Hands and Feet—Dry Skin 911

You can blame whatever you want to for dry skin—weather, age, your Aunt Fanny—but the truth is that most of us at one time or another have to deal with the itchy and scratchy business of dry skin, and it quite often shows up prominently on our hands and feet. Don’t think it’s just something you need to deal with. Here are some easy tips on restoring moisture to skin that resembles the surface of the Sahara.

Hands—They do all the hard work in the family, from scrubbing the dishes to changing the diapers. I usually keep some heavy-duty hand lotion in my kitchen to apply during the day, but we all know what happens to that. It just washes off ten minutes later. The real time to tackle dry hands is at night. Use a moisturizing and exfoliating scrub on your hands. You can make this yourself by just adding some grits or cornmeal to your regular hand soap, and a few drops of olive oil.
After you have cleaned and moisturized your hands, add some more moisture by rubbing in a heavy-duty lotion. Now here’s the trick, pick up some thin gloves at your local beauty supply store, put them on, and sleep in them. This gives your hands a full eight hours (well, maybe…) to soak up that much-needed moisture.

Feet—Who wants to play footsie with dry, scaly feet? When your feet need some moisture, it’s time to take action. The good news is that dry feet are easy to treat. When you go by the beauty supply store to pick up the gloves, grab a corn and callus remover. These are what all of the high profile pedicures use. Quite simply, it’s a razor blade that you run along your feet to remove corns and calluses. However, even if you don’t have any of these problems, they are great at removing dry, scaly skin. Just remember to use a soft touch. If you use it too often or with too much intensity, you could easily scrape off the entire top layer of skin and end up with sore red tootsies.