Glycerin has many, many uses.  I was making homemade bubbles for the kids to play with, so I needed some glycerin.  I found it for a couple of bucks at the local Wally world.  It surprised me that it was kept in the medicines department.

Switch gears to my second child, Lyndsie, who gets horrible cracks in her feet each summer.  Utah is very dry.  In fact, when we lived in the deserts of Arizona and traveled to Utah, we were surprised at our need for lotion in Utah when we didn’t need it in Arizona.  To our skin, Utah is actually drier than the low deserts.

Each summer, Lyndsie’s, feet cracked and bled unless she wore socks and shoes every day.  Have you ever tried to tell a 3 year old to keep her shoes on all day?  We did our best, but invariably, we’d have a crying child at night.  We tried every cream on the market, including quite a few prescriptions from our pediatrician and our dermatologist.  Some of the creams worked fairly well, but we had to stay on top of it every night.

Back to the glycerin.  After making the bubbles, I looked at the primary uses of glycerin on the packaging.  #1 use: dry skin.  At an appointment with our dermatologist, he agreed it was useful for dry skin.  So we tried swabbing her feet with a glycerin/water mix.  We put plastic bags on her feet to keep the glycerin from getting everywhere (it’s quite oily). In TWO days of using it, her feet were soft and the cracks were almost gone.  Amazing.

It works equally well on dry hands.  I sometimes put it on my hands just before bed so it doesn’t get everywhere, and my hands will be perfect for the entire next day.  Compare this with most lotions on the market.  With most lotions, a person has to use them many times a day (at least in Utah we do).

If you want a second opinion on the effectiveness of glycerin, read the contents of your favorite lotion.  I’ll bet you find glycerin as one of its main products.