What the Heck Happened to My Feet?

What the heck happened to my feet?  They are rough, scaly, cracked and ugly OLD feet!!!!  Geezzzz Louise, what’s a girl to do?  They practically rip the sheets at night with their jagged calluses. ROUGH!  I probably could take the paint off the side of the house with these sandpaper heels. Ack!  They are

Cracked feet!

HORRIBLE!

When did this start to happen?  It happened in my 40s. My once low maintenance feet now started to need constant attention. Why?  As we age the sebum production slows down and our feet get scaly. What to do? I raced to the nail salon for a pedicure, the place where someone yells out, “pick color” instead of “hello.” There they soaked, scrubbed, sanded, massaged and sliced off my thick calluses with a razor blade device.  Wow, the skin that came off in a flurry of pieces and landed on the black towel under my feet was shocking. Once my toe nails were painted and feet moisturized, they once again looked like the version of my younger-days feet. Yahoo!  This would last a few weeks and then back for my pedicure to maintain smooth heels.

That was then, now fast forward to present time and I am much older and my feet are in terrible scaly-heeled shape. Yucky!  I live in Florida, the land of flip flops, so everyday I have to take a foot brush to them and scrub the day’s dirt off. I have a pumice stone that I also use to smooth down the calluses, but none of this works to get my feet back to looking smooth again.

I still go to my local pedicure place but they now have STOPPED using the razor blade method in removing the dead skin and thick calluses. It is outlawed in all nail salons. I asked why and was told that people were being cut and that it also causes the calluses to come back thicker. Dang!  In the razor’s place the nail technician uses what looks like a cheese grater to GRATE the calluses off. However, it does not have the same great affect that the razor blade method does. I now walk out of the nail salon with still scaly feet. Why even go?

I now do my own pedicure at home with better results. First I soak my feet in warm, soapy water. Then I scrub with a brush and pumice sponge to get all the dirt off and soften the calluses. After that I apply a thick coating of Profoot Callus Blaster which I leave on for 3 minutes.  I rinse that off and I attack

After and looking good!

Ingredients in Callus Buster

my heels with a cheese grater device I found in the baking section of a grocery store. Then another rinse, dry with a towel and  I slather on the O’Keeffe’s Healthy Feet. You could use body butter or coconut oil, anything you like. O’Keeffe’s has a slightly waxy feel to it and lasts longer on my feet. Eureka! My feet are back to looking great!

Note: I have tied other methods such as:

• Pedi Eggs (don’t last long)
• Listerine and baking soda (feet turn blue, that’s all)
• Bought my own razor blade thingy at Sally’s that was a wimpy version of what the nail technician used to use. Didn’t work. RETURN!
• Wrapping feet in plastic wrap after layering on cream. Didn’t do anything to the calluses.

Sadly, none of the above worked as well as good ole elbow grease and a callus blaster.

Hope this helps if you have rough feet.

Thanks for reading!

Terry Ryan. Health Blogger

Terry Ryan