Effects of socks and shoes on normal foot skin temperature

Abstract

The skin is the major organ of integumentary system of human body and helps to maintain the body temperature, excretes the waste through sweating, protects deepest structures of the human body, and prevent from various problems such as water loss, infection. However, excessive sweating leads to infection in human body especially in the foot such as dermatophyte infection. This study aimed to investigate the foot skin temperature and humidity after wearing socks with shoes. It is a pre-post experimental design study. Ten subjects were selected for this study by convenience sampling methods. In this experiments, humidity and temperature, infrared images were recorded at baseline and post experiment. For this experiment, Infrared camera, HC 520 IN/OUT Temperature/ humidity, and the thermometer were used as outcome measurement and the total duration of pre and post-session consists of 3 h. The results revealed that the foot skin temperature was slightly increased in the left foot: 97.02 (mn), 2.51 (SD). Thus, there was no difference observed in temperature changes. However, humidity level increased in socks with shoes experiment in the post-experiment results. At the same time, we observed in the infrared thermal image analysis that there were physiological changes and post-test temperature changes on the skin of foot. In conclusion, this study revealed that socks with shoes are altered the humidity and foot skin temperature.