Skin Cracks (Fissures)

[Guest guest]

Hi,

For those of you who have trouble with skin cracks (fissures) on

hands and feet...

There's one thing you can do to get them to close and heal faster.

If you have a lot of skin issues, you may want to ask your doctor if

he/she thinks this is OK for you to do. I have never encountered

anybody who got problems because of this though. They do this a lot

in the hospital dermatology wards and we use it a lot at the

Psoriasis Association summer camps.

You can get tiny bottles at the parmacy of Silver Nitrate Solution

(lapis) 2%. You can also get 0.5%, but that is not anywhere as

effective.

The lapis will etch the edges of the fissures, so that it can close and heal...

What you do is this:

- Put the bottle on a newspaper before you open it! The reason for

this is that you can easily spill a little

drop and after a when it meets the air, it will oxydate (sp?) and

make an ugly brown/black stain which

is very difficult to remove. Whatever you do, don't put the bottle

on the bathroom sink!!!

- Dip a Q-tip in the bottle, and rub it in the fissure. Only dip the

Q-tip once, if you need to dip again, take

a new one (to prevent pollution in the bottle).

- Cover the fissure with a bandaid. If you want to, you can use a

piece of DuoDerm bandaid.

To prevent such fissures:

- When you have skin that starts to thicken, carefully file it down

with a foot file, sanding paper (the black

ones you get at a DIY store, or the black ones that is fastened to

a piece of foam so it will be easier to

on uneven surfaces) or one of those stones meant for such things

(have no idea what it is called in

English). Be careful so that you don't file too much.

- Apply a rich moisturizer, one which has some fat in it, not only a

lotion with a lot of water. Do this often.

- In order to keep the skin soft, you can also apply such a

moisturizer on your hands and cover them

with vinyl (not latex) gloves over night. You can get these gloves

e.g. at pharmacies. You can do the

with your feet, but then cover them with cling film (Saran Wrap). A

good way of doing that, is to take a

bread knife and cut the roll of cling film to a width of approx.

3 " . Then you can apply the wrap as a

bandage, that feels so much more comfortable. One warning though:

If you wear socks outside the

plastic film, you can easily slide and possibly fall if you are

walking... Be careful!!!

I have a lot of problems with thickening of the skin on my feet,

psoriasis on the feet etc. I have had real problems with being able

to file it myself. One day I really felt like doing it, but couldn't,

and I got an idea. I found my Black and Decker Mouse sander... I put

on a fine paper and carefully tried it. It works great!!! But of

course, the sander is powerful, so be careful so you don't sand too

far, you could easily get a nasty sore. I also tried a Skil

triangular sander I have, but I found that one to be too ineffective.

It did work, but it took too long, so it became very tiring... I also

have an excellent electric pedicure set. But, it is not even close to

being effective for use on my feet. I can only use that one on my

hands...

If it should happen that you spill Silver Nitrate Solution in the

bathroom sink, you will soon see brown stain appear. You can remove

these by wetting a gauze compress with 10% hydrogen peroxide and

leave the compress on the stain until it has bleached enough to not

be visible. This is the only way I have been able to remove one of

these stains, everything else I tried, did not work (chlorine, all

kinds of soaps and scrubbing stuff).

Hope this helps!!!

Aase Marit