Board certified podiatrist, Dr. Emily Keeter explains why our heels are prone to dryness and cracking, and shares three easy tips to treat them. 

Transcript

Hi, I'm Dr. Emily Keeter, a board certified podiatrist in Podiatric medicine and today we're going to discuss heel fissures or cracked heels. 

On the bottom of your feet, the skin is 3-4x thicker than anywhere else on your body, there's no oil glands, and you have more nerve endings on the bottom of your feet than anywhere else - over 200,000 - which means when your feet hurt, everything hurts. 

You also have a fat pad under your heel and that's to provide cushioning for when you stand, walk, jump, you name it. Now when you stand under the weight of your body that heel pad and your skin stretch, or expand, under your weight. As it stretches, the skin is expanding. If you have dry skin, it is going to crack. That's how you develop those heel fissures or those cracked heels. 

Now thankfully it's a pretty common problem and we have ways of treating it. Step one, go to your local drugstore or online and buy a pumice stone. You're going to take that pumice stone to your shower, 30 seconds every single day you're going to file or exfoliate the bottom of your feet to remove that dead skin that hasn't shed itself.

You're then going to follow, when you get out of the shower, with your favorite moisturizer. This is the one that I recommend to all of my patients here. It is called Cracked Heel Repair by Pedestrian Project and it is amazing. Number one, it smells great. Two, it is so easy to apply. It is full of plant oils, plant butters, healing oils, and it is properly designed to penetrate that thick skin.

You're going to follow that with a sock. Give it a couple of days and watch the magic happen. I promise you'll be super grateful you tried it. I've seen this stuff heal and fix some of the worst cracked heels I've ever seen. Good luck!