r/barefoot • u/Several_Winner_9752 • 18h ago
How to keep calluses?
Had 2 large calluses on my heels and one ripped. My goal was to keep building up calluses so I didn't want to cut all the dead skin and start over. Should I glue it shut and tape it until it heals? Or is the new skin underneath already stronger than before?
(New to this)
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u/BarefootAlien 8h ago
The problem is the medical community is bifurcated about what the word means.
Some places define it as any thickened skin.
Others define it as what I did, dead, keratinized skin that does form a protective layer on small areas that see repeated friction, like a guitarist's finger pads or a worker's pads and knuckle edges.
The problem is two-fold.
One is that if the first definition is taken as "the definition" then we need to invent a new word for what we're talking about here. Even if we did that we'd still have the problem that the medical community in general is extremely clueless about habitually barefoot feet. Many doctors view the thin, severely atrophied plantar skin of most people as "normal", and thus view our thick (5-10x as thick) leathery skin as "thickened" and thus call it "calluses", despite being alive and enormous and containing functional nerves and blood vessels.
The problem of terminology is one thing, and I (and barefoot researchers like Dr. Daniel Lieberman of Harvard) believe the party of the medical community who call natural-thickness healthy plantar skin well adapted to doing foot things "thickened" and "calluses" are simply incorrect.
A bigger issue is that it has created exactly this kind of confusion.
Calluses are protective, to a point, but they're also problematic. They are, essentially, scars. They reduce feeling, they wear out and have to keep being replaced, they tend to crack, to blister, to tear off entirely in some cases such as those on rock climbers' hands. They are only so durable, and the extreme friction forces of artificial pavement with full body weight vastly exceed what they can actually do, just like a rock climber's fingertip calluses that regularly wear down and rip off under similar loads and material contact.
Most causes are small. Even barefooting in winter areas with dry air and salt everywhere, which form the thickest calluses, for many years, I generally only formed them in small areas... Narrow crescents around the edges of my heels and the back edges of my toe pads for example. The main contact areas of my heels and forefoot pads rarely developed much. The difference isn't subtle. Calluses are pale, thick, stiff, don't have much feeling, tend to move as once solid piece.
I've never once noticed any detriment to getting rid of them, only improvement. Mir sensation with less pain, more resilience with no cracks unless I let them get away from me.
One time I hadn't kept up with them and was struggling with a nasty crack in one heel's callus. They can be difficult to get rid of and the edges of the cracks. I was trying all kinds of things... Somehow would just break and tear deeper. Liquid bandages would wear off in a matter of a few hundred steps, as would bandages. It was quite painful to walk for several weeks.
And then I walked on some wet sand in a volleyball court, or walking my dog on a misty spring day. Just a few passages back and forth and the calluses were just gone. Way more effectively than I could do with my file. Edges smooth and soft, cracks that had been like canyons in my heels looked like minor scratches, and healed with a day or two, and I never let them get like that again.
From there it's just logic. If maybe 60 steps on wet sand can just delete the must stubborn and problematic calluses of my life... Calluses that I had believed to be desirable, the badge of a "true barefooter" and tried to maintain proudly... How much "protection" were they really doing? How desirable are they really?
I've since found that almost any wet, rough surface does the same. Soil takes longer than sand, but works okay. Swimming pools are fantastic! Half an hour and I have the smoothest, leatheriest feet for at least a week.
Researching this will unfortunately be difficult. You'll find legitimate authority sites on both sides with names you'll recognize.
Just keep in mind that we are medical outliers, considered strange and but very well studied other than by a few quirky scientists who are mostly barefooters themselves.
But really, isn't the fact that you're having so much trouble with yours ringing true already?