Why Exfoliating your Feet is So Important
Are you guilty of overlooking the importance of having a good foot care routine? Daily we are great at pampering our face and hands keeping them smooth and forget just how important it is to keep our feet healthy, which surprisingly can be as simple as remembering to exfoliate them.
We are on our feet all day, exposing them to dirt, dust and pollution, all of which can easily dehydrate the skin, yet the worrying thing is we often take our feet health for granted, often neglecting them to the point that it causes problems and pain.
Your body is a clever thing, as it creates thicker skin on your feet as a way to natural way protect itself, although it’s a thin line, because too much thick skin can become painful to walk on and even crack and get infected, but a simple routine of exfoliating your feet can prevent this build up.
What is Exfoliation?
Simply exfoliation is a process when you remove the dead skin cells from the surface of your skin. It can be done in two ways; one is by using an object like a pumice stone to rub it away or by using a chemical option like a peel or scrub. Either way the process reveals healthy smooth skin underneath.
The Benefits of Exfoliating Your Feet
It’s actually really good for your skin to exfoliate it regularly, a few benefits include: –
- Keeping your feet healthy by not allowing dead skin to build up, which can cause painful corns and calluses, which are thick, hardened layers of skin that develop and cause uncomfortable pressure when walking.
- A boost to your blood circulation, which can relieve aches and pains, as well as be a stress levels.
- Prevents dead skin clogging the pores on your feet, which lowers the chances of your feet becoming infected. Infections most of the time come as a result of bacteria entering wounds and if you’re prone to getting blisters, then this is the perfect chance for infectious bacteria to crawl in and cause bigger problems.
- Prevent painful cracked skin and heels on your feet, because when hard skin builds up it is more likely to crack, but by removing this hard skin it gives you smooth skin.
- Your feet feeling soft and beautiful boosting your confidence about how you look and feel, as your proud to show them off.
- An insight into your overall health, feet can often be one of the first points of the body where we may notice warning signs to different health issues. Showing signs of arthritis, diabetes, and vascular disease.
The Exfoliating Products we have Enjoyed Putting to the Test
For National Feet Week this year, we have been gifted some exfoliating products in return for us to share our honest thoughts about them and the three exfoliating products we have put to the test are
Palmers Cocoa Butter Foot Magic Scrub
Palmer’s Cocoa Butter Formula Foot Magic Scrub is suitable for vegans and promises to revitalise your feet while exfoliating the tough skin on them. When we tried this out, we did find that it worked well to remove the dry skin effortlessly and left feet feeling lovely and soft, the smell was nice as well.
You can pick it for an affordable £4.99 at Superdrug
Palmers Coconut Oil Coconut Sugar Foot Scrub
This foot scrub uses natural coconut sugar and peppermint oil to exfoliate and buff away rough, callused skin for smooth and we loved this foot scrub, the smell is awesome and the oil nature of this scrub made it easy to use, although it is still quite thick. Performance wise it was brilliant at getting rid of the dry skin and left our feet feeling refreshed.
You can pick it for an affordable £4.99 at Superdrug
Footner Exfoliating Socks
So, these socks are something we have not really tried before. They are designed to be a fuss free way to get rid of your hard skin, so an option where you do not need to use pumice stones, foot files or foot scrubs.
You pop the socks on and leave them on for 60 minutes so you will need some free time to sit back and let them do their work.
We did find them easy to use, the smell was ok, but initially we did not notice much difference in the smoothness of our feet, but that soon changed, after a few days our feet started to shed the dry skin, reminding us of when a snakes sheds their skin, this continues for several days up to a week and then you are left with smooth rejuvenated feet. We were rather impressed with them, as this is the first time we have used them we can comment on how long the results last for but well worth a try if you fancy a new addition to your foot care routine.
You can pick these up for £9.99 at Superdrug
How to Exfoliate Your Feet
It’s worth noting that for the best results you need to invest the time in your exfoliating routine, so set aside time and you will be blessed in return with the softest feet you have ever felt.
First you will need to soak your feet, a basin full of Epsom salts in warm water is the classic go to foot soak as it’s known to help with reducing pain and swollen feet, it’s also thought that the minerals in Epsom salts can be soaked in through the skin to give all over body’s benefit, but ultimately it is for softening the skin on your feet, ready for the next step in your exfoliating routine.
Gently dry your feet with a fluffy towel and then use a foot scrub. A good foot scrub will have granulated ingredients in it that will work effortlessly to loosen and remove all the dead skin from your feet. If you massage in into your skin in circular motions spending more time in the areas with the worst amount of dry skin on it, such as around your heels or by your big toe.
Then finally rinse off the foot scrub, dry your foot and apply a good foot cream or lotion, if done before bed you can leave uncovered to soak in, or if during the day just put on a pair of socks to seal in the moisture.
How Often Should You Exfoliate Feet?
Realistically this is down to your own feet and how much they need it, if you have moderately dry feet, you might find that using a pumice stone in the shower once a fortnight is sufficient is to rub away the dry skin, followed by a full exfoliating scrub once a month.
Although if you have severely dry, cracked or callused feet then you might find that using an exfoliating foot scrub weekly or twice a week as well as using a pumice stone is what is need to prevent the build-up of too much hard skin.
New skin cells usually generate every 30 days, exfoliating helps them make their way to the top, so trying out a routine that works for you is the best way to find out how often you should exfoliate your feet.
The reason it’s important to work out how often to exfoliate your feet is because you can over exfoliate and end up removing the protective barriers on your skin and cause more damage, you will experience burning, blistering, pain, infection, and thick crusty skin on the heels, so once you have found your perfect routine its worth sticking to it.
And it goes without saying that exfoliating your feet is an all year-round thing, even though we won’t be showing our feet of in sandals in winter we need to love our feet in winter so they look and feel amazing in the summer.
One last top tip, additional to exfoliating your feet when needed, treating your feet to a good moisturiser every morning and every bedtime is the best daily foot care to keep your feet both happy and healthy.
National Feet Week
National Feet Week is a time to be more aware of niggling issues with your feet and a prompt to make it a priority to have your feet checked by a professional it needed. It is running from 17th to 23rd April in 2023 and you can find more information out about at the National Feet Week Website
