Let’s talk about everyone’s favorite subject: foot fungus. Specifically, the kind you tend to get in your toenails.

While it’s not exactly dinner table conversation, toenail fungus is a popular issue to have. According to the Cleveland Clinic, one in 10 people are managing the affliction, a number that jumps up to one in two after the age of 70. Though largely benign, the fungus can pose serious problems for older adults.

For the blissfully uninitiated, toenail fungus is characterized by chalky, clouded nails that are changed in color, thickening and raising from the nail bed. There is also, of course, a smell. If you have athlete’s foot, you are more likely to incur this unpleasant condition, which can be invited by places like public locker rooms and exacerbated by being barefoot in them.

Aside from the smell, toenail fungus gains some of its notoriety for how difficult it is to eradicate. It can take up to a year of topical treatments for it to go off on its merry way, and oral antifungal tablets, which can shorten treatment time, can also bring a host of unpleasant side effects.

Researchers from Bath are turning toward a treatment as stinky as its assigned enemy: a cure in the form of hydrogen sulfide, which you likely know to smell like rotten eggs.

It can penetrate nails and disrupt the fungal pathogens by eliminating their energy systems — even, or especially, those that have resisted standard treatment.

While the study has only been conducted in a lab, in vitro, researchers hope to have a compound ready for patient use within the next five years.

For now, we’ll keep putting our best, stinky foot forward.