Skin is thicker on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet, and thin on the backs of the hand and feet. Hands and feet are prone to sun damage, dryness and cracking, fungus and infections that damage the nails and surrounding skin. Heat, cold, and dampness take their toll, but foot and hand creams can help to keep the skin on the extremities smooth, preventing painful cracking and roughness.
Emollients
Frequent exposure to water can cause rough, dry, irritated skin, but use of hand creams after every washing can prevent the onset of skin damage, report German scientists Gunter Kampf and Joachim Ennin, writing for BioMedCentral Dermatology. These researchers attribute the effectiveness of hand creams to their oil and wax components--emollients--which create a moisture barrier, preventing water from escaping the skin. Chemocare.com, a resource of the Scott Hamlin CARES Initiative, recommends the high-emollient hand and foot creams Bag Balm and Udder Cream to manage the extreme hand and foot redness and cracking that can occur as a side effect to chemotherapy, but these emollients also work on hands and feet with everyday dry skin and redness, as well. Udderly Smooth Udder Cream is a hand and foot cream marketed with skin creams in pharmacies and online; Bag Balm still is marketed for its original agricultural purposes and is available in farm supply stores and tack shops.
Shea and Cocoa Butter
Shea butter and cocoa butter are two natural emollients that also soften skin, soaking into thick dry callouses on hands and feet. Many hand and foot creams start with a base of shea butter or cocoa butter, adding other ingredients for fragrance and aesthetic effect, or for their active, soothing elements. Nailtini's Hot Buttered Run Hand and Foot Cream is a lightly whipped blend of cocoa and shea butter, "flavored" with rum extract for a luxurious feel and scent, while Alchimie's foot and hand treatment combines jojoba and shea butter with soothing and invigorating botanicals such as watercress and willow bark.
Sloughing
Removing dead, dry skin cells and diminishing callouses is the task of sloughing or exfoliating hand and foot creams. These creams often are intended to be used as a combination of a coarse, scrubbing product or a pumice stone, followed by a smoothing lotion or cream. For example, the H20 Spa Hand and Foot Therapy Collection includes a pumice foot scrub featuring sea salts and mint to ease away thick foot callouses, and a Hand and Foot Smoother cream, which relies on natural salicylic and lactic acids to slough dry skins cells away from hands and feet, and aloe vera and seaweed extracts to protect and nourish freshly scrubbed skin cells.
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