The most common source of fungal infection is your shoes. The intimate contact that your feet have with your shoes is comparable to the contact your body has with your lingerie. You wouldn’t wear these items more than once without washing them. But your shoes are not given the same attention. Most people are raised to clean the outsides of their shoes to show other people how clean they are. Our feet live inside the shoes. It is more important to clean the insides of the shoes than it is to clean the outside.

The insides of your shoes are a high friction environment. Your skin cells rub off your feet and accumulate inside your shoes. This is what fungus loves to eat, your dead skin cells. The ring around the tub after you bathe is laden with dead skin cells that you have exfoliated. Leave that ring around the tub long enough and watch the fungus grow on it!

So, how do you clean the insides of your shoes? Put the tennis shoes, bedroom slippers and any other machine washable shoegear in the washing machine with bleach and detergent. The bleach sterilizes the shoes of fungus and bacteria. For the shoes that cannot be put into the machine, make a basin of bleach water. Mix one part bleach with ten parts water. Use gloves to protect the skin on your hands. Dip a clean rag in the bleach water and wring it dry. Use the rag to wipe out the insides of your shoes especially where the toes live. Allow the shoes to air dry for 24 hours before wearing them again. This is SHOE THERAPY.

If you are pressed for time, Clorox wipes, or even mouthwash will work. Please don’t settle for sifting powder into the shoes or spraying them without ever wiping them out properly. That stuff accumulates in the shoes right along with the skin cells!

If you’ve already gotten a fungus infection on your feet, go to a podiatrist and have it treated. When it comes to your shoes, don’t sabotage the treatment by not cleaning out the insides of your shoes. Do your SHOE THERAPY and KEEP IT CLEAN!

-Dr. Rene’ Settle-Robinson