Corns can be a common condition of the foot which can be painful and difficult to manage. Corns and callus are due to a lot of pressure on an area of skin. They are part of a normal mechanism that has gone awry. When there is excessive pressure on the skin, that area of skin will thicken up to protect itself. If the pressure carries on over a long time, it might be so thick that it is painful. This is the same as the process which happens when, by way of example, chopping wood. Doing this, you eventually produce a callus on your hand. A similar thing takes place on the foot with pressure from the surface or pressure on a toe from the shoe. When you stop cutting wood, the thicker skin on the hands go away. The challenge in the foot is that you keep putting on footwear and you continue walking, so the pressure continues and the thicker skin forms into a corn and becomes painful.
Getting rid of corns is fairly easy and a skilful podiatrist can easily take them out. That's the easy part. The hard bit is preventing them coming back. It's one thing to remove them, but unless you remove that cause (the higher pressures on the area), chances are they will just keep coming back eventually. Corns do not possess roots that they can re-grow from. They return since the cause is still there. Taking away a corn is a lot like managing the symptom. They are going to come back unless the reason is taken away. That's where the skill of a podiatrist is required to find out the correct cause. A full assessment is necessary of the function, shoes, foot shape and activities to work out just what it is that is causing the higher pressure. Once that reason has been identified, then different interventions can be used to remove that pressure. This could range from simple shoe suggestions to foot orthotic to surgical procedures.