNPXLJKJ?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share&tag=mumsnetapp-21

That foot file and Margaret Dabbs miracle foot cream, transformed my feet in 5 days.

Do you use it when your feet are wet or dry?

I use one of these:

https://nuvebrand.com/en-gb/products/silk-3-pro

It’s fantastic! Makes a huge difference. My feet are incredibly soft and look wonderful. Best thing I’ve ever used - and I’m a bit obsessive since a podiatrist said to me years ago how important it is to look after your feet.

@roseymoiraon dry feet

I use a Glowxie foot file once or twice a week and then Kerasal foot balm once a week at night and a cheap cracked heel cream (just like Flexitol) every night. I also wear socks for bed which helps. Mine are not totally soft and, as I wear flip flops all the time, they can get dry but this routine keeps them nice.

(They look overly red on this picture but they’re not in real life!)

Foot file when feet dry

Any moisturiser containing urea (like flexitol)

Slap on a generous amount of vaseline and put on fluffy socks before bed. Wash off in the morning and feet will feel softer (or at least less dry). If you can be bothered with it, those foot peeling masks also help - be warned that the process of the skin peeling off is pretty gross (and peels for about a week!) but great for getting rid of dead skin.

It said rabbit! 🤣 I dont know how often but it was quite unexpected but I suppose if the shoe fits and all that...🤣

Anyway, the end result was that the wall fell down and the dentist wanted almost £2000! Obviously we said no. Amazon sold them for £100ish which is still a lot but we figured it was worth a go to keep next door happy. It has worked do far. Keep your fingers crossed! No idea about the wall. I still dont think it was the cat's fault. We are all politely ignoring it but we're going to get letters from the school soon I think.

At last my chance to sing the praises of Palmer’s Foot Magic - picked it up on a whim with no expectations, and found it works so much better on cracked heels than Dr Scholl etc. Great stuff.

Oh. Wrong thread. 🤣🤣🤣

Although, any help appreciated with my feet!

@HaveYouHadYourBreak - now I want to find out exactly what this thread is about… it has it all - Amazon, walls, rabbits, neighbours, dentists!

Yes, suddenly things got more interesting.

I don’t think the cat is completely blameless.

Check you don’t actually have athlete’s foot. I had loads of hard skin on one foot for years and it cleared up when I treated it with lamisil.

They said it's because we should have kept her off it. But if it cant stand a 4 stone cat sitting on it then it'll have come down if someone blew on it. Plus something has been digging around there. Probably foxes tbh. Not a cat.

What podiatrist said that ??????? Was she even qualified? Ive been an NHS podiatrist for 46 years and that is absolutely not true. You need to cream your feet daily with a 10% urea cream and file the hard skin off a d your feet will be lovely in no time. The softer they are the tougher your skin is and the more healthy it is.
The main cause of foot ulcerations in my clinic are neglected skin with cracks and fissures and hard skin build up everywhere.
I follow this regime and my feet are baby soft and lovely at 63. It protects from blisters too.

That’s one big cat.

I'm 68 and first suffered from deep heel cracks in my teens that were so deep they bled when I walked. The GP referred me to a chiropodist who cut off the calluses and told me to always moisturise my feet after washing them.

While I was still limber enough to reach my own feet I was able to keep the hard skin under control with a file and lashings of diabetic foot softening cream.

Now I am unable to bend that far, so I have to pay a podiatrist to come and trim my toenails and file my feet every 8 weeks. I can barely walk, normally managing around 1500 steps/day, yet big calluses would still form on the outer side of my left big toe, and along the tops of the three smallest toes on both feet. Even with the foot fettler carving them off every couple of months they were a constant annoyance.

Then I got a pair of alpaca bed socks for Christmas. I woke up the first night with my feet feeling very hot, and also as if they were being scritched by a nylon pot scrubber. So I kicked them off and went back to sleep. It was so cold the next night that I tried them again, and stuck my feet out from under the duvet when they felt hot.

When the podiatrist returned in early February she asked how I had managed to get rid of the calluses, because there was hardly any dead skin for her to trim. When I said I'd been wearing alpaca bedsocks she said she'd heard that they were good for cracked heels, as well as being excellent for heat regulation and not getting stinky.

When she came back last month she noticed that I no longer have calluses on my toes. Making her job much easier because she now only has to clip my toe nails without any bothersome slicing and grinding.

I haven't even been slathering my feet with cream before putting the socks on, just the normal slapping at them with a long handled lotion dispenser after I get out of the shower. I wish I'd known about the foot smoothing properties of alpaca socks 50 years ago.