After my first long hike I had some phenomenal blisters. Truly something for the record books. I’ve improved a few areas that lead to my plight – using liner socks, non-worn out shoes, staying more hydrated, putting my feet over my head for a couple minutes at breaks – all that helped a lot.
But I still had an annoying, stubborn, and painful skin issue on my left heel. The skin grows crazy, immediately becoming callused, thick, dry, and cracked. I tried body glide, various foot creams, udder cream, plus probably 10 other foot creams. Most of them worked well while they were physically on my heel, but as soon as they absorbed my skin would start to dry out and could crack open again in less than 24 hours. Plus none of those products did anything to reduce the callus. They just softened it enough that I could violently scrub off the excess skin with a pumice stone, and even then it was marginal removing the callus without over-sanding the nearby good skin.
Someone on here mentioned urea cream to me and I’ve used it for a couple weeks now. I bought Ebanel brand 40% Urea cream with 2% Salicyclic acid. I chose Ebanel brand because most others (including the one called something like natural-organi) had Parabens and other bad chemicals. Ebanel had the fewest bad ingredients that i could find.
I’ve used it 2 weeks so far and its done more in 2 weeks than I’ve been able to accomplish in a couple months. I started applying to morning and night, but recently i’ve been doing it 4x a day after seeing a reduction in callus from the 2x application. Now the callus is reducing in size and the skin is starting to soften for the first time that I can remember. Its still thick and callused but at least its not cracking open, and doesnt crack open if I skip a day or 2, and it continues to get thinner and smaller.
So for stubborn calluses, I highly recommend urea lotion. Its the most effective product I have come across after trying more than 15 brands of foot creams and deep moisturizing lotions.
I’ll report back in a month when I get back from a 60 mile trek of the Tuolumne valley of Yosemite with how my heel held up
