Nail Health Problems

Take a good look at your fingernails and you may notice subtle variations in the color, shape or texture of your nails. These imperfections may not look like much at a glance, but it’s more important to your health than you might think. That’s because to the trained eye, nails can provide valuable indications about your overall health. Take a look:

Nail Thickness

If you have a thickening of the nails and they can have several causes including:

•Thick/separated nails can indicate thyroid disease or psoriasis

•Thick/rough-surfaced nails can be a sign of fungal infection

•Unusually thick nails could be a symptom of a circulation problem

•Thick nails alone could even signal lung disease

Thickening is fairly easy to notice when it first appears but please note that allergic reactions to some medications manifest themselves as thick nails!

Ridges

Healthy nails should have no obvious ridge lines and should be virtually smooth to the naked eye. Ridges can indicate several health issues including:

•Inflammatory arthritis

•Iron deficiency

•Lupus (with red lines at the base of your nails)

Don’t ignore these ridges by using a nail buffer to smooth the surface – these are warnings to be noticed!

A healthy nail bed should be pink with a slight pinkish white moon shape at the base. Streaks of any other stronger shades or colors can indicate health issues, as can nails that are tinged by other colors such as:

•Dark stripes towards the top of the nail are associated with aging and congestive heart failure

•Blueish tinge to the nails can be a sign of depleted oxygen levels in your blood

•Green nails are usually a sign of a bacterial infection

•White nails indicate liver disease, such as hepatitis

•Red streaks on the nail bed could be a warning of an infection of the heart valves

•Dull nails in general mean a deficiency of vitamins

Pitted Nails

Sometimes small dips can just be the result of a bash to the hand in general, but sometimes more attention should be paid as they can be a symptom of:

•Zinc deficiency (usually the pit will form a line across the middle of the nailbed)

•Connective tissue disorder

•Psoriasis

•Alopecia areata, which is an autoimmune disorder that results in hair loss

Brittle/Dry Nails

Healthy nails should be producing natural moisturizers to help maintain themselves. Excessively dry or brittle nails can be a sign of a hormonal balance problem or a bacterial infection as well as:

•Thyroid disease can result in brittle, dry nails that also crack and split very easily

•Fungus can cause nails to become dry or even crumbly and is a common problem

Both these potential problems can be treated and the nails will return to good health once a full growing cycle has passed (hand nails grow at about 1 mm per week so on average the full life cycle of human nail is about six months).