Jenna: We are recording our first podcast right now.  I am such a big fan of podcasts so I decided that maybe we should do that here at Elevate, too. This week our contents focused on feet and so one of the biggest topics that come up for people I feel is foot funguses  and it's something lots of us don't want to talk about and are maybe a little embarrassed about a little bit I know myself I was super afraid of coming to get a pedicure for the longest time. I'm so glad that I've gotten over that fear because as Jane said my feet weren’t actually that gross it was just all in my head so that was amazing to find out.

We have Jane here. Jane can tell us a little bit about yourself and your background of your history in the industry.

Jane:  So I've been doing esthetics for about 14 years and I took my year-long course here at Selkirk College and I've worked in high-end spas for many years and been doing nail care for a long time and I'm quite passionate about sanitation and health safety procedures so we have implemented really good sanitation procedures here at Elevate because I think it's the most important to protect our clients and guests from things that they can't see behind the scenes so that's our priority here is keeping things safe.

Often people can be concerned that they might have a foot fungus or like a toe fungus because their nails can be a little thicker. And that's often not true, because sometimes mechanical damage can happen with just pressure from our shoes, and that can damage the matrix of the nail and cause thickening of the toes if we're wearing running shoes, high heels,  pointy toes as we do as women. And so Jenna thought that her toes might have an issue. But really, they were just a little bit thicker on the big toe and baby toe, which is very common.

So if your nails are just a little thick and you're not seeing any yellowing discoloration, gunk growing underneath, it's often not a fungus at all. And it's just a bit of a thicker nail because that happens.

Jenna: So what would you say to someone if they were afraid of coming to get a pedicure, or they had never, ever had a pedicure before because they were concerned about something on their feet?

Jane: So it is always good because we can't diagnose things technically not being physicians. So if you are concerned, you can always book in with your doctor and they can do a swab to test. But also, if you're concerned, you can often just try to book in a pedicure, and we can assess your feet and have a look and say, if you did have something that appeared to be a nail fungus, I can't say that for sure. But we still could go through with a treatment for your feet. We just would not be able to do a polish on top of that. And then I would send you to a doctor. We do have really great tinctures that deal with fungus here with Footlogix, which is like a medi-pediceutical grade product. So it's almost like pharmaceutical grade and spa quality products. And so often the doctor will recommend an intense course of medicine that's really hard on the liver to deal with fungus, which some people can't do because they might have liver issues or people just don't want to do because it's quite harsh.

So if you're really diligent with treating it topically, we can send you home with something like that that can definitely keep things at bay and for some people over time can actually get rid of the problem. It's just really important to do it every day. 

Jenna: And then also I know that some people are at the point where they're too nervous to even come into the studio. Maybe you're embarrassed of what might be said. Usually our studio is very private and discreet, but if you are embarrassed to come in on a one on one basis, I did create a complimentary online consultation that you can do with Jane as well. That can be done over FaceTime, so you don't even have to, or you can send pictures and just do it over the phone.

If you are a private person and you feel a little bit embarrassed about it because I really do believe that everyone deserves access to self care. These issues like sometimes they're just in our head and they're not even real issues like in the case of myself and now I've benefited so much from having regular foot maintenance but yeah if there is an issue then the best way to resolve that is to address it.

Jane: So we take all the sanitation procedures so we use a fungicidal, tuberculocidal  and tuberculosis is the hardest virus of all viruses to kill. So when you're using a tuberculocidal disinfectant, it kills everything. And all of our porous, um, vials and things get thrown away and only hard surfaces like metal ones get properly disinfected. All of our surfaces get wiped down with fungicidal  things. So there's no risk of contracting, um, anything from coming to Elevate 

Jenna: Yeah. Or spreading it to another client.

Jane: Or spreading it to another client, but that's where the polishes can become problematic. So if there's any chance that you might have something that looks like a possible fungus, we would not be able to provide a polish application. And also if you're trying to get rid of a fungus that you think you might have, you wouldn't want polish over top of that. Anyways, cause we know that things grow in the dark, right? Anything can’t pass through in the dark and if you're putting polish over something that needs dealing with, it's not good. So what I recommend is actually buffing down the surface of the nail, then making it porous and using the tincture and also soaking your feet in like apple cider vinegar can be really helpful. And there might be times where you just really need your feet to look good, ‘cause they're gonna be out in public and you do have something. And in that case you could purchase your own polish,  then we could put that on for you but we couldn't use a polish that was going to be used on other people.

Jenna: The reason why I thought this was very timely to mention now, it's kind of not really pedicure season but this is the best time to get these things dealt with so that next summer your feet are ready for the sun.

Now from like the technician side Jane I know that a lot of other technicians I've heard are a lot kind of nervous about dealing with the subject.

What kind of advice can you give to other technicians who are maybe a little bit nervous about dealing with this?

Jane: Well, yeah, cuz it can be a little sensitive because you don't want to hurt people's feelings and you don't want to make them feel bad. But everyone's looking out for the safety of us as the practitioner, you as a client and other guests. So the number one thing is if you know you are throwing away everything porous that you're using then the risk is almost zero of transmission, so you can feel good about that. So if you're doing that, you can know that that's good. And also letting people know that we can't diagnose because we can't diagnose any condition we can only recommend.

Jenna: When a technician has a client coming in what kind of conditions are they able to work on and what kind of conditions would they have to send someone away for?

Jane: Well technically we're not really supposed to work on anything that's contagious, so warts are something that is not something that you want to work on some have a plantar's wart or something on their foot that they weren't aware of so in that case if you did the consultation you had them feel something now and they didn't know about it and then you were to discover it during that time you would just avoid that area keep gloves on all the time and not touch that area as to spread the virus because plantar’s warts are quite common.

So something like athlete's foot again would be something that you'd want to take care of which can be like peeling feet, hot feet and there's really easy things that you can get over the counter.

Jenna: We have  I think a really good Footlogix one for that as well.

Jane: So Footlogix we can use that to treat but things like cracks where there's not blood and it's just like dry cracking on the heel we can definitely take care of thick and nails that are just we can buff down and take care of that with smoothing them and polishing them so they look more attractive, ridge nails that often can be from like dietary things we can take care of all those things.

Jenna: So I hope that you guys have gotten a little bit more clear on the foot fungus that maybe it's a little less scary for you we have developed a couple of other tools that are available to you guys.

There's a quiz free of use on online available and will have the link to it below this podcast in the comments.

It's just a informal little quiz of course it's very private and confidential but it just will give you an idea of whether you are flagged for maybe a medical visit in the future and then also we have the free consultation available through the link in our bio or also the link below for a complimentary consultation with Jane.

If you're a technician and you feel like you need some more training on this, Jane is also doing professional training courses that would be a great place to start if you are needing some more information that way. Is there anything else you wanted to add Jane?

Jane: No - I think that's good. Our job is always to make people feel good and keep them healthy and beautiful in the safest way possible.

Jenna: So if you guys have more questions you can just message us. If you have any ideas for what we should cover on our next topics that would be great and if you know someone who has been afraid to have their feet worked on or you think could get some value from this podcast please feel free to share it with them because we really are hoping to help as many people as we can by recording these podcasts. We will talk to you again soon.