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In-grown toenails can cause great discomfort, we only realise how important our toes are when something goes wrong with them. It should be noted that ingrown toenails only ever happen in people who wear shoes so, as much as you can, get your feet out of your shoes and don't, whatever you do, ever wear constrictive footwear that make your feet hurt, not ever! What follows are some ‘old-school’ ways of dealing with in-grown toenails. |
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The first step is to get in there and ‘clean up’ with a pair of scissors and a nail file. You may already have gone to a podiatrist who will have done this for you but there is no reason that a person cannot do it for themselves, so long as they can reach! You have to work on the affected toenail with the file until you have thinned it down sufficiently to cleanly cut away as much of the nail as you safely can, remember to cut ‘straight’ across the nail in the future rather than in a curved manner.
The second step is to soften the area up as much as possible. The swelling and hardening around the in-grown toenail is what makes it so uncomfortable and also what stops it from sorting itself out. One of the best ways to achieve this ‘softening’ effect is to take a piece of fresh lemon that you have cut to the right size and to ‘bandage’ it on overnight using any kind of tape or sticking plaster you have handy.
The third step is to help your body with all the foreign debris and bacteria that will have assuredly gotten into the area if it has been around for any length of time. The herbs Myrrh, Golden Seal and Echinacea in tincture form will all take care of this. Dab a small amount of any one of them (or a combination of them is even better if you have that possibility) on to the affected toenail and repeat several times over the next few days. Get one or more of these herbs from a reputable herbal supplier or a herbalist if at all possible - how you might go about finding one of them is written up here. Your body will know how to stop the nail growing back in so long as your footwear is not pushing your toes into an unnatural position. If the damage is done and you have some malformation in your feet that is setting you up for this problem chronically then you definitely need to get to a podiatrist to give you the technical assistance you will need to splint and position your toes to prevent re-occurrence. Depending on how old and how bad the problem is you may need to repeat this ‘cleaning, softening and disinfecting’ process a few times. So long as it is clearly helping there is no reason not to keep it up until things get completely better, however long it takes.
Please understand that I cannot personally advise you without seeing you in my clinic. |
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