Get your feet ready for sandal weather

Original article with video on abc7Chicago.com

June 11, 2007 - Newbeauty editor Marie Czenko Kuechel shares the best ways to look pretty, down to your toes!

Here are some solutions to common foot-beauty and comfort problems.

What is the most common foot beauty problem?

The most common is rough, dry, scaly, discolored and even calloused skin. It is important to regularly treat the feet to remove hardened or dry skin. A big mistake people make is to remove dead skin in the shower or after a foot soak.

Product to try: microplane (microplane.com) at Williams Sonoma and Crate and Barrel, $19.95.

Tips: Use microplane on dry skin and use a natural oil based soak, not soap to condition the skin. This one contains sage, lemongrass and citric oils.

Product to try: Linden Leaves Foot Soak ($18.95 lindenleavesusa.com)

The skin on feet is thicker than anywhere the body. It needs its own skincare. this contains shea butter to soften, watercress to reduce puffiness, salicylic acid in the form of willow bark to continue exfoliation naturally.

Product to try: Alchimie Forever, antioxidant relief for feet ($39, skinstore.com)

What if these over the counter solutions don't help?

The best thing is to get a medical pedicure by your podiatrist. Just like we shouldn't try to extract pimples with our nails, we should not try to cut or remove calluses at home. A podiatrist can use special tools to manually exfoliate and remove corns and calluses. They can also treat nail conditions like fungus or ingrown toe nails.

What about sweaty feet?

Product to try: footlogix ($25.00 amazon.com, health & personal care tab)

Sweaty feet are not only unpleasant, but in a strappy sandal or a slide you may find yourself sliding around. Footlogix is a fast absorbing mousse with herbal extracts that act both as an antiperspirant without drying the feet, as well as deodorant. Sage, aloe and some of the normal ingredients are used in antiperspirants, but are made into a formula specifically for the feet.

Is it true that botox can be used to treat sweaty feet?

Product to try: botox ($400 to $600 or more, in your dermatologist's office)

Botox is FDA-approved to treat excessive perspiration, a medical condition, in the underarm. It is used off-label to treat perspiration of the feet and a treatment will literally shut off perspiration for 4 to 6 months or more.

Tips: botox treats excessive perspiration for 4 to 6 months, choose a doctor with extensive experience, may experience some redness or discomfort after treatment.

What about the pain that we experience when wearing heels and strappy shoes? We want our feet to look great, but how can they feel great too?

Product to try: foot petals ($6.95 - 19.95, Nordstrom)

Foot petals come in all shapes and sizes to help cushion the balls of the feet, to prevent slipping through your slides if they are too wide or too high and to help grip heels and heel straps - it's common for a foot to be wide at the front and more narrow in the heel.

Is there a medical solution for these conditions?

Product to try: Restylane and Perlane ($600 or more per treatment in your dermatologist's office)

Injections of hyaluronic acid actually originated in orthopedic use to cushion joints like knees that have lost cartilage from osteoarthritis. The cosmetic formulations that are FDA approved to fill facial folds and enhance lips like Restylane or newly FDA-approved Perlane are just the right consistency to be used off-label and cushion the balls of the feet.

Tips: choose a doctor with experience, may experience mild discomfort after treatment.

So is this "cosmetic surgery" for the feet?

Actually things like shortening and lengthening toes, or narrowing the feet, has become rather popular in discussion, but the American Orthopedic Foot & Ankle Society has a very strong statement against this. It's better to take the shoe to a shoemaker to fit your foot rather than have surgery to try and fit the shoes.

The most common occurrence is when the second toe is longer than the others, which is called a morton foot. By wearing shoes that are too short, the toe curls and you develop what can be a painful hammertoe deformity. Surgery in these cases is for the medical not the cosmetic problems.