As we all know vinegar has been around for years and is used
for lots of things. It also comes in
many flavors today and isn’t just plain white vinegar anymore.
They say it cleans windows better than any window cleaner,
but I can’t stand the smell of vinegar.
Honestly, I would never use it if I could avoid it. The odor makes me very ill. But I use it in salad dressing and things like
that and we use it at work all the time to soak pots that get burned on the
bottom while doing a demo. Vinegar is so
strong it wafts all over the store. I do
everything I can to avoid burning anything so I don’t have to get near this
stuff.
I have a personal story concerning vinegar that I don’t know
if I should share or not. It all started
with having to wear socks and closed in shoes at work, preferably some type of
sneaker with a good non-slip sole. Let
me tell you this, my feet aren’t designed to wear closed in shoes and sneakers
all the time. I’m working far too many
days than I signed up for because we’re always shorthanded at work. I much prefer wearing sandals or going
barefoot, which I always do when I’m off work.
I do understand the need for all this footwear in a professional environment
where food is served, but I still hate it and my feet hate it more.
This issue has caused me a lot of grief due to the fact I
contracted the worst case of athlete’s foot I’ve ever had in my life. I couldn’t seem to shake it so I decided to
confront my friend, Google, and see what I could come up with. I ended up on a chat board where this health
issue was being discussed. There were
two options, soaking my feet in Clorox or white vinegar. Well somehow the Clorox seemed a bit harsh, so
I decided on the vinegar.
Every night, for two weeks, I soaked my feet in this white
vinegar and warm water bath. I figured
if this would do the trick I could put up with the smell of vinegar that
long. It stung like the devil for about
the first ten minutes, but I kept at it soaking at least twenty minute a
night. Then I would dry my feet well,
put on my athlete’s foot cream and socks and go to bed. I was supposed to do this twice a day, but
with my schedule I was doing good to do it every night.
It got less painful as time went on and in two weeks I thought I was a bit better, so I put on a pair of flip-flops and went out on a Saturday to clean up the patio. This turned out to be a big mistake. My toes were so irritated from the vinegar that I got the worst blister on my big toe. I also had three other smaller blisters on other toes. The athlete’s foot was better, but not gone, and now I had these wicked-looking blisters to deal with. I finally had to break down and go to the doctor on my next day off.
Of course he told me the vinegar helped to kill my athlete’s
foot fungus, but it also damaged my healthy skin and that’s why I got the
blisters. He told me to stop the home
remedies and gave me two cream prescriptions, plus an anti-fungal pill. I was also instructed to soak my feett in Epsom
salts for the next two weeks, preferably twice a day.
I finally got the prescriptions two days later and I did
soak my feet once a day for two weeks.
He told me I had to wear socks until the situation was healed up. So I do wear sock at home, but no shoes. It’s still the usual socks and shoes at
work daily. It’s been almost a month now
and I’m still dealing with this issue, although it’s ninety percent better than
when it started. I’m hoping to have it
completely cleared up in the next two weeks.
Fingers crossed.
The whole purpose of this post is to caution you about using
vinegar on your body. Perhaps I had the
solution mixed up too strong, but I wouldn’t want to go through all this again. I think the vinegar would kill the athlete’s
foot, as well as the Clorox that a friend at work swears by. But, a little bit goes a long way.
