Treatment Options for Fungus in the Nails and Skin
Today, we’re talking about fungus - fungus on your skin and fungus on your nails. It's a very common problem. Fungus is among us, it’s all around, and it can get into our shoes and socks, which then gets onto our feet and nails. Fungus loves a dark, moist environment, and that’s exactly where our feet are living most of the time. Fungus also thrives and lives off of our skin and our toenails. We need to do certain things to keep those things from happening.
Fungus in the Skin
Most of us have probably had a little bit of athlete’s foot, which is a fungal infection of the skin. If you catch it early, it’s easily treatable with over the counter medications, sprays, and creams. Keep a watch out, especially between the toes, for cracking or itching or burning, and treat it right away. If it gets out of hand, or it starts to spread, let us know and we can do prescription medications, which are much stronger. If you come in with a fungus problem on your skin, we will do prescription creams.
Fungus in the Toenails
If it gets into the toenails, that’s when you start to see yellow discoloration, sometimes some thickening of the nail, sometimes it’ll even start to lift off. In its severe form, they can get very thick, very irritating, and painful. It’s something that we should treat. There are many topical medications, nail polish-type medications that you can purchase at the pharmacy, and they’re worth trying, but you have to use them for a long time.
Treating Shoes
Also, it’s important to treat your shoes. We talked about that dark, moist environment. There are specially formulated shoe sprays that attack that fungus that’s living in the shoe.
Medications
Finally, there are some excellent oral medications, or pills, that can be prescribed, which is something that we commonly do. If there’s a fungal infection of the nails, we can prescribe some oral pill medication that often can take care of that.
Fungal infections are something you don’t want to ignore. If you’re having any of these problems, call the Hermiston Family Foot Clinic, and we’ll help you out!
