I think I’ve gone a month or more at a time. I hate laundry. I have enough clothes to support this lifestyle. I never thought it might be saving my feet from all the gym showers. I also take my shoes off upon entering my house. Always. Inside house = barefoot or in a pair of new fresh socks/slippers if it’s really cold.

I had athletes foot once or twice but it just went away. I didn’t know that it didn’t just go away on it’s own actually. I’ve gotten some kind of fungus/bacteria in shoes you wear without socks before that makes them smell terrible. I’ve never thought there was anything to be done about it so I’ve always just trashed the offending shoe.

News at 11.

Once it started it was very hard to get rid of, especially because I was wanting to be a tourist and running about all day outside seeing sights, etc and it was about 35 degrees (c) every day so my feet were sweaty as hell.

Things I found helping was changing my socks twice or 3 times a day. The key is keeping your feet as dry as possible. Buying another pair of shoes so I could at least alternate them day to day. This didn’t make the stuff go away but it did slow down the rate of it getting worse. Once I got to Croatia I exclusively wore thongs (flip-flops, jandals) and made sure to go to the beach every day and soak my feet in salt water and wash my thongs at the same time!

It went away about a week or two later. I don’t think the cream I was using the whole time had much impact at all.

Washing your feet, and drying them thoroughly, before applying any medicine is key. Tea tree oil works wonders for keeping the fungus at bay, once it is under control.

I have never had a problem with foot fungus in my entire life. Here’s why:

1) Wear clean socks every day.
2) Take your socks and shoes off the moment you get home and let your feet breathe!
3) Do not wear the same pair of shoes every day. Have a few pairs of work and casual shoes to alternate between so that each pair can completely air out and dry between uses.
4) Wash your socks seperate from the rest of your laundry. (Underwear too.)
5) Wash socks in hot water and bleach. (Underwear too to avoid jock itch.) I prefer Ecover’s non-chlorine hydrogen peroxide bleach because it’s safer for the environment and doesn’t produce toxic dioxins as a bi-product as cheaper chlorine bleaches do.
6) Always use an extra rinse cycle. Preferrably on all laundry. (Do an extra wash cycle with no soap if you have to use public washers which often don’t provide the extra rinse option. Sorry, it does cost more and uses more water, but at least your athletes’ foot and jock itch will go away and stay away.)
7) Use fragrance free detergents.

My brother had fungus problems. His doctor told him to do what his sister does (ie: as outlined above)… and it finally went away after years of suffering.

Goodluck!

PS: I read recently that soaking your feet in the essential oil of thyme (thymus oil) can help treat toe-nail fungus and other fungal infections. Sorry I don’t have the link for the article, but the study showed that thymus oil seems to combat a variety of fungi, including candida. Thymus oil stinks, but you can also add lavendar and tea tree oils for a more pleasant aroma and for their cleansing properties.

Weirdly it is no longer for sale in the U.S.A. I almost think it is some secret conspiracy on the part of the folks who sell pricey antifungals.

Here another tip for you metrosexuals: change your underwear every day also and you won’t get jock itch.

8) Make sure you keep your bathtub and foot towel clean and washed weekly in hot water and non-chlorine bleach.

I like new, clean, cotton socks. A lot. I don’t wear a totally new pair every day, but I would rather toss them in the rag bag once they start getting a little nubbly and thin and shell out another 8$ for another bag of socks than save the money and keep them in the cycle until I wear holes in them.

Once in the rag bag they are suitable for anything from cleaning clothes to stuffing a cushion for a cat (my cat likes the smell of feet) to making a Klein bottle coin purse.

I’ve got terribly sweaty feet and wear the same shoes basically whenever I’m not in bed or in the bath, but I’ve never had foot fungus.

Obviously rotating my socks is helping!

If you wash your socks in 60 degrees Celsius (actually a few degrees lower, but 60 is a standard temperature on European washing machines), you kill almost all of the active fungi and a lot of spores.

If you wash in 90 degrees Celsius (actually a few degrees lower, but yet again European washing machines have a safety margin built in) you kill most microorganism that can cause you trouble. Next step is 95 degrees and the step after that is higher then 100 degrees Celsius under pressure and kind of unpractical.

Temperature is a lot more effective against fungi and other microbes then any chemical.

I’ve never caught AIDS or Ebola, but that doesn’t mean I am immune to either one. Just that I’ve been lucky.

The only time I’ve had foot fungal issues was in college, and in the dorms. After that we all learned to shower with sandals on….

First time, I took the oral fungicide prescribed by a physician. (Have you ever noticed that when a physician encounters an unfamiliar condition, he gets kind of excited? This guy did: “I’ll bet if we scraped off a skin sample, we’d see fruiting bodies under the microscope!” Yeah, “fruiting bodies”, that’s just what I want to hear. Thanks, dude.) The fungicide knocked that fungus right out, but oral fungicides are kind of hard on the system, so I prefer to avoid that approach.

Second time, a nurse advised that I could get a prescription topical ointment; but she also advised that I could use Selsun Blue, which is cheaper.

Selsun Blue comes in two version: traditional (containing some selenium compound), and a “Naturals” version (containing salicylic acid). Not fancying selenium, I tried the salicylic acid version — it works pretty well, not a one-time knockout punch, but two or three applications on successive days did the trick. It’s not cheap-cheap, but it’s cheaper than the prescription salicylic topical.

Which gets me to thinking: aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid, might serve as a topical, ground up into a poultice/paste. Haven’t tried it, but it is cheap-cheap, so I probably will.

Other commenters above have mentioned other acids (urine, vinegar) as topicals. Seems like the crud is pretty fussy about pH balance.