“Dry skin can be caused by a number of different reasons, and typically you do have to address what the cause is. The cause can be metabolic – like a thyroid problem, a person can have a kidney problem, a person can have a liver disease that causes the dry skin. So ultimately you do want to address those issues if they’re the over-riding issue. However, on your own at home, what you can do is put the hydration back into the skin, keeping in mind that what causes the skin to get dried is an evaporation through the pores of the skin. The skin loses moisture on a regular basis when it’s a drier skin. People who don’t have dry skin are able to maintain the moisture inside. So typically when there’s scale, usually what you would do is you would use a pumice stone to remove the outer layers of that dead skin if you could. There are different types of moisturizers that you can use. If there’s an issue with the excess dry skin, then what you could do is use something like Kerasal Ultra 20, which has a urea base in it, which what it does is it exfoliates the skin to allow then for you to apply a moisturizer. Typically a moisturizer would be something in the line of shea butter, which is good and it doesn’t have any parabens or chemicals that are bad for you, so that’s usually what I recommend. Vaseline can be used, as well – that’s also a fairly neutral ointment – and A&D ointment is something else that can be used.”
Thomas Goldman, DPM, is a board-certified podiatrist at Mount Sinai Doctors, seeing patients Monday-Friday. He has a particular interest in podiatric minimally invasive foot surgery and sports medicine. Mount Sinai Doctors is an organization of clinical relationships and multi-specialty services that expand the Mount Sinai Health System’s footprint beyond the seven main hospital campuses into the greater New York City area.