Heel Cracks

Andrew here from Waikato Podiatry Clinic with another tip to keep you active and healthy and on your feet this summer.

Heel cracks are something that we see a lot of at this time of year. Usually heel cracks or heel fissures are they’re sometimes known come about because during the winter, you’ve spent most of your time in shoes, which are a relatively humid environment, the skin on the heels and the feet becomes quite thick, it’s the thickest area of skin in the body. But then when you go out of the shoe, into a hotter, drier environment, it dries out, dehydrates and loses its elasticity, so it splits.

These can be relatively superficial and relatively benign or don’t cause many problems. They can also be quite deep, very painful and sometimes get infected. We tend to reduce the skin and the thickness so that it’s more supple and then we get people to apply a heel balm. There’s lots of different varieties out there.

Now the real benefit of a heel balm is that it has ingredients in it that helps penetrate the thick skin and helps to keep the thicker skin more moist. So it’s different than a normal hand moisturizer or some of the other moisturizers and it does make a significant difference and it needs to be just applied more so around the thickened skin on the heels.

However, there is one problem, it doesn’t work in the container, it’s got to work on your foot. So some people will need to when they’re at their very worst put it on a couple of times a day. But it does work well if you can remember to apply it and after the heels have been debrided.

So I hope that helps keep you active and out and doing what you want to do this summer.

Suffering from Heel Cracks?

Are you are feeling like you have tried everything but are still suffering from heel cracks?
Do you feel like you have seen every health practitioner you can about your heel cracks with no results?
We have a track record of diagnosing and successfully treating cases that have previously proven difficult to resolve and we’d love to help you get the problem sorted.