O'Keeffe's Working Hands vs. O'Keeffe's Healthy Feet

What's the difference between hand lotion and foot cream? Can you use foot cream on your hands, and vice versa?

Have you ever heard the expression, “Kick up your heels?” It’s meant to signify something positive, but when you have dry, cracked heels, that’s probably the last thing you’d want to do. You don’t want to kick those dry heels up for everyone to see—you want to hide them and wallow in shame (or at least I do). My feet are always a bit dry, but lately, the dryness has escalated into a huge crack in my right heel. So when Cyber Monday rolled around yesterday, I briefly considered buying a foot cream. But then I thought, what’s the difference between body lotion and foot cream? Couldn’t I just use hand cream on my feet?

That got me thinking about why companies make hand creams and foot creams. Is there merit to it, or is it just another thing they want to sell you? Could hand cream work on your feet, if it was thick and hydrating enough? And could foot cream work on your hands, as long as it wasn’t overly thick and greasy?

I sent my dad the ingredients for O’Keeffe’s Working Hands hand cream and O’Keeffe’s Healthy Feet foot cream to see what he thought.

O’Keeffe’s Working Hands hand cream ingredients

O’Keeffe’s Healthy Feet foot cream ingredients

My Dad the Chemist’s thoughts on O’Keeffe’s Working Hands hand cream vs. O’Keeffe’s Healthy Feet foot cream

My dad thinks that O’Keeffe’s Working Hands hand cream and O’Keeffe’s Healthy Feet foot cream are largely the same, except that the hand cream also includes an extra ingredient: paraffin. Paraffin is also a moisturizer that protects the skin and helps it retain moisture. Therefore, he recommends using the hand cream as a foot cream, since it contains this extra moisturizing ingredient. Edit: Thanks to a comment from a reader, it appears that my dad was saying that the hand cream contains may contain more/additional paraffin (since paraffin appears higher in the ingredient list) so it may be more moisturizing than the foot cream. Another reader pointed out that the main difference between these two products was allantoin, which appears higher in the ingredient list in the foot cream vs. the hand cream. Read more about the benefits of allantoin here.

Hand cream vs. foot cream: The final verdict

All of this convinced me that I didn’t need to spring for a dedicated foot cream, because I already own O’Keeffe’s Working Hands hand cream. I decided to try applying that to my dry heels at night, instead of buying a foot cream.

I can think of only a few reasons why you might want to opt for a dedicated foot cream or a dedicated hand cream when all you have is one or the other (e.g., you want to apply non-hand-cream to your hands or apply non-foot-cream to your feet):

In my case, I was able to use O’Keeffe’s Working Hands hand cream on my feet, with good results so far. I actually never noticed that this product contained paraffin until my dad pointed it out. Paraffin always makes me think of melted candle wax. When I rub it into the crack in my heel, it feels like it’s actually filling in the crack, which is nice. After I apply it, I simply slip a sock over it and go to sleep.

I did it last night and it in the morning, I saw marked improvement in the crack in my heel. I’m going to continue using it and seeing how it works out. If it doesn’t continue to improve, I might just have to give the foot cream a go. But for now, I think the hand cream will do just fine.

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