It’s a story we are hearing more and more now that many people have had success getting rid of their fungal toenails with either the laser or medication. The nails used to look great — but now don’t look so great. What happened?
Fungus is stubborn. It is everywhere in the environment but especially in warm and wet areas. It lurks in locker rooms, showers, and most especially in enclosed shoes. What can you do? In the locker room and shower, you can wear flip-flops. One of the most simple and quite effective techniques is to dry your feet with a blow dryer. Certainly, don’t burn your feet – but get them good and dry.
Enclosed shoes provide a dark, warm, moist environment. This is the perfect environment for fungus. It is imperative to kill the fungus in your shoes! Whatever effort and expense you go through to kill the fungus in the toenails is for naught if you are sticking them in an infected shoe. The two ways of killing fungus in a shoe are a spray that is used once a day for about two weeks and it continues to kill fungus for about four months inside the shoe. The other extremely effective way is with a device called the steri shoe which is an ultraviolet light which kills fungus in the shoe without chemicals. Of course the other option is to wear open toe shoes!
Last year at a podiatry conference I had the pleasure of eating dinner with one of the foremost podiatric dermatologists. He told me that they had evidence of a strong genetic predisposition to fungus in the feet. I know I’ve seen this in practice and just recently read a statement from a podiatric dermatologist Dr. Tracey Vlahovic who also said the same thing.
The bottom line is that toenail fungus is curable but it is a constant battle. If you have a genetic disposition to toenail fungus, yes it can be cured, but it will be that much more difficult and you will have a greater chance of it returning. At least we can do something about it… I’m still waiting for an effective cure for baldness!