Corns to the Little Toes and Chiropody
Both men and women commonly complain of pain in their ˜baby™ or 5th toes. Footwear is almost always the cause.
When shoes are too tight, the side of the shoe will rub and press onto the soft skin of the small toe. Over time your body will need to protect itself and the underlying nerves and blood vessels, and callous/hard skin will develop ˜to toughen up the skin™.
If there is a concentrated area of pressure on the skin, not only callous will develop but a painful hard ˜corn™. A hard corn is like an inverted traffic cone of callous (hard skin), and will lie on top of an underlying nerve, therefore when you wear tight shoes, the needle point of callous will press onto the nerve and cause quite a lot of pain.
What can you do to help?
Find comfortable shoes which will accommodate your toes, and decrease the pressure, pressing directly onto your 5th toe this will mean a shoe with a broader, more rounded toe box that is not tapered. If in doubt about your footwear fit, try drawing around your shoe. Then draw around your foot ontop of that outline and see if and where your foot goes over the edges of your footwear. A simple and easy trick, it can really help to show you areas of your shoe that are not a good fit.
What to avoid
˜Corn caps™ worn on the sides of your toe are quite problematic and may increase pain. Corn caps contain salicylic acid (SA), this is an ˜anti keratolytic.™ Keratin is a protein that your skin, hair and nails are made from.
This acid burns the skin and causes the callous to break down and flake off. Often the acid also destroys the healthy surrounding skin and creates a wound, causing considerably more pain when wearing closed shoes. Do NOT self-medicate with acid based corn pads as these will only make the site worse and cause more damage. See a Podiatrist for safe, correct ˜enucleation™ of the corn and prevention advice.
How can a Podiatrist help?
A podiatrist will enucleate the corn, this means removing the needle of hard skin pressing on the nerve. This is pain free treatment carefully removing only the corn no surgery, blood or pain. Corns should not be surgically removed as this can lead to scarring, which can cause much bigger long-term problems. A small cavity may be left behind, and if you continue to wear tight fitting shoes the cavity will become a corn again. Consequently this will require further podiatry treatment in 8-12wks, or sooner.
Another effective way of managing painful callous/corns here is to use silicone toe ˜sleeves™. The silicone wraps around your toe and the shoe presses onto the silicone and not directly on to your skin to prevent the formation of callous/corns. You should also use a urea-based foot cream daily after showering as part of your regular footcare regime, to help keep hard skin at bay.
A qualified podiatrist experienced in biomechanics will also want to check your biomechanic alignment, just to be sure that any corns are only footwear related and not indicating any other biomechanical mal-alignment, which can be alleviated also with the use of custom corrective prescription orthotics to alleviate high pressure points on the feet.
If you are experiencing discomfort on your small toes, or anywhere on your feet/legs, you should see the foot experts at Dubai Podiatry Centre. Contact us today on +971 4 3435390.
