Tips for peeling feet?

[pegkerr]

In other earth-shaking news, the bottoms of my feet, now that I'm in sandals for the summer, are peeling horribly. I tried a pumice stone on the rough patches and slathering Vaseline on them at night; but they are not in the least impressed by my efforts.

How do you keep your feet from flaking away?

Comments

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Okay. For skin that's thick and dry and in danger of (or already) cracking (the backs of my heels get like this) use something like pumice, loofah, or just your fingernails after you've soaked them in hot water for long enough that the dead skin's really soft and just comes away (say, when you scratch it). That way you're not likely to hurt the live skin underneath. For skin that's thinner but peeling, do the same thing, but really gently - I recommend loofah or sisal, rather than pumice.

Then, both on any area you've treated that way, and on areas that are just dry, like catmcroy says, use a vegetable oil/butter for moisturizing. Butters and salves are better than lotions, in general - more concentrated, and they don't need preservatives - and preservatives are generally bad for the skin, so there's kind of a conflict of interest there. Cocoa butter, coconut oil, shea butter, heck, even olive oil out of your kitchen woudn't be a bad choice. There are also more exotic butters and stuff, but those are the most commonly available. (I make body butters with a mix of shea butter and cocoa butter, but if I were making a foot-specific butter I'd probably use kokum butter as well, because it's supposedly specifically good for healing cracks in skin.) I'd check your local healthfood/natural stuff store, and look for any kind of salve or moisturizer that /doesn't/ have any petroleum jelly or mineral oil in it.

Alternatively, in a couple months, you can start buying such things from me. But alas, not quite yet.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Also, do you by any chance wear Tevas with rubber inner soles? I don't know why, but I've found that my feet dry out many times worse when I'm wearing Tevas than when I'm wearing any other sandals. I still love them, but it is something I've noticed.