Cracked Heels, dry feet, hard skin

Wearing sandals with no socks, walking in bare feet, canoeing and wading in the mud or sand, all lead to cracked heels and feet. You take your feet for granted until they cause you pain. Then you are desperate to find someone to help you. Infection and the lack of sensitivity are the main dangers. Keeping your feet clean is obvious but it really helps. A number of soldiers come to see me for help with their aches and injuries. The last SAS training involved 3 weeks of exercises. One day recently they had to walk for 40 miles carrying over 70 lb (32 Kg) packs and a rifle. The latest qualifying training co-incided with the Tour de France. One soldier said to me that the cyclists would have cold baths, masseurs every night, calorie measured food intake and a host of support for drinks. The SAS trainees had to go to the canteen at night or eat army rations and expend about the same energy as the Tour de France cyclists.
It is obvious, but keep your feet clean and moisturise. We use light olive oil for massage, you could use it every day. On a trip take some alcohol hand gel, tweezers and a needle, remove any tiny splinters. Try the inner pith of citrus fruits if you have no gel. Grapefruit works particularly well. If my heels crack when I am away I use superglue, dribble a little on, let it dry then add a little more. An emery board or pumice stone keeps the dry skin smooth. The best foot cream that we have come across is:
Scholl, Cracked Heel Repair Cream. It is brilliant.
Find someone to give you a foot massage or reflexology. Practice yoga balance postures or simply balance on one foot when you are waiting for someone. There are 26 bones in each foot and 72,000 nerve endings. Your feet form a tripod between the big toe, the cuboid in the outer border and the calcaneus in the heel. Pain in one big toe can be caused by stubbing the toe or other damage. However numbness in the big toe can indicate nerve root entrapment. It could relate to the nerve that comes out below the 5th lumbar vertebra in your back. If you are local to Milton Keynes we can treat that problem with success in most cases
Someone said to me recently that I was the first person to give them a really deep foot massage. They called it an "X ray massage."
Bunions are formed when the big toes are damaged or the arches in your feet start to collapse. The big toe is pushed over into or under the other toes and you walk by rolling off the inside of your big toe not the front of it. If your piriformis muscles in the pelvis are short the feet will externally rotate. You develop the "Charlie Chaplin walk" which is inefficient. That can be cured by muscles energy techniques and piriformis stretches.
To test whether your arches still have some spring in them look at your feet when you are standing. Do they have arches or not? Then sit with your legs dangling. Is the arch higher or are they still flat? If the arch is higher you still have some spring in them. You can work on that and strengthen them. If the arches are still flat you will need orthotics to support them. Podiatrists call orthotics, orthoses (from the Greek, orthosis - making straight).