It’s not very sexy, talking about blisters, but I’m willing to speak for the travelers who have walked many steps before me. No matter how comfortable you say your Blundstones or your Rothy’s are, if you spend hours traipsing around foreign cities, odds are your shoes are going to rub you the wrong way.
The thing about traveling is, if you get a blister on day one of your trip, you’ll likely suffer on each successive day. After all, your limited shoe options will provide you with little to no relief. The flimsy Band-Aid will not do the trick—sliding off sweaty skin in 0.2 seconds—nor will wearing socks with your sandals. (I once had to resort to this on a 2016 trip to Copenhagen, before people started sporting that look on purpose, and unfortunately, the chafing prevailed.)
Then, on a trip to France many moons ago, I discovered Compeed. It’s a heavy-duty, hydrocolloid patch that you apply to your open wound. Super adhesive, it stays on even in the shower, which is a godsend, because there’s nothing worse than hot water stinging raw skin (sorry for the graphics). The clear patch will continue to stay attached for a few days, protecting your blister as you continue to wear your killer shoes. Then, once it starts to peel off on its own, you’ll slowly rip that bad boy off, and it’ll appear as though you grew fresh skin (more on that later). The blister patches have allowed me to break in new flats on the streets of Paris, complete day-long hikes through the forests of Japan, and commute with ease to my office in New York City.
Compeed was invented in Sweden in the ’80s by Lars Blackwell, who worked for Coloplast, a company that was pioneering hydrocolloid use in medical dressings. A recreational runner, Blackwell started experimenting with putting small patches of hydrocolloid on his heels to prevent blisters, and eventually sent his prototype to soldiers in the Swedish army. In 1984, the first Compeed hit the market, and the rest is history.
At the time of my discovery, Compeed was extremely hard to find in the US, and I’d bring a few boxes home whenever I visited France, as I would bottles of Nuxe oil. But sometimes globalization is good, and my favorite blister patches have started to experience a widespread retail presence in the last few years—this might be in part due to an acquisition by HRA Pharma in 2017, which expanded the product to over 90 countries. What if I told you you can get them on Amazon?
