Shoes can ruin your nails

What is your criterion for choosing shoes: price, design or health?

It's no surprise if you accidentally find your toenails rough or uneven. They can also be bumpy, peeling with jagged edges, cracks, or yellowing, which can raise suspicion of nail fungus, especially after the summer period when the legs are sweating intensively. But if intensive treatment does not work, then the cause may not be related to your feet, but may be in your shoes.

Here are three main reasons shoes can injure your nails.

1. Hiking is good for your body, but not for your fingers.

Runners and ballerinas have long been familiar with this problem: constantly standing on the back of the toes, injuring their nails, which makes pedicure visits a waste of time and money. Sometimes this is not feasible at all due to blisters and bruises. In the modern world, treadmills, exercise bikes, etc. with sweaty feet can have the same effects. During exercise, your feet can swell, which in tight shoes can lead to blisters and even damage to your nails.

2. Your shoes are too tight.

About 70% of the population buy shoes that are smaller than necessary. When choosing shoes, we often try on whether they fit in length or in width, but we never think about whether the toe of the shoe suits us. If the toe of the shoe is tight, then while walking, the nail will constantly rest and be injured with each step. This subtlety is often overlooked, but because of this, the nail can receive thousands of microtraumas during the day. These microtraumas accumulate and can cause onychodystrophy - changes in nails associated with malnutrition and making them unsightly, which can often be confused with nail fungus.

Recommendations: When shopping for shoes, choose shoes with wide, high toes so that your toes can move freely in the toes of the shoe. Let's be honest when choosing shoes, people are often guided by criteria other than convenience. Therefore, periodically take breaks for your feet, every two days, wearing open, not tight shoes. You can also take advantage of the new FDA-approved special polyurethane coating that allows you to clean and protect your nails from damage (like a sealed safety pad). It will take about six months for the nails to fully grow back.

3. Going to the gym is at risk of developing an athlete's foot.

Be careful not to wear someone else's slippers in the showers of gyms - this can lead to infection with the fungus. But the trouble is, when you put on home shoes on your feet seeded with fungus in the hall, the fungus can persist there for a long time. In shoes, the ideal conditions for fungus are warm, dark, moisture and limited access to fresh air. You can have successful results with pills or with nail fungus treatment, but if the fungus has colonized your shoes, it is possible for the nails to become re-infected with the fungus.

Recommendations

Open your shoes as wide as possible, remove the insoles and leave them overnight. Or leave them in direct sunlight for a day, which is harmful to the fungus. Treat shoes 1-2 times a week with alcohol or disinfectant solution; carefully to get into all hard-to-reach places of the shoe. If you have had a fungus, then most likely you are susceptible to this pathology, so prevention should come first. Create an unfavorable environment for fungus in your shoes - keep them dry and use powdered foot deodorants. If you have calluses on your feet, we recommend a pedicure or using exfoliating socks for a home pedicure.

If there are signs of nail fungus, we recommend laser nail fungus treatment as it is completely safe.