My Cure for Dry Cracked Skin on My Feet and Heels or "Heel Fissures"

I found it quite difficult to find a definitive description of cracked heels. There are a few inadequate interpretations available from some sources, and so, in the absence of a medical definition, I can only supply my own experiential definition.

My dry, cracked heels began as i aged, mid thirties onwards, initially it was mild and seemed to depend on how well my shoe was fitting and how well made the shoe seams by the heel were. Then as I continued to age I noticed the skin became thicker and to change in colour, from a pinky colour to a more milky yellow. Then, slowly, there appeared some fissures, on bad days these seemed to crack, but I found the condition variable, and some days it really wasn't very noticeable. I did try to moisturize the area and tried a pumice to slough off the thicker skin, but these measures were temporary and the problem always remained.

Pretty much by my late forties I had given up trying to fix my dry cracked heels and found a very good rub with a rough towel after showering was as good as anything. In fact the skin on pretty much all of my foot, upper foot, toes and heels and balls of feet had dry skin and I could rub much of it off with a towel.

This brisk rough towel drying did remove quite a bit of the skin, and my feet felt nice and soft for a short time afterwards, but the underlying problem was still there and getting worse.

I have a very different view now about foot health and health in general. I believe heel fissures and dry skin on the feet are chronic problems that are as a result of a poorly operating immune system.

My foot health had been on a steady decline for a period of about 20 years. I had also contracted many other small health problems that I simply had put down to aging. These little problems were accumulating and although annoying they weren't life threatening. Then I had a breast cancer diagnosis. Things really weren't great now.

I decided there had to be something fundamentally different between me and my contemporaries, my friends were all pretty healthy compared to me! So whilst i was undergoing cancer treatment I started to research my immune system.

What i discovered was that my immune system was compromised. At first I thought this could be a sub optimally operating thyroid gland, and pursued hypothyroidism for a while. The problem I had with this idea was that my blood tests were normal. Even so, I did dabble with some glandulars, they didn't really work. A bench mark used to determine the success of thyroid treatment was body temperature. I noticed no matter what I tried, Armour, T3 etc, my temperature remained low. After a few months of this i decided I was looking in the wrong place.

I was however still very motivated to find a cure, and searched further. I discovered someone had managed to fix his own compromised immune system. He was an engineer who had decided to treat his brain like a control system. Effectively he had reprogrammed his own brain, which he had identified as selecting incorrect set points, to work at an optimal temperature.

When I read his writing, I just made a leap of faith and decided I needed this man's help.

His name was Steve Richfield. Within 48 hours of contacting him he started to support me on my resetting program. The process is different for different individuals, mine was a two week initial phase followed by a year maintenance, actually this turned out to be nearer two years. My temperature had been 35.8C during the day, I reset it to cycle around 37C.

Very quickly I noticed my body started healing old niggling diseases. Some things really surprised me, like my nasal polyps, which just disappeared and very quickly, but other things are still healing only much more slowly.

My cracked and dry heels cleared up pretty quickly, I have little or no dry skin anywhere on my feet. The skin no longer needs to be rough dried to feel soft and smooth. Looking at my heels, they are very similar to how they used to be in my twenties. I can safely say I think they are cured, and I truly believe operating at the correct temperature has enabled my more optimally operating immune system to deal with my heel fissure.

I have to use an analogy to explain how I see how temperature affects how the body operates optimally.

When I was at school, if we were asked to perform a chemistry experiment looking for a specific outcome, we would be expected to ensure the constants and variables were fixed and/or known accurately, according to predetermined specifications. Temperature was quite often one of those constants or variables. If the temperature was either higher than specified or lower than specified, then the outcome of the experiment would be different than the desired result.

So, if I extrapolate this to my human body, I am, in fact, a whole series of chemical reactions, these reactions are controlled by my brain, my central metabolic control system. If my brain, for whatever reason selects incorrect set points for example, operating body temperature, then my chemical reaction speeds would be different to optimal, and there would be a different result. The long term outcome as a result of central hypothermia, in my human body, might have been things breaking down, otherwise known as chronic or idiopathic illnesses. When my temperature was re-adjusted, my the reactions returned to normal ( well as near as possible unless too much damage has been done) the immune systems started to operate optimally again enabling some observable healing to take place.

Feet, as extremities, may demonstrate when things are breaking down pretty quickly, they already are operating at lower temperatures, more often than not, and so the margin of tolerance in my thinking, may be reduced. II believe my feet are a very good indicator of my health status, and can quite possibly indicate how well the immune system is operating.

The very best way to fix a sub-optimal immune system is to enlist the support of a Central Metabolic Control System Therapist. In my situation, fixing my sub-optimally operating immune system required me to fix my low body temperature. This process is called resetting and is a way of training the brain to like operating at 37C or 98.6C instead of a lower temperature set point.

Resetting a low body temperature is a supported self help process. It is very difficult and for me, required a considerable amount of determination and subsequent devotion to a long term maintenance program.