3 Tips to Take Care of Your Feet

There is more to buying a shoe than making a fashion choice. While most of us are completely concerned with the way our footwear looks with just a passing nod to general comfort, what we don't know is that selecting shoes is as much of a medical or health choice as it is a fashion or aesthetic choice.

Let us look at the choice in a different way. If you had to walk the length of the Earth's circumference four times in your entire life, would you rather wear fashionable shoes or comfortable ones? At the end of your life, you would have covered more than one lakh kilometers on foot!! Can you imagine the cumulative damage done in this period by wearing high heels, cramped shoes or ones with inadequate support for your feet?

Maintenance for Your Feet

Tip # 1: If you think the women in the hit TV serial Sex in the City look good in high heels, think again. In 2009, a survey by the American Podiatric Medical Association found that 88% of women were buying shoes that were too small for their feet against all sensibilities of proper foot care.

It seems to be a common misconception that shoving your feet into a pair of beautiful shoes will make them healthy and beautiful. The fact of the matter is that more than 65 % of women have not had their shoe size checked properly in more than 3 years. Add the fact that different shoe makers have differing measurement systems, clearly one size no longer suits all. Each time you stand up, your feet increase up to two sizes. Now imagine their plight in a tight pair of high heels.

Tip # 2: Hydrate your feet. The sole of the foot requires plenty of moisture for the skin to remain soft and supple and be able to stretch to meet the various forces that play on the feet. Without proper foot care your skin will crack and you will run the risk of painful walking and even fungal infections. The fact that the foot has over 2,500,000 sweat glands does not help at all. In fact, if your feet are sweaty, you are not moisturizing your feet, instead you are providing the right conditions for a fungal infection to take root and grow. Use foot creams such as Scholl Foot & Nail Cream to clean and rehydrate your feet.

Tip # 3: Keep your feet private. Community spaces such as hostels, swimming pools and common showers have been known to cause infections such as athlete's foot. Avoid sharing your shoes, socks, stockings and towels.