For the uninitiated gardening might seem like a gentle, leisurely pastime. Oh how wrong they are! If you’ve spent any amount of time working in the garden you’ll know just how tiring it can be, one minute you can be on all fours ripping up weeds, and the next you might be up a ladder trimming back the branches of an overgrown apple tree.
All this physical activity comes at a price to your body, not least your hands and feet, both of which are on the front line of all the work involved with gardening. To make matters worse they spend much of the time trapped inside gloves or boots, at risk from chafing and blistering.
At the end of a hard days graft, your hands will often be in a tired and sorry state. Sore, cracked and dry they deserve some much needed rest and recuperation.
Luckily one particular company have got just the solution for tackling dry and tired hands and feet; O’keeffe are experts in the field of keeping skin healthy, and with good reason. Founding partner Bill O’Keeffe was a lifelong lover of manual work, but also suffered from dry and cracked skin. Working closely alongside his daughter Tara, a chemist, the pair were able to develop a winning formula to help sooth the pain caused by even the most traumatised skin, firstly developing ‘Working Hands’ hand cream, and later ‘Healthy Feet’. After over 20 years the company is still a family run operation, proudly serving the hands and feet of hard working people the world over.
Utilising a surprisingly simple formula, both products feature high concentrations of glycerin as their secret weapon, its water retaining properties being the ideal solution to keeping skin moisturised, whilst at the same time being completely non greasy. Both Working hands and Healthy Feet are also hypoallegnic and odour free, therefore you shouldn’t experience any ill effects or irritation whatsoever. The major difference between the two products is that Healthy Feet contains a greater concentration of the compound allantoin for its ability to penetrate more deeply into the thicker and tougher skin of the feet.
So whilst there’s not an awful lot too them in terms of ingredients, the positive effects of these creams is pretty clear; almost all who have tried them have been impressed with the results, with some reporting a marked improvement within a matter of hours, compared to years of ineffective results with other products. The recommendation for both products is to apply a small amount daily just before bed time. This gives your hands/feet the best opportunity to recover during a long period of inactivity.
If we were to pick any fault at all it would be with the price tag, whilst not unreasonable £6 or so does seem like a fair bit for a such a small 91 gram tub. However as the manufacturers rightly point out, you won’t need to use a lot with each application, so it should last you several months of daily applications.