Athelete's foot got you down?

[GreyGeek]

When you get older your immune system doesn't seem to work as well as it used to.   Foot fungus is one of the main culprits.   I tried tubes of 1% Tolfinate and bottles of 25% Undecylinic acid to no avail.  (I won't take systemic medicines to fight an external infection ... I love my liver.)   A week after the tubes or bottles ran out the buggers returned to drive me crazy.  Even worse, the fungus got underneath some of my toe nails and they looked terrible.

My wife was telling her near relative and best friend, who works in an old folks home, about my foot problem.  She suggested what they use at the home.  Here is the recipe:

One cup of distilled vinegar, straight from the bottle.
One cup of Listerine mouth wash, the blue kind.
Two cups of water.
Mix in a pan sufficient in size to soak your feet, covering the toes.
Heat in a microwave to 40C (105F) (as warm as you can stand)
Put the pan under your computer desk and soak your feet for an hour while you type away at this forum!  Have a towel handy.

After an hour pull out each foot, let the fluid drain off and lightly towel dry.  Pour the mixture into a plastic jar for reuse.  Use soap and water to wash the Listerine off your feet and dry them.  You can rub off your callouses with your hand while they are moist.  I use a PedEgg. 

So far I've used it up four times, and twice with a fresh batch, with good results.   The treatment stopped my athlete's foot and the toe nail fungus in their tracks.  A healthy big toe nail has returned to one foot and the other is growing out quickly.  It has been more than six months ago since I started this treatment and my routine is to do it once a month.

Just thought I'd pass this on to others who spend more time outdoors in hot sweaty boots and wading in water than I do (which is zero time!).

P.S. -- While I think that Listerine is poor at what it claims to do, it works great in this mixture.  However, I don't recommend gargling it.     

[ILoveCats]

You should have put this in the Missouri non-indictment thread to add even more meandering. 

Good ol fashioned yellow Listerine is underrated as a general antiseptic.  Every doomsday prepper should keep a couple bottles in his fallout shelter.  They used to include instructions on the bottle to rub it on your scalp for dandruff, so I don't know why feet would be any worse.

Good in your mouth too.  I've never had a single cavity and my gums are the envy of everyone I meet.

[00BUCK]

Raw apple cider vinegar with the pulpy stuff still in it mixed 50/50 with hot water will kill it in about 3 days, soaking your feet in it twice a day for about 20 minutes.

[GreyGeek]

Good in your mouth too.  I've never had a single cavity and my gums are the envy of everyone I meet.

You can give your parents credit for a good upbringing for that.   My folks didn't know from sick'm and didn't care.   It's cost me a lot of teeth and I've got a lot of fillings.  My two kids have good teeth and so do my two grandsons.

I mentioned the poorness of Listerine because when I was teaching microbiology in college one of the lab exercises I had students do was to compare the bacterial killing power various mouth washes and antiseptics.   Listerine always came out as the worst of the lot.

[on the fritz]

I have also heard that Vick's Vapo-Rub also kills athlete's foot.  I'm sure it would, but then you have the smell........ 

A friend of mine said that once in high school he sprayed Tilex on his feet because of a bad case of athlete's foot.  He said it cleared it right up in one application, but kinda burned real good.      

[DenmanShooter]

I have also heard that Vick's Vapo-Rub also kills athlete's foot.  I'm sure it would, but then you have the smell........ 

A friend of mine said that once in high school he sprayed Tilex on his feet because of a bad case of athlete's foot.  He said it cleared it right up in one application, but kinda burned real good.      

Laughing almost uncontrollably right now. 

[DenmanShooter]

One other thing.  Make sure you put your socks on BEFORE you change your underwear.

It can migrate, you know.

[ILoveCats]

One other thing.  Make sure you put your socks on BEFORE you change your underwear.

It can migrate, you know.

You don't want to have to soak THAT in Listerine.

[GreyGeek]

When I was in high school, about 60 years ago, the favorite  initiation trick among the jocks was to put a gob of Atomic Balm on their fingers and when a rookie was taking his first shower the jock would slap that balm on "that area".   You could hear the screaming for a block in all directions.

[OnTheFly]

When I was in high school, about 60 years ago, the favorite  initiation trick among the jocks was to put a gob of Atomic Balm on their fingers and when a rookie was taking his first shower the jock would slap that balm on "that area".   You could hear the screaming for a block in all directions.

I love to joke around, but there is NO prank funny enough to justify touching (even momentarily) another guy in "that area". 

Fly

[GreyGeek]

I love to joke around, but there is NO prank funny enough to justify touching (even momentarily) another guy in "that area". 

Fly

Well, current politically correct theology didn't apply 60 years ago, and people weren't as hung up on gender as they are today.  And,  slapping balm on a guy's genitals wasn't considered a homosexual act back then.  Learning to handle tough situations was part of growing up back then.  Today, people run to the nanny state and whine.

[OnTheFly]

Well, current politically correct theology didn't apply 60 years ago, and people weren't as hung up on gender as they are today.  And,  slapping balm on a guy's genitals wasn't considered a homosexual act back then.  Learning to handle tough situations was part of growing up back then.  Today, people run to the nanny state and whine.

