What to eat for healthy nails

In fact, there is really no need to look for any "special foods for nails". As long as the daily diet is balanced and contains enough high-quality protein, trace elements and essential fatty acids, most of them can develop healthy and shiny nails. Blindly following the trend of taking supplements may be useless or even harmful to the body.

A while ago, I helped a friend who always does manicures to condition her nails. Her nails were as thin as cicada wings and broke with the slightest force. The nail surface was also densely covered with small white spots. She followed the trend and bought hundreds of dollars of imported biotin supplements. After taking it for two months, there was no improvement at all. Later, I accompanied her for a check-up and found out that she had been eating a vegetarian diet for half a year in order to lose weight. She rarely touched eggs and milk. Her high-quality protein intake was less than one-third of the recommended amount. She was also diagnosed with mild iron deficiency anemia. You must know that the main component of nails is keratin, which accounts for more than 90%. If you don’t even have enough bricks to build a house, your nails will not be thick and will break easily.

Speaking of biotin, which is also commonly known as vitamin H, it has been widely praised on the Internet in the past two years, claiming that eating it can grow hard nails and eliminate hangnails. In fact, there has been controversy among academic circles about its nail-raising effect. Indeed, there are clinical data showing that people who are severely deficient in biotin will have brittle nails and recurring hangnails around their nails, which can be significantly improved after supplementation. However, this deficiency basically only occurs in people with long-term malnutrition and intestinal absorption disorders. The vast majority of ordinary people who eat normally will not be deficient at all. Extra supplements are not only useless, but excessive intake may also interfere with the absorption of other B vitamins. There is a girl around me who took biotin supplements for two months, but her nails were not well maintained and she lost more hair.

There is really no need to pursue expensive ingredients for daily nail care. A glass of milk in the morning, a piece of lean beef on the lunch plate, and a small handful of original almonds as a snack in the afternoon are all good nail care foods. I met a girl who liked to grow hangnails all the time. She often tore her nails and her nails were bloody. She thought she was lacking vitamin C. Even eating three or four oranges a day was useless. Later, she discovered that she almost never ate nuts or deep-sea fish. Her intake of essential fatty acids was not enough, and the skin barrier around her nails was too fragile. Later, she adjusted her diet and ate about 10 almonds a day. Within two weeks, the hangnails rarely appeared.

Of course, this does not mean that all supplements are unnecessary. If you do find iron or zinc deficiency in a blood test, the corresponding supplements can indeed improve the small white spots and bumps on the nail surface. I once had a colleague with severe iron deficiency anemia, and his nails were sunken into a small spoon-like shape, which is clinically called spoon-shaped nails. I took iron supplements for three months as prescribed by the doctor, and consciously ate more red meat and animal blood, and my nails slowly returned to normal full curvature.

There are also many people who panic when they see that they have fewer crescents and vertical lines on their nails. In fact, it is really unnecessary. The number of crescents is only related to the growth rate of the nails. Vertical lines are mostly normal physiological phenomena after aging and have little to do with lack of nutrition. As for the claims on the Internet that eating collagen to nourish nails is even more IQ taxing. Collagen will be decomposed into small molecule amino acids when eaten in the stomach, which is no different from the nutrition you get from eating an egg. Why spend so much money on it?

If your nails suddenly become severely thickened, discolored, or uneven, go to a dermatologist first to check whether it is pathological problems such as onychomycosis and onychomycosis. Don’t just rely on food to make up for it. If the symptoms are not correct, no matter how much you eat, it will be useless.