Nails of steel

Brittle, ridged, yellow, gnawed or frail nails may be a sign of deeper health issues. Help is at hand for naturally nice nails without the nasty chemicals.

- CAROLINE ROBERTSON

Groomed nails are an obvious part of personal hygiene and key to a polished appearance, but nails are also important indicators of our overall health. While nail quality is partly determined by your genetics and habits, the state of your talons can also reveal underlying health conditions.

Keratin claws

The nail has both living and non-living components. The overlying nail plate is dead, but the skin beneath the nail is living. Despite this dead outer layer, it’s vital to watch what you put on your nails as they are more porous than skin and absorb harmful agents (as well as beneficial balms).

The nail is composed of the nail plate (the visible overlying layer), a matrix, which is the underlying vascular layer that produces the plate, and a bed, which is the pink skin under the nail plate. The paronychium is the soft tissue border around the nail, the lunula is the white crescent at the base of the nail and the cuticle is the thin tissue that emerges from the nail’s base.

Containing an average of 50 layers of alpha-keratin protein, fingernails grow around three-and-a-half millimetres a month, whereas toenails grow about half that rate. The more fingernails are used, such as the index finger, the faster they grow. Fingernails take three to six months to completely regrow and toenails 12 to 18 months.

Handy tools

We tend to take our nails for granted, but think of all the things you couldn’t do effectively without fingernails. Backscratching, nose picking, knot untying, splinter scavenging, finger tapping, guitar strumming, flower plucking and scratching off stains all depend on your nails. At a push, they also double as an inbuilt weapon system.