How to effectively heal sore, dry and cracked heels.
What causes dry and cracked heels?
Dry, cracked, sore heels are more common than you think. The pressure we exert from our own body weight, onto our feet can cause them to be dry. Ailments like psoriasis, eczema, diabetes or athlete’s foot can also make the feet on your skin, dry, flaky and itchy. Dry, cold weather or standing for long periods can contribute to the problem too.
Another very common issue is a lack of moisture. Our feet have fewer oil glands than anywhere else on our body. Therefore, they are prone to getting drier, faster. As we get older, we also tend to loose moisture all over our bodies, as well as our feet.
Surprisingly, walking barefoot on hard wooden or marble surfaces causes cracked heels due to friction. Think of your heel as a tomato, if that tomato repeatedly hits against a hard surface, the skin will eventually burst. Similarly, the skin on your heels functions the same way. If your feet get smashed and compressed each day against a hard surface, cracks will soon appear on your heels, just as they do on the tomato.
How to heal cracked heels?
STEP 1. Cushion your foot bed
First and foremost you have to start looking after your feet and treating them with love. A quick and easy solution is to remember that when you are indoors, keep footwear on. Try wearing a nicely cushioned shoe that supports your foot bed, rather that going barefoot. It can be anything from a fluffy Birkenstock, or a rubberised sandal. Anything that will reduce that friction between the hard surface and your foot.
STEP 2. Exfoliate your feet
Just as you exfoliate your face to get rid of the dry skin cells, so too, can you exfoliate your feet. Look for hardworking, heavy duty formulas. AHAs (alpha hydro acids) like glycolic acids which have the smallest molecular size of all AHAs, can penetrate deep into your skin. Therefore, they have the the ability to break down those dead skin cells, bringing in fresh, new and healthy cells to the surface.
3. Apply a foot scrub or pumice
To get rid of all that hard, tough skin, one of the best ways is to use a foot scrub or pumice. An external exfoliator can be very effective at sloughing away the dead skin. Immediately effective, and you will be rewarded with significantly softer heels.
Have you ever been for a pedicure and the manicurist pulls our a foot razor to shave off the dead skin? A word of caution. Don’t be temped by it! Shaving off the dead skin is instantly gratifying however it does immense damage. After shaving, your feet are left baby soft and unprotected, therefore your skin will try to protect the feet by thickening up again, very quickly. Shaving off dead skin produces more harm than good. Just say no to the razor.
Another common exfoliator that is trendy are foot peel masks. These comes with little disposable booties, that are infused with exfoliating acids. You wear them for a couple of hours and in a few days, a shockingly huge amount of dead skin peels off your feet. It can be a bit creepy peeling off large sections of skin from your foot. And as it’s instantly gratifying, it feels like it’s the correct solution. However, I don’t recommend these foot peel masks for the same reason as the razor above. It’s too harsh. The key is to go slow with the exfoliation or you will only exacerbate the problem.
4. Moisturise and Maintain
After you have successfully removed all the dead skin on your heels, it’s time to lather them up with plenty of moisture. Skip your regular body lotion, (unless it’s one for really dry skin). You want to look for products that are really greasy. Petrolatum based, like Vaseline. Also, look out for products that have urea listed at the top of their ingredients lists.
Urea is a humectant, so it is very good at retaining and preserving the moisture content in skin. It also acts like Hyaluronic Acid whereby it loves water and attracts water from its surroundings. Urea is a natural antibacterial and anti-inflammatory ingredient. For these reasons, urea can promote healing. This makes it an ideal ingredient in foot creams.
Follow these steps above and in around a week you will have solved your cracked heel woes. Soft, beautiful feet await you for the summer.
