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Hey guys! How's it going? I just want to say hi to all my toes out there. This is
Jonathan, a.k.a. The Toe Bro, and first off I just want to say again thank you for
all the views and all the comments! This is my first time ever having to try to
put videos together, do some editing, making graphics on a video. So this is
something completely new. I'm trying my best.
I hope you guys are enjoying the videos. Keep giving the great feedback! I want to
make these videos not on the weird side of YouTube. I want this to be educational,
fun, you guys learn something, you guys can use some of the advice or tips I I'm
going to be giving you to help prevent some foot problems. That's what I'm
really looking to do and make feet fun because everyone thinks their feet are gross
but you know the feet are so important! So today I'm going to do something a
little different; instead of showing you a surgical procedure I do in my office,
I'm actually going to show you more of some routine treatments that I do every
single day and what we're doing today is removing a painful corn from elderly man's
fifth baby toe. So a little background about this patient, he's been suffering
from a lot of foot pain on his right foot for a few years. He's tried to
scrape it down himself, he's tried using acid pads, but nothing's really worked
and he hasn't had anyone treat this in the last couple years. So as you can see,
quite a large mass of growth of hard, hard skin. So a quick little side
note: I know some of you might be saying, "Oh my gosh! He's using a nail nipper to
cut said hard skin!" So a little background information. My father was a
foot specialist for over 30 years and I was lucky enough to grow up going to his
office, watching him work, and always talking
about work, and he showed me so many little tips that you learn after
practicing for so many years and instead of taking all this time using a scalpel
to try to take off the hard part and top layer, it's sometimes quicker just use a nail
nipper to cut down the top so we can get a little bit deeper quicker, and then use
a scalpel to remove the remaining amount.
So when you work with hard skin and calluses and corns all the time, you get
pretty good at knowing the different levels of the skin. So by carefully going
level by level, I can make sure that I'm cutting off just the top layer skin
and not actually cutting into the flesh. "Look how big this thing is! Whooh!"
So like I said, today what we are doing is removing a corn and how is the corn
really caused? So something like this, there's only one way you can get it and
that's from too much pressure on the side of the foot, and the only way you
can have too much pressure on the side of the foot is that your footwear
isn't fitting properly. If you have a shoe that is too narrow or too pointy or
the top of the shoe too shallow, meaning expanding on the top of your toes where
the shoe itself is a very firm material, all these things are going to put too
much pressure on the side of the toe, and that's what it's going to cause the
body to build a hard skin to protect that area from the pressure. A callus or
corn is sometimes the body's mechanisms to protect itself from too
much pressure. So the big question we always have is is it a corn or is this a
callus? People really don't know what they have on their foot when they have
this hard skin growth and this is the biggest question I get when it happens: is this
a corn or a callus? I called this video "A Corn Removal" and a lot of people
might look at it and they say, "Hey, that's not a corn, that's a callus." A callus, you
know, you have this big mound of hard skin. While people are used to hearing
about a corn having some sort of hole or core. So you guys are pretty
good to say this is a callus but the difference, and we'll see throughout the
video, is after removing this hard skin, we're actually going to see a core that
was underneath, and this has been here for so long, that's actually created
permanent damage to the skin creating a scar. So usually if this was a true corn,
we'd have a clear core of dead hard skin. But because of this long standing or chronic
corn, the bottom layer of the skin has turned into a scar. Therefore a corn has
not been able to form causing the hard skin to grow up and above similar to a
callus. So that's why I'm calling this a corn removal but it does look very
similar to a callus. So why do corns usually have a core of dead hard skin
and calluses don't? That's because of the type of pressure that's causing this
hard skin to form. Calluses are usually caused by direct pressure from
standing on a certain spot for too long. That's why calluses are usually yellow,
there's no core, they're diffuse, and they don't have any sort of definitive
border to them. Corns, on the other hand, are usually caused with pressure and
torsion or so a twisting motion and this is what pushes that hard skin or
calluses into the body forming a core. So corns are usually very localized, very
defined, very circular. Looking back at the video at this moment, you can see
there's a very localized circular lesion. That pink, pink skin in the middle is
that scar tissue very, very delicate thin skin. So right now I have to be very very
careful that I don't go down too much or it could definitely cause a cut or an
injury to the skin. So why do we have to treat these corns? The reason we have to
treat these corns is we have to remove that pressure from that hard skin that's
burying itself into the body. If we don't, that hard skin build up will actually
cause the tissue underneath to break down and turn into a wound. That way we
can actually have an abscess or a wound underneath this hard skin that
starts to form and then we can get an infection and, if depending on the
patient profile, if they're diabetic or if they have a poor immune system, this
can definitely lead to a serious infection and even possibly an amputation.
So yes, now we've taken down the core and everything is looking better. A lot of
people say, "Great! Will this ever come back? and I say "It all depends on you."
What we've done today is we've treated the symptoms and not just not the
problem. The symptom that we treated today was a hard skin build up because
there's a pressure but if we do not remove the pressure, the hard skin will
grow right back. So this is an important part after doing any sort of routine
care is going through the advice with the patient to make sure they understand
what they need to do to prevent a corn from forming again. So here are a few
ways that you can reduce your chance of getting a corne again: number one, using
some sort of nail file or emery board to regularly file down the hard skin
build-up. That's going to kind of remove some of that dead skin so it's not
getting too thick, too hard, and too painful. I would advise to not use some
sort of pumice stone or anything with a razor because you can always cut your
skin and nail files are safe and easy to use. The skin is a living organism. The more
moisture it has, the more it can stretch and move and it doesn't build up as much
pressure when it's a soft skin dry skin and when you apply pressure to dry skin,
that's going to either cause it to crack or build up corns pretty quickly and the
last and most important thing to minimize a corn is to change the
footwear making sure that you're reducing the amount of pressure on that
toe. The less pressure on a baby toe, the less hard skin buildup you're going to
get. That's why footwear is so important. So there you go, guys.
Another video done. I hope you like this one; something a little bit different
than a surgical procedure. In the future, I hope to give you guys some more
preventative video stuff, information, some exercises, things that you can really
use to prevent foot problems before you have to come to see someone like me. I
really enjoy making these videos and spreading some knowledge to all you guys.
So again, give me some feedback. I hope you loved it. Let me know what you want
to see next. Toe Bro, out.