07/22/2026
Think you can get rid of a corn by cutting out its “root”? It’s one of the biggest foot care myths out there. A foot corn isn’t a plant with roots — it’s simply a small area of thickened skin that develops from repeated pressure or friction. Here’s what you actually need to know, from podiatrist Dr. Andrew Stanislav.
Video transcript
Andrew Stanislav:
I’m Dr. Stanislav, a podiatrist for OrthoNebraska, talking about the myth that you can treat a corn by finding its root and cutting it out.
So, that’s actually not true.
A corn, by definition, is just hard thickened skin that forms. Typically it forms either in between the toes or on tops of the toes. Um, it can be exquisitely painful. They’re very, very tiny, but they can cause a lot of pain.
Non-operative treatments work very well in most situations, but in some cases surgery is indicated.
So if we think of patients just not responding favorably to the conservative treatments, if that’s the case then we will take them into the operating room and we will either remove that bone spur or we will fix their hammer toe, therefore making that corn disappear.
So the myth that you can find the root and cut it out is actually not true. It’s an underlying bone problem, so unless you do something to the bone, most likely the corn is going to come back.
