Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast we’re talking about the best way to file your toenails if you’re a marathon runner.
If you get black toenails, if you lose your toenails after long runs or after doing a marathon, and you’ve tried a whole bunch of stuff like using skin lubricants or trying bigger shoes that make you feel like you’re wearing clown shoes, but you’re still having problems where you’re beating up your toenails and your running shoes when you do marathons or when you do a long run, I’ve got a simple solution that may actually help.
One of the reasons you get black toenails, one of the reasons you actually start to get bruising under the nails, is really simple. And when you look at your toe, and if this is, let’s say, your big toe and the nail plate is here like this, what’s happening is that the inside of your running shoe, the upper of the shoe, as you pull your foot up, the toe actually swings up this way to help you clear the ground through this what we call the swing phase of gate.
One thing that happens is the upper of the shoe will actually catch on the edge of the nail and pull it in a couple of directions, and that abrasion back and forth with your toe swinging upward and catching the upper of the shoe over and over and over can cause it to become black and brown or even lose the toenail, and they can be very painful after a marathon.
So one of the simplest solutions is to actually take a nail file and file it off at about 45 degrees. What I mean is, you literally take a nail file and you just drag it across the nail so that you actually smooth this out right here. And by removing all of this portion of the nail and really smoothing it out, it will significantly reduce the amount of abrasion you have within the shoe from the toenail hitting the inside of the shoe.
A very simple thing to do, so you literally just take a nail file at about 45 degrees, just drag it across the nails. After you cut your toenails, if you do that, you’ll notice that you feel a lot of resistance as you drag the nail file across when you first start doing it. That’s basically how the upper part of the shoe over your toes is catching when you’re actually running. So if you’ve tried all these other things and you haven’t tried this one yet, this might be worth trying.
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