How To Protect Your Fingernails Naturally

Nail biters and pickers put our fingernails under a great deal of stress and damage every time we stick them in our mouth or pick away at them. This is made worse when our nails get wet and remain damp, are constantly alternating between wet and dry, are exposed to chemicals like cleaners and hand sanitizers and during cold weather spells such as winter months.

How To Protect Your Fingernails

While wearing gloves at certain times can protect our nails this isn’t always possible. Limiting direct exposure to harsh chemicals and cold weather is a good start. Eating a well balanced diet to ensure we aren’t iron and vitamin deficient also ensures good nail health. Protecting our nails by not using them to open soda cans and avoiding blunt force trauma is another way to protect fingernails. And of course, if we stop biting nails and picking them, that would be ideal too.

Below is a series of tips and suggestions to further protect fingernails in your everyday life.

Wear Gloves

If you’re using chemicals for cleaning the house or if you work with chemicals for your job (cleaners, swimming pool attendants, factory workers, scientists) harsh chemicals can dry the skin and nails which adds to the stress placed upon your fingernails and hands.

As a kid growing up in the north where we get harsh winters, I was (and am still) amazed by people both young and old who walk outside in the middle of winter with no gloves and either stick their hands in their pockets or walk around with freezing hands. In winter, wearing gloves to protect your hands will help prevent your fingernails and skin from drying and getting damaged. It’s that simple.

Minimize Moisture Exposure

While washing your hands and drying them multiple times per day is normal and suggested especially during this era of COVID-19 and more so for nail biters, the constant wetting and drying of nails can weaken them and make them brittle. This is further exacerbated when you add alcohol-based hand sanitizers which are the ones recommended instead of non-alcohol based sanitizers that don’t kill bacteria the same way. The problem is that soap and alcohol are both drying agents that dry our skin and fingernails which also make them brittle and more susceptible to breaking.

Minimize Drying Your Nails

While moisture can damage your nails, so can dryness. If you use a hair dryer, a hand dryer in restrooms or regularly operate an oven or clothes dryer where your hands are constantly exposed to heat, these can all help to dry out your hands and thus your nails. In winter and during cold weather, the air is also dry and when forced air or other heaters are added to the mix, this can further dry our skin and nails.

Use Your Nails For Show Only

Don’t use fingernails to open soda cans, scratch off lottery tickets, open boxes, use as a screwdriver or in place of another tool or do anything that can damage or break them. This places a great deal of stress on fingernails especially if you’re a nail biter and picker and worse if you have some other conditions that we’ll discuss below like dehydration or vitamin deficiency.

Eat Healthy

If your diet is poor, your body may be starved for nutrients and may conserve them as a result, which can lead to hair and nail health suffering. In general terms, a diet of fresh fruits, leafy green vegetables, lean meats, whole grains, nuts, eggs, and other healthy foods will help to ensure your body gets all the nutrients it needs to ensure good nail health. And although dairy gets a bad rap these days, milk products offer benefits for nail health too. Consider a supplement, protein powder or consult a dietician for a plan specific to you if you’re having trouble eating healthy.

Stay Hydrated

Drinking enough water not only helps your overall health but your nail health specifically. Dehydration can contribute to fingernails drying, becoming brittle and breaking.

Also, hydration refers to your skin and nails specifically regarding use of hand and nail-specific lotions or moisturizers that can further help to keep nails and skin hydrated. This is especially true during cold, harsh winter months and if you are exposed to chemicals and hand sanitizers which contribute to drying nails.

Consider A Blood Test

Vitamin deficiency from a poor diet or other reason can hurt nail health not to mention your overall health in general. Sometimes even a healthy diet leaves certain people deficient in certain vitamins and minerals through no fault of their own.

Biotin (vitamin H) plays a role in nail health but so do vitamins like B vitamins, magnesium and iron. A multivitamin or other supplement might be in order but before you guess what you need and spend money on products you might not require, consider getting a blood test to see if and where you are deficient first.

Limit Use of Chemicals On Nails

We already mentioned limiting alcohol-based hand sanitizers and harsh chemicals above. But repeated use of nail polish, nail polish remover and other chemicals hurts nail health too. Many nail polishes are toxic and nail polish remover typically contains alcohol or acetone and can dry fingernails and thus weaken them. Using fake nails and gel nails can damage fingernails, too.

Keep Nails Short

As a 40+ year nail picker and biter, I can speak from experience: Short nails tend not to crack and break like long ones do. It wasn’t until I’d finally stopped biting my nails for about a month that I noticed a crack down the center of my right pinky finger. A few weeks later after about 6 weeks of no longer biting my nails, I got a chip on a finger on my left hand. This never happened when I bit my nails! They were too short.

In all seriousness though, keeping your fingernails short and trimmed limits the chance they will break, crack or chip. And if you want longish nails, keeping them at least somewhat short and trimmed is the next best thing.

Don’t Ignore Problems

Fingernails and toenails can be a predictor of serious health problems. Ignoring changes in the way your nails look or feel can have serious consequences to your health. Research has shown that nails – and in particular toenails – can act as a biomarker (a measurable indicator) for predicting some serious chronic diseases.

More commonly you might find fingernails with spots, grooves, ridges, discoloration, and other nail changes that you should get checked out by your doctor to ensure it isn’t a sign of something more serious.

Summary

If you notice the above list of potential problem areas that can cause nail health to suffer, you can see that they are interrelated:

• You can harm your fingernail health by exposing them to harsh weather, chemicals and blunt force trauma. These are things you can avoid.
• You can also eat a poor diet and not drink enough water which can make nails brittle and dry and thus weakened. You can eat better and drink more water.
• But you can also further expose your fingernails to dryness with repeated exposure to heat. You can try to avoid direct heat on your hands.
• And at the opposite end of the spectrum, you can also make your fingernails wet and damp which also negatively affects nail health. We can try to keep our hands dry and avoid dampness.

So fingernail health is really a balance between numerous factors some of which we can improve upon and some that we may only be able to limit rather than completely avoid.

And of course, we can also try to quit biting and picking our nails.