Garlic: An effective treatment for athlete's foot

According to the MayoClinic, the signs and symptoms of athlete’s foot can be numerous, although you probably won’t have all of them.

They include:

• Itching, stinging and burning between your toes
• Itching, stinging and burning on the soles of your feet
• Itchy blisters
• Cracking and peeling skin, especially between your toes and on the soles of your feet
• Excessive dryness of the skin on the bottoms or sides of the feet
• Toenails that are thick, crumbly, ragged, discolored or pulling away from the nail bed
• Onychomycosis (a fungal infection of the nail) that may or may not develop with or other signs and symptoms of athlete’s foot.

If you’ve these signs of athlete’s foot, you’ll be glad to know you can treat yourself with garlic.

That’s right, garlic is an effective treatment for athlete’s foot because it has very powerful antibiotic and antifungal properties.

Here’s how you can use garlic to treat athlete’s foot

According to Householdmagicdailytips, if you have athlete’s foot, apply one clove of crushed garlic (mostly the juice) to the affected area. Leave it on, uncovered, for a half-hour, then rinse with warm water.

If you do this once a day, within a week, your athlete’s foot will be gone.

One word of caution, when you first apply the garlic, there will be a sensation of warmth. If after a few minutes that warm feeling
intensifies and you start to feel a burning sensation, rinse the area with cool water. The next day, dilute the garlic juice with water (about a tablespoon or so) and try again. This is because your skin may be sensitive to the potent power of garlic, warns
Householdmagicdailytips.

If you can’t stand the smell of garlic, there’s another way of treating athlete’s foot: Tea tree oil.

Dr Jonathan Wright of Nutrition & Healing recommends you trim the nail back and use a soft toothbrush to apply tea tree oil to the affected nail twice a day.

“To speed things along, you can apply DMSO (Dimethyl sulfoxide – colourless liquid that diffuses quickly through the skin). DMSO helps carry the tea tree oil through the nail directly to the fungus,” advises Dr Wright.

While this treatment may take several months, the good thing is it’s also effective.

There you have it. Eliminating athlete’s foot is as easy as using natural treatments are readily available at your supermarket and local health shop.