Q: When I was a child, I had sweaty feet. Taking off my shoes would clear the room. In the 1970s, I worked in downtown Chicago and commuted by train from a western suburb. Most of the winter, snow or slush on the ground meant I had to wear galoshes to protect my shoes. Train cars were heated with vents at the floor level. Needless to say, my feet did sweat.

The skin between my toes cracked and hurt. My toe pads were wrinkled and pure white, and of course my feet smelled bad. I tried a lot of fixes. Nothing helped. Then I read that smelly feet with cracks between the toes and wrinkled white toe pads could be caused by a zinc deficiency.

I started taking zinc tablets. Within the first day, the cracks between my toes closed up and the pads were no longer white or wrinkled. By the third day, the feet were completely cleared up: no sign of wrinkled white toes, the cracks completely healed and, as a bonus, no stinky feet. After about two weeks of zinc tablets, I began to notice a metallic taste in my mouth and decided it was time to stop taking the zinc tablets.

Since then, whenever my feet begin to smell, I take zinc tablets for a couple of days. I hope you can add this to your wealth of resources of home cures.

A: You are not the first person to tell us that systemic zinc may help control unpleasant odors. The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements suggests a daily intake of 9 mg for women and 11 mg for men. The “tolerable upper intake limit” is 40 mg.

Q: My wife has Sjogren’s syndrome and some other autoimmune problems. She is currently taking Plaquenil, which worries us because it can cause serious vision problems. I found a reference to using low-dose naltrexone as an alternative treatment with few side effects. Can you comment on the efficacy of this drug for autoimmune problems?

A: Naltrexone is an oral form of the opioid antagonist naloxone. At the standard 50-mg dose, it is approved for treating alcoholism and other substance abuse disorders.

Off-label, low-dose naltrexone (1 to 4.5 mg) is being considered for use against chronic pain (Senior Care Pharmacist, Jan. 1, 2019), fibromyalgia (Current Rheumatology Reviews, 2018) and certain autoimmune conditions (International Immunopharmacology, August 2018).

We haven’t found any studies of low-dose naltrexone for Sjogren’s syndrome, which causes dry mouth, dry eyes and complications affecting other organs. Researchers need to conduct well-controlled trials to determine if this drug would help.

Q: After I had surgery, the intensive care unit nurses gave me alcohol wipes to sniff for the nausea. It worked like a charm.

When I was sent to another floor for my last day, I asked for the alcohol packets. The nurse on that floor asked in shock, “Why? Are you sniffing alcohol?” It’s funny how nursing staff from one department are unaware of the simple practices another department uses to help their patients.

I went home the next day with a few packets at the ready but was hardly bothered by nausea by then. I now keep some in our home first-aid kit.

A: Emergency physicians did a randomized placebo-controlled trial of sniffing alcohol wipes compared with the powerful antiemetic ondansetron (Annals of Emergency Medicine, August 2018). Their conclusion: “aromatherapy with or without oral ondansetron provides greater nausea relief than oral ondansetron alone.”

In their column, Joe and Teresa Graedon answer letters from readers. Send questions to them via www.peoplespharmacy.com.