How to handle athlete's foot or mizumushi

Did you ever have athlete's foot? Medically it is called tinea pedis. In Japan it has the rather cute name mizumushi (水虫), literaly meaning "water insects."  

A few weeks ago I felt something itchy between my toes on the right leg and I checked where it was coming from. The skin between my tiny toes was broken, it was white and some liquid was coming out. I didn't know what this could be nor where this could come from, so I researched on the Internet. Discribing my symptoms I ended up with mizumushi.

Mizumushi is a skin infection caused by fungus. You often get it through walking barefood in public showers or pools. Something I haven't done for a while, but for sure there are also other ways to get infected. As a prevention it is recommended to keep you feet dry, keep you toenails short and wear socks that can enable your feet to breathe easily.  

A website was telling me that this is not even rare and that over 2/3 of the people have it at least once in their lifetime. Some stronger, some pretty weak. So, it seemed like it was my turn.

According to the fact that it is a common infection, I decided to take a look to the drug stores to find something that can handle it. And right, we ended up standing in front of a shelf filled with mizumushi medicine. Luckily I took my husband with me, so he could check what is different between the products.

At the end we bought Damarin Liquid (ダマリンL液). For the 20ml bottle we payed about 500~600 yen, what was still one of the cheapest we could find there.  

Inside the tiny bottle is a clear liquid with a quite strong smell which lasts for a few minutes. You drop it on the mizumushi affected area once a day. The first days it was burning like hell! You are asked to keep doing it for one month even if you can't see anything on your foot anymore. So you can really destroy all the fungi which have settled down on your foot.

And it really helped. Already, after about one and a half weeks, the space between my toes started to look healthy again. The pain stopped after a few days, too, and now everything seems to be alright again. 

I can really recommend Damarin L to you if you ever have athlete's foot. But for sure I hope you won't.