Call them a natural lie detector. You say you eat a healthy balanced diet, but your nails may tell another story.
Healthy nails depend on sufficient protein, B vitamins, Vitamin A, calcium, zinc, iodine and iron. When the body doesn’t receive enough of these vital nutrients or absorb them properly, the deficiency may surface on the tips of your fingers.
A balanced diet and proper nutrition are essential to maintaining healthy nails. Protein is a building block for nails and vitamins and minerals provide nourishment that support growth. A diet lacking in nutrients can lead to weak, brittle nails.
It’s difficult to get all the required nutrients through wise eating habits alone, so many people choose nutritional supplementation to help ensure their bodies receive everything they need to function their best.
For beautiful nails from the inside out, consider the following tips:
• Add a nutritional supplement into your daily routine. Complexes containing biotin help alleviate nail brittleness.
• Mix a tasty nutrient and calcium-rich fruit smoothie using non-fat yoghurt, ice, a pinch of your favorite sweetener such as honey or fresh fruits. Fruits such as cranberries, blueberries and blackberries contain high levels of antioxidants, helping improve nail and cuticle health. Yoghurt is rich in calcium, creating strong chip-resistant nails. Remember fresh fruit contains more vital nutrients than frozen.
• Give yourself a moisture-rich and relaxing hand and foot massage to relieve stress and tension. Using a gentle scrub, remove dead skin cells and use cuticle oil to soften the skin around the nails and keep them moisturised. Use the cuticle oil twice a day to keep the skin conditioned, especially before going to bed at night.
• Lastly, pamper yourself with regular professional manicures and pedicures. They’ll do wonders for your look and stress levels. Your beautician will advise on professional treatments that best suit your needs.
Tips for healthy nails
Our nails can say a lot about our beauty habits. Here’s how to keep them groomed and gorgeous.
As most women will tell you, diamonds are a girl’s best friend – complemented by a perfectly manicured nail. But sometimes it seems it could be easier to score yourself a set of sparkling earrings than have hands worthy of a royal handshake. Genetics, nerves, lack of attention or overly aggressive care can leave you with ragged cuticles, chipped polish or chewed-off nails.
Nails grow about 0.1 millimetres each day, which means that it takes a fingernail about four to six months to fully regenerate. Treat nails and cuticles with some care and maintenance and never use your nails as tools. Opening a soft drink can for example, can cause nails to become weak, break and chip. Use a spoon instead or if you’re out, use a key to help you pry open the lid.
Healthy nails are smooth, without ridges or grooves. They’re uniform in colour and consistency and free of spots or discoloration.
Unhealthy nails can be brittle, flaky, peeling, break easily and discoloured with green, yellow and white.
The condition of your fingernails can also be indicative of your health status. For example, if a person has pale or very blue natural nail colouring, this could be a sign of bad circulation.
Hydrate
One of the most common issues that plague our hands is dehydration. No surprises there – our hands are parts of our bodies that we don’t cover up. And, while any good face or body moisturiser will work, hand creams are generally richer and more emollient.
Filing
Filing your nails is one of the most important aspects in nail care. Ideally, filing should be left to a professional nail technician where possible, but it’s important to keep up maintenance in between manicures. For maximum strength cut nails straight across, rounding them slightly at the sides – the shape du jour is ‘squoval’.
Filing nails into points weakens them. The correct way to file a natural nail is from corner to centre. Never see saw on the natural nail. This will encourage splitting and chipping of the nail plate, upsetting the nail-plate layers. It’s also important to file your nails when they are dry, not after you have just had a shower or washed your hands.
Stains
Dark polishes can discolour nails, so you should always wear a base coat under them and never leave the colour on for more than a week.
Splitting
Some people are born with a predisposition to brittle nails; others acquire them through mishandling (excessive wetting and drying, exposure to detergents, or over-filing and overbuffing). In rare cases brittle nails can be caused by protein or vitamin deficiencies. Avoid splitting nails by not overfiling and use a nail hardener.
Cuticles
The best way to keep your nails healthy, whole and as free from problems as possible is to push your cuticles back as little as you can. The less you manipulate your cuticle, the better off your nails will be.
Never cut or clip your cuticles. This increases the risk of infection that may spread to where the nail develops, causing the nail plate to grow in a deformed way.
White marks
White spots are most frequently caused by injury or by too much pressure applied to the nail matrix (the area just under the cuticle where new nail growth is generated), for example, during a manicure. You can’t get rid of spots – you have to wait for them to grow out.
Nail anatomy
Nail plate
The nail plate is the part of your nail that’s most visible, the hard portion you see when you look at your fingernail.
Nail folds
This is skin that frames each of your nail plates on three sides.
Nail bed
Your nail bed is the skin beneath the nail plate. Cells at the base of your nail bed produce the fingernail or toenail plate.
Cuticle
Your cuticle is the tissue that overlaps your nail plate at the base of your nail. It protects the new keratin cells that slowly emerge from the nail
Lunula
This is the whitish, half-moon shape at the base of your nail underneath the plate.
