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Foot odour

Having bad-smelling feet is a very common problem, but one that has simple solutions.

On the body, the hands and feet are the extremities with the highest number of sweat glands – more than 600 per square centimetre. Because the feet spend so much time encased in shoes, this perspiration can’t evaporate. Warmth and moisture create a perfect incubator for bacteria, which produce odorous fatty acids.
 
One of the main contributors to bad foot-odour is the wrong sort of shoe or sock:

  • Shoes with plastic, synthetic or cardboard linings don’t allow sweat to evaporate. (If your shoes have a stamp that says “leather uppers”, they might still have a synthetic lining.) Stick your finger inside and they might feel damp, even if you haven’t been wearing them. Consider buying new shoes.
  • Two new pairs are best, if you can afford it, because then you needn’t wear the same pair for consecutive days. The shoes that have the “day off” should be stuffed with newspaper to absorb moisture.
  • Every few weeks, stick the narrow nozzle of your vacuum cleaner into the shoes to draw off moisture. You could even leave those little bags of silicon that you get with electronic equipment inside the shoes to absorb moisture.
  • Buy some inner soles for your shoes. Buy enough so that each pair only gets used once or twice a week. The good ones will stand up to sustained washing.
  • Get rid of any nylon or synthetic socks and replace them with socks that are a mixture of wool and cotton, or ones with no more than 40 percent man-made fibre such as rayon or nylon. Wear clean socks each day.

Odour can also be due to a skin problem, or excessive sweating:

  • If you have hard or cracked skin, you need to remove it. Hard skin can become “soggy” and harbour bacteria. Use a pumice stone or foot cream (recommended by your pharmacist) to remove the hard skin.
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  • Put a few drops of tea-tree oil into a basin of warm water and bathe your feet in it for about 20 minutes at the end of each day. As always, dry your feet thoroughly afterwards.
  • Look for little pits in the soles of your feet. If there are enough of them to create a honeycomb pattern, and if this is accompanied by a very bad smell, you might have a bacterial infection called pitted keratolysis. See your doctor about a course of antibiotics.
  • Speak to your doctor or pharmacist about an aluminium chloride antiperspirant spray that you can apply to your feet (as long as you don’t have athlete’s foot or any open sores).

William Smook, Health24, updated March 2013

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