Fit to be tried: Medi-pedi
Monday July 13 2009
WITH the warm weather finally here, and our levels of exercise and outdoor activity hopefully increasing, spare a thought for the part of your body that takes the full force of almost everything you do -- your feet.
When it comes to foot care, a relatively new kid on the block is the Medi-Pedi, an upmarket alternative to your standard pedicure.
Therapists are trained to carry out this one-hour foot treatment using an alkaline solution and a herbal cream that is said to cure problems ranging from athlete's foot to hard skin build-up.
Keelin Murphy, of Pangaea Salon in Sutton, north Dublin, and Camden Court in the city, says:
"The Medi-Pedi approach is especially good for people who do sports, as any exercise really hits your feet, and we all tend to run and walk a lot more during the summer.
"We use an alkaline solution that temporarily raises the pH of the skin, to kill the hard dead skin."
The results will knock your socks off, says Ms Murphy.
At least 40pc of her Medi-Pedi customers are men. Besides the warm weather, her business is helped by the growing popularity of the sandals and flip-flops favoured by the Irish male.
Exposed toes are now de rigueur -- pay a visit to any shoe shop and you'll find sports sandals, all-terrain sandals and sandals with names like the Wraptor alongside flip-flops and Birkenstocks.
In fact, open shoes have become so popular that anti-sandal bloggers feel the need to argue their point. Sandals are "the shoe god never finished, for the men who don't care", splutters one.
Ms Murphy says many men show up with their feet in "terrible condition", suffering from problems such as dirty toes, diseased nails, verrucas, bunions, callouses and corns. "Men really don't know how to look after their feet, and they often feel self-conscious about it," she explains.
But at least men don't have to wear high heels -- a punishment that makes plenty of women fans of the Medi-Pedi process as well.
The exfoliation and wheatgerm oil restore your twinkle toes and gently eliminate stubborn deposits of hard skin, she says.
The Medi-Pedi is a less brutal procedure than the standard pedicure -- for example, there's no razoring.
The treatment cleans your feet, rubs off the dead skin and shapes your nails into a gleaming perfection that would even have pleased that old foot fetishist Sigmund Freud, who claimed we're all obsessed with our feet because they're the first thing we see when we're newborn.
Trying out the Medi Pedi treatment for the first time is a pleasant experience. Foot therapist Niamh leads me to a scented and darkened alcove, where she immerses my feet in soothing warm water imbued with salts and the alkaline wash solution.
She rubs a blend of creams into the hardened and calloused skin I have built up from jogging, and massages my feet firmly.
Then they're wrapped up in warm cloth and left to absorb an anti-fungal herbal blend.
The wraps are removed, and a surprising and yucky amount of dead skin just falls away as Niamh briskly rubs off the medical concoction.
The end result is baby-smooth feet that would have made Freud proud. Franklin Roosevelt once said a radical is a man with both feet firmly planted in the air.
When you've had a Medi-Pedi, you'll be happy to plant your feet anywhere.
The Verdict:
Did it work: Smoothed away hard skin, and my feet felt great.
Pluses: Gets you on your toes for summer.
Minuses: Dear dear, it costs €80 per treatment
Contact: www.pangaeaspa.com
15 Howth Road,
Sutton,
Dublin 13
Tel: 01-8324999
- Amanda Phelan
