Toenails Ready for Sandal Season

Spring in Ottawa is a battle between sudden snow showers and the songbirds’ trills, emerging greenery and lingering frosts. It can also be a time when you do battle against an unpleasant condition called toenail fungus. That’s because if you want your nails to be healthy and look pretty once you start wearing sandals, you really need to start now. Ottawa Foot Practice has developed a 4-step treatment for fungal nails to get them in shape for summer fashions. Here’s what we found works best:

• Start by disinfecting your shoes each day with a spray or a UV light device.
• Apply antifungal cream on the skin around the affected nails every day.
• Set up your first monthly anti-fungal laser treatment at our office. We use two clinically-proven fungicide wavelengths. You may need as many as three or four treatments.
• We apply an antifungal nail sealant right after the laser session.

You need to start now, because even though the laser kills the fungus immediately, it takes a while for the new nail to grow out and replace the damaged one. Depending on how fast your nails grow, this could take a couple of months or more. Each time you trim away the ends, more of your nail will begin to look like normal, healthy tissue once again.

The daily antifungal cream and shoe treatments each day will help keep new infections away by killing any new fungus before it can get under your nail and start multiplying. Nail fungus is tough and resilient, so don’t stop the home treatment until we can confirm the infection is gone.

When you are ready to say goodbye to thick, yellow, crumbly nails, call Ottawa Foot Practice in Ottawa, ON at (613) 595-9700 for an appointment to get the treatment plan started. When you are enjoying the warm sun at Britannia or Mooney’s Bay Beach on the Ottawa River without embarrassment this summer, you’ll be glad you did!