Thursday, February 15, 2024, 10:00 a.m
Even though they carry us through life every day, our feet often don’t get the attention they deserve. A healthy and well-groomed foot is not only visually attractive, but also essential for your own health. Depending on the problem or care goal, there is a large selection of preparations available – for a better overview and the final product selection, customers want detailed and individual advice in the pharmacy.
A current pharmacy survey commissioned by GEHWOL shows that most customers buy products because of a specific foot problem. This experience corresponds to the results of the current GEHWOL foot care trends. Different types of foot care have been precisely defined here. PTAs classify almost half of their customers as so-called “problem-oriented improvers”. They often suffer from foot problems and only care when it is acutely necessary. In the pharmacy they ask for a targeted product recommendation and thus actively create a consultation opportunity. When recommending and selecting products, it is important to know that many skin indications on the feet follow a cascade of problems. A disturbed skin barrier due to a lack of lipids, for example, often leads to the skin’s elasticity decreasing. As a result, more calluses and cracks develop. When there are cracks in the skin, bacteria, allergens and fungi have an easy time of it. The GEHWOL MED system is suitable for such cases. The care concept covers the different stages of problem skin with its products and supplies it with sufficient moisture and lipids as needed. The GEHWOL MED Express care foam is suitable, for example, for basic care for normal to dry skin. The unscented GEHWOL MED Lipidro Cream intensively nourishes dry to very dry skin and ensures a balanced fat and moisture balance. The GEHWOL MED callus cream is suitable for removing excessive calluses. If cracks have already appeared, the even richer crack ointment is recommended. Anyone who struggles with sensitive skin should use GEHWOL MED Sensitive. In addition to problem-related advice, specific illnesses are often the reason for an individual product recommendation. From the perspective of PTAs, diabetes is the predominant clinical picture for which there is an active opportunity for advice on therapy-related topics such as foot care. This assessment also corresponds to the results of GEHWOL research. The current GEHWOL diabetes report suggests that 98% of people with diabetes know about the risk of complications related to the foot – but they consider foot care to be particularly important if they are already affected or are afraid of it have the risk of being affected in the future. Paradoxically, regular foot care is not an established part of everyday life for more than half of patients. This underlines how strong the need for targeted education to prevent foot problems in diabetes still is. This is an important task that all diabetes counseling professionals face.