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It’s easy to keep your feet in good shape, with consistent clipping a few other moves—a little effort goes a long way. But using the best foot cream for any problems you’re having might have the most bang-for-buck of any treatment for you feet.
Below are six of the best foot creams—some of them are for general maintenance, some of them more specifically targeted against roughness, odor, sweating, and fungal buildup. That’s why it’s good to have more than one in your cabinet, since you never know which condition might rear its ugly head. Then again, a steady application of a general foot cream should prevent most of these problems altogether.
This is doubly important if you’re on your feet all day. I’m talking to the athletes, waiters, dog walkers, mailmen, car salesmen, corn farmers, sandwich artists, paparazzi, and stroller dads out there. Just for you guys, we went and tried all the best foot creams out there and picked our absolute favorites. Here are the six that stood out.
The Best Daily Foot Cream
In terms of everyday, standard, post-shower, pre-bedtime hydration, this is the foot cream of the crop. While it’s less targeted than the rest of the list, it will help you maintain soft, fresh feet day in, day out. It has a soothing, healing formula, carefully combining shea butter, beeswax, chamomile, calendula, vitamin E, and two essential oils (avocado and sunflower seed). It’s scented with clover and cucumber, so that your feet buzz happily as you tuck them into bed—and so they feel pillow soft come morning.
The Best Foot Cream for Calluses and Cracked Heels
If you need to break down your calluses or rebuild cracked heels (and since your callus remover can only go so far), then Advanced Clinicals is the ticket. It uses lactic acid to dissolve dead skin and keep the healthiest cells at the surface. It also has a nourishing, softening base of shea butter and avocado oil.
The Best Foot Cream for Moisture Control
If you have sweaty feet, then you can get ahead of it with an aluminum-packed, powder-based antiperspirant lotion like Carpe. It’s also terrific for athletes to apply if they are prone to blisters or excess rubbing, as it creates a small barrier that blocks moisture, reduces friction, and prevents interior moisture levels (the kind want to maintain) from escaping. And, by reducing moisture accumulation, it prevents your feet from playing host to bacteria and fungus, so it in turn prevents athlete’s foot and foot odor while it works.
The Best Drugstore Foot Cream
Another lactic-acid-packed foot cream, AmLactin helps break down dead skin, buff out rough patches, soften your sole’s texture, and perhaps just as importantly, it is the softest on your wallet. If you need a good daily cream but also suffer from frequent rough patches, cracks, or calluses, then this is a great one to have in your arsenal.
The Best Cream for Athlete’s Foot
This one isn’t so much an all-over cream as a targeted treatment for the itching, redness, and scaling caused fungus (be it Athlete’s foot, ringworm, jock itch, or more.) It’s available OTC at any drugstore and harnesses the fungus-fighting powers of clotrimazole to quickly and safely nix the problem. (If problems persist after a few days, it’s probably time to see the dermatologist or podiatrist.) In general, though, this is one of those products every guy should have ready in his medicine cabinet, because you never know when you might need it.
The Best Foot Peel for a Fresh Start
A foot peel is a terrific periodic treatment to give yourself—like a twice-yearly at-home spa service. Baby Foot’s product, like many others, soaks into your skin over the course of one hour (do it while Netflixing or taking work calls), and then it takes a week to slowly lift away all the dead, rough skin on your feet, leaving only the softest, smoothest skin in its wake. It’s a gradual process that takes a few days to start working, but it’s the easiest way to reset everything, and thus it’s not something you need to do more than every six months or so. Plus, honestly, it’s kind of fun (albeit gross) to wake up each morning, strip off your socks, and see how much dead skin molted off your feet.