I do a fair amount of biking and walking and long-distance running. Especially with the increase in running I’ve developed a couple of big calluses, which “Fixing Your Feet” warns against (Blisters suck. Blisters under calluses are awful). I have tried friction reducers (Body Glide and so on), moisturizers, used a pumice stone…nothing worked.
Read about the Ped Egg in Consumer Reports. It’s basically another use for the wood rasp that found it’s way into the kitchen for grating chocolate and hard cheese - you know what they look like, a thin stainless steel sheet with a grid of punched slots, the little flaps are tiny surface planes. Here’s a version for woodworking:
(I like how it shows up in Amazon’s “Kitchen And Dining” section)
Boy that sucker works great - rough spots smoothed after a couple of minutes’ work, some big callus lumps are pretty much gone. It produces a fine powder of dead skin; most of it does go into the plastic box although a certain amount did wind up on the bathroom floor. Nothing else I’d tried came close to doing the job that this little gadget did. It’s also hard to harm soft tissue with it - assuming that you aren’t bearing down like you’re trying to sand through oak it just doesn’t catch non-callused skin.
Guy at my regular running store asked me to tell him how it works, they might carry them.
Cost me $8 at BB&B. Well worth it.
No I will not be cleaning anything up using Oxyclean and Shamwow.
My sister saw the commercial for the Ped Egg for the first time this afternoon. The look of horror on her face as the model emptied the massive amount of foot crumbs into the trash was priceless.
I’ve got a small callus rasp myself, and I know how much powdered skin you get each time - in that commercial, I swear they they’re dumping a year’s worth as if it were a single use. Gross.
Yeah, it’s really a small volume of stuff. They probably fill it up with flour to make it look good on TV but you’d have to have been seriously neglectful to get to that point…
It just looks…too violent for me. I’m sure scraping my feet on a metal grater wouldn’t be nearly as horrific as it sounds, but I just can’t bring myself to try one of those. I’m satisfied to stick with my Footsie, which is a little rubber pad with a file on it, that you can stick to the bottom of your bath.
Plus, there’s the added benefit of laziness, since I don’t have to use my hands. Win!
When I used to resent the drug-addled wastes that created a fair amount of unpleasantness in my old neighbourhood, I occasionally collected my callous powder in little jewlery baggies and left them on the sidewalk.
I want to like my Ped Egg. I just can’t quite bring myself to.
I do have horrible enough feet that the amount of filings she empties into the bin in the ad is about accurate. Nasty stuff, at least a quarter inch of callus on both heels, not to mention the balls and sides of my feet.
There’s just something wrong about the sensation of the Ped Egg. It doesn’t cut or hurt. It’s just… Not right.
But I will try to endure, in the hope of lovely soft tootsies.
The little instruction sheet is 50% warnings about not using it on non-callused spots and to stop if anything hurts or gets inflamed/scraped/etc. It really requires very little pressure to use and just watch what you’re doing…frankly about the same level of skill and care as using a safety razor.
How about using it on rough but not callused skin? My heels are rough and need a good smoothing out, but there are no calluses on them. Is the PedEgg overkill?
Probably. I get a rough almost-callus on the top of my foot (from sitting with my foot tucked under me). There’s moisturizers that help a lot with it. I like Heel Rescue myself.
I think it also advises to use it only on dry feet. So, no pre-soaking, no after-shower sanding. I’ve used a PedEgg on my feet after they’ve had a soak, and the sensation isn’t pleasant; it feels like the skin is pulling or tearing rather than gently sanding away. It feels just fine, and even kinda nice, on dry feet.
I have one, and really like it. I do use it on non-calloused spots, and am just careful not to take too much off. I have never had a problem with it.
I have extremely dry skin, and my lower legs and feet are the worst. I use mine on my knees too…they get rough as well.
When I haven’t used mine in a month or two, I hate to admit it, but that little egg fills up even more than the one on TV!
The blades do wear out fairly quickly, so get some refills.
If they don’t bother you, then there isn’t a need to remove them. But some get really big, dry out and can crack deep into your skin. Then there is a good chance of infection.
My husband has a couple that are that bad on his feet, and one knee.
That was what I thought until I got into longer-distance running. The book I referred to, “Fixing Your Feet”, is foot care for endurance athletes (think a marathon is long? Try running 135 miles through Death Valley, running across the US, etc). The author has a couple of cardinal rules that he’s arrived at through years of working on this stuff and one of them is “Get rid of your calluses”. I have had blisters start to form underneath a callus and it’s not pleasant. If you Google “callus and running” you’ll find a variety of information about the topic, everything I’m looking at recommends avoiding calluses since they are often a sign of irritation and they can lead to other problems - you wouldn’t run with a wad of something jammed into your shoe…
