Give your heels an A plus

Q: I've had very thick heel calluses for most of my adult life. I've tried everything from lotions to scraping to soaking and nothing seems to work. Is there anything that will help?

JVW: In the 1970s, I read a book about nutrition and general medicine written by a Yale professor. In that book, he observed that heavy heel calluses were a sign of long-term vitamin A deficiency. He recommended vitamin A (not betacarotene) supplementation for individuals with this problem.

Since that time, I have recommended the same treatment for my patients and have found it quite reliable, although in many cases it takes three to four months to begin to see results, and complete disappearance of the calluses can take eight months or more.

For adults, the dose is 75,000 units of vitamin A per day until the calluses are gone. Then you can decrease your dose to a "maintenance amount" of 15,000 to 25,000 units per day. (If the calluses return, the quantity can be increased once more.) In over 20 years, I've never observed any adverse effects with this treatment.

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