HOW TO CURE CRACKED HEELS

After I had my first child, my heels began cracking and looked dirty. I think it was because I had gained so much weight. It was nasty. I was totally embarrassed to go barefoot. I went to a podiatrist, who prescribed a cream named Lactinol-E. It was a heavy-duty cream with lactic acid as the active ingredient. It didn't cure the problem, though. And neither did the cheese grater-type tool they taught me to use in nail school. I tried everything. I was a licensed pedicurist at one point, so I felt like I should know the answer to this problem. I didn't.

A couple of years later, I started getting pedicures from this cute little girl from China. Turns out that the problem is actually that my feet were dry. She used a callus remover (with an actual razor blade on it!) at first to get a lot of dead skin off. I was a little freaked out by that, and it made my feet pretty tender. Then she used a pumice sponge with some lotion to smooth my foot. Not a pumice stone. Those things are useless. The pumice sponge worked miracles. She gave me one, and I took it home and used it with lotion once a week for a few months. It finally broke in half.

I ran across the pumice sponges in the dollar store and bought every single one on the shelf. Now, I moisturize my feet after my entire body is done. In the shower, I use body scrub on the pumice sponge to do my feet after I am done with everything else (ESPECIALLY shaving...OUCH!....but that's another story...).

Now, I have learned a neat little trick. I buy one of those round boxes of sea salt and pour some of that into my hand. Then, I add a bit of any kind of cream, and I rub it on to my foot before using the pumice sponge.

My feet are smooth again, and I am no longer embarrassed.