Whether you are someone who regularly paints your nails, or someone who likes it clean, nails reflect our overall health. Follow these tips to keep your nails healthy.
Your fingernails reflect the overall health of your body. Take a closer look at them, are they healthy? Or are you seeing dents, ridges, or areas of discoloration or change in shape? Well if you are seeing anything from the latter list, it is time to take your fingernails seriously. However, maintaining healthy and strong nails does not always require paying a visit to a nail salon and spending money on a costly manicure. With these easy and effective tips, you can start taking care of your nails right at home. So let’s get into it.
How do you detect unhealthy nails?
Before moving forward to the tips, let’s talk about the signs that point toward damaged and unhealthy nails.
- If your nails have horizontal grooves, that could mean you are dealing with high fevers, stress, or jamming your fingers often.
- If your nails peel or strip often it could be a sign of vitamin deficiency.
- If your nails have red and swollen skin around them, that could mean you are removing or biting cuticles.
- If your nails have tiny white spots, it could mean you are painting your nails too often or biting them too rigorously.
- If you have spoon-shaped nails, it can be a sign of your iron deficiency or anemia.
If your nails are healthy, the plates would be of a pinkish-white color with cuticles. In the case of healthy nails, the nails and white tips are of the same height and there would be a prominent half-moon-shaped white section called lunula at the nail base.
- Be gentle
The first advice that every high-profile nail tech usually gives is to be gentle on the nails. This would include avoiding using metal tools under nails because with too much digging the nail plate can be separated from the skin. This is a condition that is known as onycholysis which is common for people over the age of 50 years. Washing dishes with bare hands, or cleaning with chemicals also plays a vital role in weakening your nails so you can guard them instead with vinyl, rubber, nitrile, or plastic gloves.
- Keep hands clean and dry
Keeping your hands and especially fingernails dry and clean means you are preventing bacteria from growing under your fingernails. Prolonged and repeated contact with water can weaken and cause breakage in nails. After washing your hands, ensure that your nails are thoroughly and completely grime-free. You can do this by removing the nail polish with an acetone-free remover which will not dry out your nails. To remove any dirt or exfoliate any dead skin cells around your nails, you can take soap into a toothbrush and then scrub your nails and surrounding skin gently.
- Good manicure practice
To maintain healthy sets of fingernails, you must engage in good manicure practice from time to time. This includes using a manicure scissor or clipper to give your nails consistent trims. This will make them less prone to breakage and snags. So aim for clipping them every two weeks trimming them straight across and then rounding the tips in a curve. You can also adjust the frequency according to what suits you best after seeing how your nails respond to this practice.
- Health over length
Sure, long nails are elegant but they are also more prone to breakage. So if you are someone whose nails break off easily and had struggled with hangnails or breakage previously, it would be best to keep your nails short – at least for a period when you are allowing them to grow back stronger. In the meantime, you can go for a shorter nail with a round tip that looks classy and is easy to maintain. This will also make your nails less subjected to extra wear and tear. As long as all the nails are in matching shape, trust us, you will not miss the length!
- Get rid of the habit of biting nails
If you want healthier and stronger nails, you must stop biting your nails at once. Bad habits like biting nails and picking at the cuticles can cause damage to the nail bed. At the same time, it makes your fingernail more prone to bacteria, even a small cut across the fingernail can make it exposed to bacteria or fungi and allow them to enter and cause an infection.
- Clean nail tools
Another way your nails can get subjected to bacteria and fungi and infections caused by them is if you use dirty nail tools. Just like any other tool you use to groom yourself, these need protection and care too. Just like you wash your makeup brushes, hair combs, and other things regularly, you need to wash nail tools like your clippers and nail scissors as well. You can wash the metal tools with soap and water and then use rubbing alcohol to wipe. You also need to replace disposable tools like your emery boards.
- Take care of your cuticle
Nail care cannot be completed if cuticles are not talked about. These have a very special purpose to serve in your fingers; cuticles seal the area at the nail base. So if you are someone who often cuts or removes the cuticle, it is time to think twice. Doing this can cause the seal protection to break leaving the fingernail vulnerable to bacteria and fungi, increasing the possibility of painful infection. Taking care of the cuticles will also minimize the painful hangnails. If you have to push back the cuticles, you can do this once every week after you shower because that is when the skin is soft. Use a wooden orange stick and finish massaging the cuticles with cuticle oil as these serum-like strengtheners are absorbed into the skin quickly and rehydrate.
- The base coat
If you are painting your nails at home, never miss out on the base coat. This step will save the nails from getting directly stained by polish. At the same time, it will also make the nail color look more saturated and opaque.
Make sure to visit a dermatologist if you face any problems or signs of unhealthy nails.
