Everyone dreams of having long, strong fingernails, but every day we come into contact with conditions that can damage the health of our nails. Fortunately, there are lots of easy ways to prevent damage to fingernails and maximize your chances of growing healthy nails. Here are our 13 pointers for getting and keeping ten perfect tips:
1. Your Nails Are What You Eat:
If your diet isn’t healthy, your nails (and skin and hair) won’t be. There’s a lot of conflicting advice about what specific foods can help fingernails, but evidence suggests that protein (found in meat, beans, and dairy) and biotin— present in fish, and eggs—make a difference. Fruit and vegetables are important, too: about 2 cups of each every day should help create the optimum conditions for strong, gorgeous nails.
2. Gelatin Makes Perfect Tens:
Or it seems to, anyway. Many women swear that soaking fingernails in gelatin (the clear kind, not flavored jello!) or eating gelatin improves the strength and appearance of nails.
3. Say No to Formaldehyde:
Formaldehyde is a toxic chemical. It’s bad for you for a whole host of reasons, but it can degrade the nail plate and irritate the skin around the nail, causing ugly, painful hangnails. In spite of evidence that it’s harmful, many nail care products still include formaldehyde. Read labels and choose formaldehyde-free nail treatments, such as those made by Nail-Aid, or other companies that support the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. Look them up at www.safecosmetics.org.
4. Suit Up:
When you’re washing dishes or scrubbing tiles, you bring your hands and nails into contact with harsh detergents and chemicals that cause skin damage and nail damage. Wear rubber or latex gloves and keep the insides dry.
5. Slather On:
If your nails are prone to brittleness or flaking, moisture is an issue. Oddly enough, soaking hands in water can cause the nails to dry out. The solution is to seal the nails with a good cream or lotion at least once a day. If your nails are extremely dry, slather on the lotion and then pull on cotton gloves before going to bed.
6. Frequent Hand Washer?:
If your job requires you to wash your hands frequently, you should be using as mild a soap as possible and always rubbing on some lotion afterwards. If possible, avoid using a hot-air dryer every time you wash your hands.
7. Bathing Beauties Take Note:
If you regularly swim, both salt water and chlorinated pool water can wreak havoc on your nails. Take a moment before getting in to rub some Vaseline into the nail plate and cuticles. This helps prevent some of the chemicals from being absorbed, lowering the dose of drying, brittle-izing nastiness your nails are exposed to.
8. File, Don’t Saw:
Only file your nails in one direction, from the edge to the center, and try not to grind away. Sawing back and forth shreds the top of your nails, leading to tiny breaks and tears that can become bigger problems later on. Stick to gentle rounded curves for your nail shape, too—pointy nails snag and break!
9. Take a Break:
Constantly polishing, manicuring, or artificially extending your nails will generally degrade the health of your nails over time. Take a break from cosmetic polishes for at least one month a year (three is best) to let your nails recover. You can still buff them until they shine.
10. Touch Up, Don’t Strip Off:
As your nail polish color grows out, don’t constantly remove the polish and reapply. Touch it up instead. Using nail polish remover more than once or twice a month causes damage to your nails and the cuticles—you’re asking for dry, ragged cuticles and flaky nails if you opt for the remover too often.
11. Those Cheap Fake Nails Could Be A Real Ripoff:
Not all manicurists are created equal. Some salons offering artificial talons at bargain prices may be giving you more than you bargained for. Manicurists who still use the banned chemical MMA (methyl methacrylate) in the application of artificial nails may be exposing you to kidney and liver damage as well as increasing the chances that your real nails could be ripped right off your fingers.
How can you tell if a salon is using MMA? Three hints: super duper cheap prices (that aren’t part of a special deal), technicians wearing breathing masks, and a pre-application step of severely, sometimes painfully abrading the real nail to get the MMA to stick. MMA nails also won’t soak off, even after hours of acetone application.
12. Buy A Screwdriver, Already!
Your nails are not letter openers, bottle openers, plastic wrap cutters, or screwdrivers. Many women tear their nails badly while using them as tools, and it can take a long while for nails damaged this way to recover. Buy a Swiss Army Knife if you need it—your fingers will thank you.
13. Harden Up:
Finally, you can help strengthen your nails by applying hardeners. Just make sure you avoid nail care products that contain toluene or formaldehyde. As mentioned above, these are toxic ingredients that can irritate your skin and may even cause longer-term health problems.
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