Tips for healthy and pampered feet!

Keep your feet looking and feeling good with these great foot care ideas!

Our feet are one of the most worked parts of our bodies walking an average of 10,000 steps daily but are also one of the most neglected! With approximately 250,000 sweat glands, our feet can excrete as much as half a pint of moisture daily meaning we need to keep those trotters well moisturised! A lot of us believe our feet are one of the most unattractive parts of the body with some even having a fear of them! So it is no wonder a lot of us keep them hidden away. I am going to go through a few basic rules on how to look after your feet and have you feeling like you’re walking on air in no time!

For gorgeously glowing and smooth feet make sure they are washed and dried daily (make sure in between the toes is properly dried). Removal of hard skin should be done while the skin is soft after a bath or shower. Always use a gentle pumice stone or skin file, the really rough ‘cheese grater’ style rasps can often make the hard skin worse. The skin on the bottoms of our feet are there for protection, therefore if we get rid of it too quickly the body will produce more to over compensate so keep it gradual and gentle! When cutting and filing the nails always make sure you are doing it straight across and not curving down into the corners. This can cause ingrown toenails which can be extremely painful and can lead to infection. Finally apply a nice thick moisturiser or body butter daily but avoid in between the toes to prevent athletes foot.

Regular pedicures are also a great treat for tired and worn feet. At Eden Beauty, Kirkstall, we offer a mini pedicure for £14 or a full pedicure for £25 and both include the application of polish. I recommend a full one every 4 – 6 weeks for optimum results.

There are many over the counter products we can buy for our feet (my personal favourites been any that include cooling peppermint) but there are also scrubs and pastes that we can make from home. There are lots of recipes on the internet so why not give one a go with the ingredients you have in your cupboard. Overall these scrubs and pastes are cheap to make and the ingredients are easily available,  but they can be time consuming and messy to apply – so make sure you allow enough time!

Even nature has natural exfoliant’s, next time you are on holiday at the beach let the sea and its salt soothe your feet then have a walk around on the rough sand to exfoliate gently. Don’t forget to moisturise well afterwards! So the next time your feet are sore or you see a patch of hard skin – book that beach holiday, in the name of the health of your feet!

Look after your feet, and they will look after you! There are no excuses for not looking after your feet properly. They look after you through 10,000 steps a day, so don’t neglect them!