Testimonials welcome. Thanks.
The pharmacists I work with usually recommend Lamisil or Lotrimin (well, the generic equivalents), with the rationale that the active ingredients used to be prescription. I’ve never had it myself, so I can’t speak to their effectiveness. Just remember to use it for 7-10 days, even if it looks cleared up so that you’re sure it’s totally gone.
Lamisil has always worked well for me. Much better than Tinactin…I wouldn’t even bother with that stuff.
Another vote for Lamisil.
Lamisil is supposed to work faster than other OTC antifungals. (1 week vs. 2, IIRC.) It’s also the newest of the prescription-to-OTC switches in the category. Generics are available for fairly cheap.
chaoticbear’s advice on continued usage is a sound one-- like antibiotics, to make sure an antifungal truly is effective, use it for the full recommended treatment period, even if symptoms go away.
Do you have to treat your shoes too? I mean, if you’re putting your treated feet into fungus infested shoes, doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?
Basically, there are 4 main antifungals in use in OTC athlete’s foot/ringworm/jock itch products.
Tolnaftate: The worst of the bunch- 20+ years old, and takes a long time to take effect. Active ingredient in Tinactin.
Clotrimazole: Good- takes less time than Tolnaftate, but more than Terbinafine. Active ingredient in Lotrimin AF
Terbinafine: Better: takes less time than Clotrimazole, but slightly more than Butenafine. Active ingredient in Lamisil AF
Butenafine: Best. Fastest one on market. Active ingredient in Lotrimin Ultra.
- This info was something I checked on about a year ago when I got some killer jock itch; you want that shit GONE as soon as you can! The timing was based on the product boxes.
In addition, there are studies that say butenafine is more effective than either clotrimazole or terbinafine- just google “butenafine vs clotrimazole” or “butenafine vs terbinafine”.
But if you really want to nuke bodily fungus use household bleach, diluted 1:1 in water. Apply with a cloth you don’t care about. I have had this work in a single application where the OTC stuff wouldn’t dent the problem.
IIRC, the Lamisil instructions tell you to make sure you change your shoes (and socks) every day. That way, your shoes get a chance to air out for a day. This worked for me, and I’ve tried to follow the advice since then, too, to keep fungus at bay.
Thanks, everybody!
So, resurrecting this 6 year old thread has anyone tried bleach in a 1:1 ratio with water? Isn’t that going to cause serious burns?
I tried topical listerine applied with a cotton ball since some people have said topical listerine works as an anti-fungal against athlete’s foot. I don’t know if it helped because I was also using a bleach foot bath (far more diluted, maybe 1:200 to water), plus some sprays and creams.
Bleach didn’t work for me, even at 1:1. Didn’t burn either. Tried every damn cream in the medicine aisle at the supermarket. Nothing worked.
Soaking my feet nightly in a solution of Borax worked within a few days. Yes. 20 Mule Team Borax, sold as a laundry booster. YMMV.
And do read the instructions – the recommended period may be as long as four weeks.
If you’re not wearing socks, it sure wouldn’t help, and may be a big factor in how come you’re in your current situation. If you are wearing socks, it may not matter much but it would be wise to treat the shoes as well.
Soaking your feet in your first morning’s urine is the best cure-all for athletes foot, bar none. Your body must produce something, I do not know the mechanics of it, I just know it is a life saver! I had read this several times over the years, that it worked for fungal infections and that washing your face with your first morning’s urine will cure cystic acne, but I had never been in enough pain to try it.
I was day 5 into a road trip across the US with my kids, and in so much pain from athlete’s foot in my foot pad and big toe, that had gotten so bad I could hardly walk. It was making it so that I was ruining the trip for my teenagers, and if you know anything about getting an 18 year old and a 15 year old to go on a road trip with their 50 year old mom, then you know how stressed I was. Visiting friends and family along the way, seeing Lake Erie and going to the roller coaster park there, Niagara Falls were spectacular, but I was slowing down, and by the time we got to New York City, I was getting desperate.
I lay there one night, unable to sleep with the pain of the swollen toe, burning pain in my foot pad… I got up and did it. I broke all rules of propriety, put the ice bucket in the toilet and filled it up with my own urine. I soaked both feet for about 5 minutes, washed out the ice bucket with hot soapy water, hopped across the carpet and then lay across the bed with my feet over the edge to air dry for the rest of the night.
The proof was in the look on my kids face the next morning as they saw that the swelling in my toe was almost gone, and for me that the burning pain was gone. Just gone. It was the turning point in the trip. Gettysburg was everything we had hoped, Virginia Beach, Tybee Island off the coast of Savannah Georgia, The panhandle of Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans, Carlsbad Caverns, the annual UFO convention in Roswell, NM all the way back home to Utah. It was a trip to remember, not because of the burning crippling pain, but because of the fun we had. The kids are still believers and so am I.
I repeated the treatment for a good week. I lost the toenail a few months later, but also lost the “Fungal Infection from Hell”. I had a glove box full of every anti-fungal cream I could purchase when I got home, they all went in to the trash as we cleaned out the car from the trip. I repeat the process when I feel a tingle and have not had to purchase OTC cream since then.
Don’t fault me, it is real, it worked, and I am not ashamed to tell people I did it and that it works if it might help someone else with a terrible problem. Maybe it seemed tacky to have used the ice bucket, but it was all I had in the hotel room and desperate times in the wee hours of the morning, justify desperate measures.
I share this very true story, in hopes that it will help some of you out there, looking for the answer to the question of how to kill an athlete’s foot fungal infection. Good luck!
Awwwwwwwww shucky ducky. The only thing that fixed my athletes foot was vics vaporub and Antiperspirant. I tried every otc medication and various home remedies. Wash feet before bed, dry them then liberally apply vics vaporub to affected area. Put on sock and sleep. In the morning wash foot again, dry and apply Antiperspirant spray, I used arrid xtra dry, all of affected area. Put on sock. Do routine each da. Doing that was the only thing that worked.
I’d question if the afflictions that are mentioned that didn’t respond to OTC antifungals are really athlete’s foot, and not something else.
What else could it have been
Bacterial infection, which I had for a while and wondered why OTC treatments for what I thought was a fungus weren’t working.
Also, psoriasis.