I have jumped out of a plane somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,200 times with some pretty harrowing and painful experiences.  I have survived a plane crash where the aircraft was totaled, I was knocked unconscious, and I was laid up for a week.  Yet I continued my aviation career and have nearly 9,000 hours of total time.

I don't think my mental or physical toughness has suffered because I didn't have some kid in high school slap me on the scrotum with a burning salve.   

On the bigger picture, I would agree.  Everything is overly sensitive.  Sometimes pain and humiliation are good teaching lessons.  The public school system tries (too much) to make sure every purple penguin is treated with kid gloves instead of letting them learn the tough lessons of life.

Fly

[RedDot]

Other than OTC remedies the only two "sworn to work" ideas were

 1) Soak your feet in vodka- this from the polish immigrant I work with although he claims to do it frequently so how good can it be eh?

2) Pee on your feet in the shower every day... that from a marine buddy of mine.  You'll have to ask SFG or someone if this is for real or just sick Corps humor to see if someone will actually do it. 

[GreyGeek]

Other than OTC remedies the only two "sworn to work" ideas were

 1) Soak your feet in vodka- this from the polish immigrant I work with although he claims to do it frequently so how good can it be eh?

That would probably work fairly well, except that Vodka besides drying the skin severely is also fairly expensive.   I have never deliberately gotten drunk.  The three times it occurred were when I was at a wine taster event sponsored by Cessna (who was hoping I'd buy one of their planes),  when a business partner introduced me to Mint Julips without telling me they were alcoholic, and when he gave me a communion cup full of Russian Vodka he'd picked up on a sales trip to Russia.  In the first case I never swallowed any of the wine.  I'd taste it, spit it out, eat a bit of cracker and cheese, and go on to taste the wine at the next table.  There may have been 30 or 40 tables in the perimeter of that auditorium.  It was there that I learned that alcohol can pass directly into the blood stream through your tongue and cheek tissues.  I knew I was in trouble when the auditorium started spontaneously rotating to the left about 90 degrees and then snapping back.  The second time was because I ordered a second Mint Julip because the first one tasted so good.  I swear, I never tasted the alcohol, but I was wondering why they were grinning at me when I ordered the second.  The third time the Vodka tasted oily and burned my tongue and throat.  The room shifting occurred about 10 minutes later, but I have no doubt that Russian Vodka could be used as a powerful antiseptic.

2) Pee on your feet in the shower every day... that from a marine buddy of mine.  You'll have to ask SFG or someone if this is for real or just sick Corps humor to see if someone will actually do it. 

That won't work.  While urine is sterile, unless you have kidney or urinary tract infection, it has no anti-fungal properties.

[GreyGeek]

I have jumped out of a plane somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,200 times with some pretty harrowing and painful experiences.  I have survived a plane crash where the aircraft was totaled, I was knocked unconscious, and I was laid up for a week.  Yet I continued my aviation career and have nearly 9,000 hours of total time.

Cool!  I've never done a parachute jump.  Were you a military paratrooper?

You've got a LOT more flight time built up than  I have, but I've never been in a plane crash.  I had one instance of the cockpit filling up with smoke during take off which forced me to kill the mag switches and do a down wind landing on the runway I just took off from.  I've had two harrowing experiences flying commercial.  It's an interesting time watching fire trucks line the runway you are about to land on because our only hydraulic "system A", the pilot explained,  failed during take off.  He never said there was not a "system B", which I found out later.  We flew around the patch for five hours to burn excess fuel while the stewards got everyone drunk with free booze.  I believe the pilot let a little pressure out of the cabin to facilitate the sleepiness.  IIRC, the landing speed of a Boeing 727 is about 140 knts.  I measured our speed at about 250 knts because the pilot couldn't lower the flaps, which retracted half way up during takeoff before the hydraulics failed.  Also, he couldn't guarantee that the wheels locked into position so he hit hard on the threshold to force them to collapse and give the maximum slide distance before the runway ran out.  Luckily, the wheels held, but the reverse thrusters were the  loudest I ever heard and the deceleration force was so great that my arms and legs stretched out in front of me and were difficult to pull back.  We came to a stop just as our nose ran off the far end of the runway.

I don't think my mental or physical toughness has suffered because I didn't have some kid in high school slap me on the scrotum with a burning salve.   

Sorry if you took it personal, it wasn't meant to be.

On the bigger picture, I would agree.  Everything is overly sensitive.  Sometimes pain and humiliation are good teaching lessons.  The public school system tries (too much) to make sure every purple penguin is treated with kid gloves instead of letting them learn the tough lessons of life.

Fly

That was my point.   From what my grandson tells me his school is a beehive of politically correct police running amok.  No games are played in which someone can win while others lose.  Scores in competitive events are not kept.  Kids are not encouraged to do better than they've done before but to achieve the average of the group.  Even scarier, everything is group think and behavior and opinions are molded to those of the "group", which are actually the mores and opinions of the teachers, which is why, here in Lincoln, instead of using gender pronouns kids are encouraged to use various colored penguins to refer to various genders. 

[OnTheFly]

No military experience.  I WISH I did, but drinking beer and chasing girls after a day of skydiving was more important to me at the time. 

That plane crash was the worst of my experiences, but there are plenty of times I was in the air wishing I was on the ground.  Your 727 ride sounds exciting.  The 727 was a runway hog WITH hydraulics.

Fly