What is Nail Fungus?
Nail fungus can infect one or more toe nails and sometimes finger nails. The process is often very slow and the infection develops over several months or years. Usually the infection is moderately advanced by the time it’s noticed. Ladies are sometimes unaware of a fungal nail infection development because the use of nail varnish can hide the visual symptoms.
Nail fungus can be identified by it’s visual appearance. The first visual indication is the appearance of white steaks or patches on the nail surface. As the nail fungus develops the nails may become yellow/brown in colour spreading between toes. Later signs include thickening of the nails followed by crumbly nails with a pungent odour.
How to treat Nail Fungus
At this stage it’s important to explain nail fungus is often seen along side athletes foot infection (another fungal infection). Athletes foot may be between the toes or on the underside of the feet and heels. Both the nail fungus and athletes foot infection need to be treated together. This is because all fungus produces spores to spread the infection else where. Therefore the skin may infect the nails and vice versa. The skin may be treated with athletes foot creams and nail fungus has several options.
- Oral Medication via your GP called terbibafine may be prescribed but there are potentially serious liver and kidney side effect risks. A long informed conversation with your GP is advised before this route is taken.
- Topical treatments available via your pharmacy which are applied as each product advice. These can be successful for early stage fungus but often is found to be ineffective for more advanced fungal infections.
- Cold Laser Therapy. This form of treatment is very effective for even advanced nail fungus infections. We offer this treatment at Waverley Foot Clinic in Farnham, Surrey which is laser beams within the cold spectrum and is therefore totally painless, without sensation. A coarse of 5 treatments each lasting 12 minutes for both or a single foot is required. After the initial coarse of treatment we follow up the patient at 4 weeks and eight weeks to check the progress of the nail fungus and athletes foot infection resolution.
Lunula Laser ‘Cold’ Laser
Waverley Foot Clinic Website
Our website has detailed information relating to Cold Laser Therapy for fungal nail infection https://waverleyfootclinic.com/lunula-laser-nail-fungus-treatment/
Media Interest in Cold Laser Therapy
The press and TV media have been very interested in the development of Cold Laser Therapy to treat nail fungus
Waverley Foot Clinic
