Natural Foot Remedies Newberg OR

Alternative Medicine Cabinet: Happy, Healthy Feet

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By Nicole Duncan

Sure your monthly pedicure makes you feel better about your embarrassing foot problem, but let’s be honest—your pretty red and pink toenails aren’t doing anything to disguise those bunions, warts, or foot fungi. But before you resort to cortisone shots, ice freezes, or surgeries, learn how you can heal your menacing foot problems naturally.

Bunions
Women have long sacrificed comfort for fashion, so it’s no surprise that teetering in 3-inch heels has made women 10 times more likely to have painful bunions than men. Heredity can make you more susceptible, but “any kind of pressure on the side of your foot or on your toes can lead to bunions,” says Kathy Thorpe, a Boulder, Colorado, homeopath. This pressure causes inflammation around your big toe joint, which creates a bony bump (or arthritic deposit). Over time this bump pushes your big toe inward, making it crooked. “Most women don’t understand that their feet get bigger and wider as they age. It’s normal for them to go up one foot size or more,” she says. Wearing shoes that are too narrow, short, or high can inflame the joint and eventually lead to bunions. For serious cases, Western doctors recommend an injection of cortisone to ease the pain. Anti-inflammatory analgesics like aspirin or ibuprofen get the call for less painful bunions. But these solutions don’t fix the deformity—they merely treat the symptom.

Try: Homeopathic silica. Treating your bunions internally with silica will reduce inflammation in your big toe by restoring your body’s balance, or qi, says Thorpe. Take 6c two times a day for two to three weeks—one week on, one week off.
Homeopathic nitric acid. Dissolve arthritic deposits by taking 6c twice a day for two weeks.
Chamomile. After drinking a cup of chamomile tea, place the tea bag on the bunion as a kind of anti-inflammatory poultice.

Plantar warts
This variety of the human papillomavirus (HPV) appears as a tough, thick patch of speckled black skin and can make you feel as though you’ve got a sharp pebble in your shoe as you walk. Resist the urge to pick at the wart—it will spread and become even more painful. Most doctors use cryotherapy (freezing), electrosurgery, or laser surgery to remove plantar warts, but because these methods leave the virus untouched, they’re just a temporary fix. “If you just deal with warts topically, they will come back,” says Thorpe. “Don’t just remove the symptom—remove the problem.”

Try: Homeopathic thuja. Take 12c two times a day for four to six weeks (one week on, one week off). “Thuja is great for all warts, but I’ve seen it cure plantars,” says Thorpe. “It gets at the underlying imbalance causing the wart and restores your body’s equilibrium to kill the virus.”
Crushed garlic. Slam a clove of garlic, and keep the pieces wrapped around your wart for two to three days. .

Author: Nicole Duncan

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