Saturday, June 18, 2011

Feel The Burn

The next few weeks...well they pretty much sucked.  However, it wasn't necessarily just because of the stresses of the academy.  Due to the fact the we were running and marching around for 15-16 hours a day...I became a victim of athlete's feet.  The body normally hosts a variety of microorganisms, including bacteria and fungi. Some of these are useful to the body. Others may, under certain conditions, multiply rapidly and cause infections. Athlete's foot occurs when a particular type of fungus grows and multiplies in your feet, especially between your toes. The most common symptom is cracked, flaking, peeling skin between the toes. The affected area is usually red and itchy.    It can develop from wearing closed toed shoes for long periods of time, keeping your feet wet for prolonged periods of time and sweating a lot.  The academy creates the perfect environment for these things to occur.  You're in boots all day long, you're always running all over the place causing your feet to be sweaty.  Even when you shower, you have such little time that you end up putting your socks on before your feet completely dry.

My feet itched and burned all the time.  When I was home on the weekend I bought some cream and I used it for at least a week and a half and saw no results.  My feet kept itching and burning.  I brought multiple pairs of socks and tried to change socks during the day if I had time, but nothing worked.  I just couldn't get rid of it.  Finally, through some advise from a friend of mine I found a cure.  I simply started to pee on me feet!  Every time I showered, I peed on my feet.  I thought it was crazy at first and it was tough to mentally make myself pee on my own feet but I was out of options.  Sure enough, within a few days...my feet had cleared up. 

I decided to look into this a little more to find out how this would do the trick.  Apparently, there seems to be some controversy on the idea of urine curing athlete's feet.  The compound urea is sometimes used in anti-fungal creams and has shown to break down fungus in some studies.  However, some medical experts argue that the concentration found in urine would not be high enough to cure athlete's feet.  I'm no medical expert so you can do your own research, but it worked for me.