We are nearing the end of summer for another year, and what a year it has been! Melbourne has an incredibly hot and dry climate, which does not help our poor feet which tend to live in thongs and sandals over the summertime!

Dry climate equals dry heels (with hard skin!) which can cause cracking and fissuring. They look almost like earthquake lines and are caused by excess pressure on our feet. When your feet aren’t looked after well, unfortunately, these fissures can run deep to the healthy skin and can make them bleed! When this happens, it can be extremely painful, and in the worst cases, can cause infection.

How does a Podiatrist help with this?

With our training, we are able to scrape away the dead, hard skin and get to the healthy skin easily so we level out those cracks. We then recommend a treatment plan tailored to you in order to look after your new, fresh feet at home!

How do we look after our feet at home?

There are a lot of creams out there on the market. However, there is one main ingredient that you want to look for and that’s Urea. Urea 25% to be precise. Urea 25% has been shown to adequately absorb into the skin and leave you feeling hydrated and your feet baby smooth. For others, we may even recommend you to file your heels with an emery board or a pumice stone every 1-2 weeks to ensure that our work is long-lasting.

For those with feet prone to drying up, try putting moisturiser on your feet, covering it with plastic wrap/glad wrap, and then put a sock on over the top. Leave this to soak overnight for up to 5 nights in a row. You will find that this will absorb the moisturiser much more effectively through your feet.

If you are active or spend a lot of time on your feet, you may find that you will eventually build up more calluses again on your feet. Generally 6-12 weeks! This is a normal body process as calluses build up in high areas of pressure on our feet to protect itself. However, it also occurs because the body is attempting to protect itself too much!

If this does occur, we can start the process again and maybe even find a treatment plan that may suit you better. Calluses are caused by pressure, and therefore it might just be that your walking patterns need adjusting to offload these pressure spots.

Enjoy your last few days of summer!

Till next time,

Jasmine (Podiatrist)