Do you know what you get after walking around the man-made Chennai flood waters for 5 days? If you don’t know, or cannot guess it, you are a person who has lived a very protected life.
By the third day of dunking your feet in those unclean, sewage mixed waters, the skin between the toes – especially between the 4th and the 5th – starts to itch. By evening, you get a burning sensation there. Comes the night and it is a full fledged infection. The toes feel like they are stuffed into hot coals.
What you have is Athlete’s Foot (சேற்றுப் புண்). NHS, UK, website describes it as a ‘rash caused by a fungus that usually appears between the toes, and the affected skin may be itchy, red, scaly, dry, cracked or blistered'.
Whatever it may look like, it is certainly painful. And the most effective treatment for Athlete’s Foot, in my experience, is to wash the foot with soap and water, and once it dries, to apply a coat of oil. Normally people apply coconut oil, but my preferred choice is the cure-all ‘thennamarakudi oil’ (தென்னமரக்குடி எண்ணை).
Coconut oil contains Caprylic acid (IUPAC name is Octanoic acid) and is actually a bactericide / fungicide. The acid dissolves the durable cell wall of the fungi causing the Athlete’s Foot infection and kills it off. I guess tennamarakudi oil also contains some of it, and is also effective in killing off the infection.
However it works, the relief is tremendous. And it gave me a thought for a meme. How do you identify a Chennai Guy? He smells like wet socks, stomach growls at Sambar rice, and totters around as if walking on coals.
:-D
The red rash of Athlete’s Foot, yuck!
By the third day of dunking your feet in those unclean, sewage mixed waters, the skin between the toes – especially between the 4th and the 5th – starts to itch. By evening, you get a burning sensation there. Comes the night and it is a full fledged infection. The toes feel like they are stuffed into hot coals.
What you have is Athlete’s Foot (சேற்றுப் புண்). NHS, UK, website describes it as a ‘rash caused by a fungus that usually appears between the toes, and the affected skin may be itchy, red, scaly, dry, cracked or blistered'.
Whatever it may look like, it is certainly painful. And the most effective treatment for Athlete’s Foot, in my experience, is to wash the foot with soap and water, and once it dries, to apply a coat of oil. Normally people apply coconut oil, but my preferred choice is the cure-all ‘thennamarakudi oil’ (தென்னமரக்குடி எண்ணை).
Coconut oil contains Caprylic acid (IUPAC name is Octanoic acid) and is actually a bactericide / fungicide. The acid dissolves the durable cell wall of the fungi causing the Athlete’s Foot infection and kills it off. I guess tennamarakudi oil also contains some of it, and is also effective in killing off the infection.
However it works, the relief is tremendous. And it gave me a thought for a meme. How do you identify a Chennai Guy? He smells like wet socks, stomach growls at Sambar rice, and totters around as if walking on coals.
:-D
The red rash of Athlete’s Foot, yuck!
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