Dry feet

[Guest Posts]

The soles of my feet, sides and mainly front of my toes and also the palm of my hands and sides and fingers are badly affected by horrible dry and very itchy crusts of dry skin, and what can be best described as open wounds as though caused by a knife blade. This makes walking extremely painful and difficult.

My gp gives me zerobase cream, which helps, but I can only wear in bed and then it is uncomfortable as I have to wear protective items to stop the cream wiping off on bedclothes.

During covid I was diagnosed with celiac disease based on previous blood tests. Could this be the cause? Where I live getting gluten free is difficult and often too expensive unfortunately.

Rest of my body skin is absolutely fine. I'm a 55 year old male.

Kind Regards

Mairtin

[Julie Van Onselen]

Dry, itchy and fissured (cracks and open wounds) are symptoms of a skin condition, and the most common conditions are likely to be eczema or psoriasis. We are not able to diagnose at this clinic, so it is important you return to the GP and explain your continuing symptoms. With any dry and itch skin condition, emollients are first-line treatments, and they should be used for washing and moisturising (soap, bubble baths and cosmetic fragrance washes should be avoided). If moisturisers alone do not help, then you may need a topical treatment, to treat the skin condition, which should be used with a gap between applying emollients, which alone will not resolve an active skin condition.