Put your best food forward in your Pilates and yoga classes. Pretty feet need a quick manicure to look yoga mat ready, but a few tips for common nail and skin issues.
Some conditions require prevention strategies
Keep toes moisturized. Use your body skin care on your feet to put your best food forward in your Pilates and Yoga classes. Revision Nectiferm or Skinsceuticals Triple Lipid are both terrific for feet as well. Dry nails produce hang nails. Hang nails need trimming. Trim the nail close to the skin and nightly moisturize with a glycerin-based ointment.
Place a single nightly drop of vinegar under a fungus infected nail. Use the vinegar on each toes in cases of nail fungus. Tea tree oil fights fungal infections as well.
Generally, nail strength comes from B vitamins, but swallowing a dose of the cider vinegar a day can help too.
Sometimes dull nails respond to a good washing with soap and a nail brush. If that doesn’t work use Lemon juice from one lemon and 2 teaspoons of olive oil as a lightening mixture.
Slip some glycerin into your acetone polish remover solution so it’s not so drying to remove any old nail polish.
A New Cleansing Regimen
Soaking in baking soda helps to exfoliate, ease itching, and helps to cleans. The baking soda is especially good to soften dry hard calluses which can build up for those of us who go bare foot a lot. For the chemists among us sue peppermint or lavender oil. Mustard added in warms cold feet.
Start with a pumice stone to thin the nail tips after soaking. Additionally, treat thickened toenails with topical applications of a salicylic acid to further soften the nail. If your nail resists cutting, see a podiatrist.
Walking on a sandy beach exfoliates the feet. Bring back a bit of the sea sand to mix with any vegetable oil and use as a scrub at home.
Urea based creams soften thick toenails. Furthermore, applied nightly the urea cream produces a top softened layer can just be wiped away with a finger!
Yogurt Can Be the New Foot Balm!
Yogurt is a dairy product that has many benefits for the skin, especially the feet. Yogurt contains lactic acid, which helps to exfoliate and moisturize the dry and cracked skin on the feet. Yogurt also has anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties, which can prevent infections and reduce swelling. Great for us yogi’s who regularly sweat on our mats and get them clean, but obviously not sterile!
Some people like to use yogurt as a foot balm, either alone or mixed with other ingredients some of which we’ve mentioned above. Consider adding vinegar, celery, or bergamot oil. These ingredients enhance the effects of yogurt and provide additional nutrients and benefits for the feet. For example, vinegar can soften the calluses and remove dead skin cells, celery can provide zinc and vitamins, and bergamot oil can add a refreshing scent and soothe the nerves.
To use yogurt as a foot balm, you can apply it directly to your feet or make a foot mask with other ingredients. You can find some recipes for yogurt foot masks online, such as this one or this one. You can leave the yogurt or the mask on your feet for about 15 to 20 minutes, then rinse it off with warm water. You can repeat this process once or twice a week to see the results.
Often it’s just your shoes!
Poorly fitting shoes, not vinyasas, leave ridges on the toenails. Identify the issue, omit that shoe, or fix the shoe. In the meantime, cushion so the contour of the shoe doesn’t let your foot wiggle as you walk. Adding heal insert will fix the poor fit for bunion feet.
Improper shoe fitting affects ingrown toenails. A small pea size piece or smaller of cotton can be pushed under the nail. Elevating the nail over trapped skin relieves pressure.
Nail care in pregnancy can be a whole other issue. Check out the Women’s Health Practice Blog post for nail care during your expectant time.
Cracked nails ‘heal’ by a drop of glue, and in addition, patch of a small piece of tea bag!
