Every summer my foot cracks on the pad below my big toe. It cracks so badly that it bleeds. Worse, and brace yourself: You can spread the folds back and see clear, clean muscle tissue a good quarter of an inch deep. I mean you can, but I try not to. I went to a dermatologist once about it and she gave me a prescription for a tube of cream that had no effect on my foot but took $37 out of my bank account.

So I was hesitant to even mention my seasonal foot cracking to Dr. Martha Calihan during our initial interview for the Five Stones program. I always blamed it on wearing Tevas or flip-flops. But I mentioned it anyway, along with the problematic patch of Athlete’s Foot that never seems to go away under my left pinkie toe. Not the right pinkie toe, just the left one. Strange.

“Have you tried tea tree oil?” she asked.

I’d never heard of tea tree oil.

“What’s it taste like?”  I asked.

As it happens, tea tree oil is made from steaming the leaves of the Melaleuca altemifolia, an Australian plant; the stuff has been used for untold eons by Aboriginals for healing just about everything, from cuts and boils to lice infestations and yeast infections. And you don’t drink it after all: You put a few drops on a cotton ball and swab it on whatever ails you.

It smells a little like turpentine or mineral spirits, but less abrasive. I dabbed it on the bottom of my foot each day for a few weeks in the spring and was happy to note that I went the entire summer wearing flip flops without the toe pad rupturing once. The tea tree oil seemed to soften the skin, keeping it pliable as I marched along in foot wear that provides less support than regular shoes.

Chalk one up to Dr. Calihan.

The little spot of Athlete’s Foot, however, was tea tree oil resistant.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 7:51 am and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.