Simple steps (in shoes) save your skin in heat wave

It’s hot this week, even by Arizona standards, so here is some advice from a doctor:

Wear shoes.

If you’ve lived in Arizona for any length of time, you know why. We think we can make it barefoot down the driveway for the newspaper or skitter across the cul-de-sac on hot asphalt to the mailbox.

We can’t, not without searing our soles.

“Summertime is tough for us,” said Dr. Kevin Foster, director of the Arizona Burn Center, which is part of the Maricopa Integrated Health System. Burns to the bottom of the feet are the most common injury doctors there see this time of year.

So: Wear shoes.

We scorch our feet on sizzling sidewalks that can reach 170 degrees and blister our bottoms on 150-degree leather car seats. We turn on the hose outside to wash our hands or fill a kiddie pool and get scalded by 180-degree water.

We can get burned in a few seconds at those temperatures.

So: Wear shoes.

And, while you’re at it, wear gloves. Foster always wears gloves when he works outside in the summer. “You never know what is going to be really hot,” he said. The metal pole of the pool net. Tools left in the sun.

Gloves are good for driving, too, to protect our hands from hot door handles and steering wheels.

Also: Wear clothes.

I have a scar on my hip where a seat belt burned me as a teenager. I was making a run to 7-Eleven for Slurpees on a hot summer day in my bathing suit.

“You really just have to protect yourself,” Foster said. “You just have to think about it all the time.”

So: Wear shoes. And gloves. And clothes. (And, yes, sunscreen.) I know it seems counter-intuitive in a week when it’s going to be so hot to put things on. But I’m trying to save your soles.