Ways to Keep Your Nails Healthy

Your hands tell the story of your life. Calluses show where you’ve repeated actions that are important to you. The color of your polish gives a clue about your personal style.

Your hands and nails also tell a lot about your health and personal hygiene. A set of infected, ragged-looking nails is unpleasant to look at and may make people think you don’t take good care of yourself. 

Follow these nail tips to keep your nails healthy and fresh-looking always!

Moisturize Cuticles

Your cuticles are the protective barrier for your nail bed. If your cuticles are in bad shape, your nail is at much more risk for infection. Moisturize daily with a specific cuticle moisturizer, and avoid trimming or pushing them back. You can even make a request to avoid this step at your next professional manicure.  

Watch out for early signs of infection such as redness, swelling, soreness, and pus at the cuticle. If you experience any of those symptoms, seek a doctor’s care right away.

Regularly Trim Your Nails

Just like healthy hair is regularly cut hair, healthy nails are regularly trimmed nails. Talons may be trendy, but the healthiest nails are kept short and clean.

The longer your nails are the more likely it is for them to snag and break. These breaks can travel much further down the nail than just a superficial break and can even cause infection.

Cut your nails straight across and then file the sides to a rounded look for the strongest shape. After cutting, gently buff your nails too to avoid rough edges that can snag more easily.

Gently Clean Your Nails

Leave the special cleaning tools to the professionals. At home, all you need to clean your nails is a nail brush. Cleaning your nails with metal tools at home can create a gap between your nails and skin that makes infection more likely.

Instead, gently scrub under your nails with a nail brush nightly.

Wear Gloves

There’s a reason fashionable ladies used to wear gloves. They protected their nails from daily activities and kept infection causes bacteria away.

Today, you probably aren’t wearing gloves as a part of your daily outfit, but there are certain situations where it’s better to protect your nails from the outside elements. Wear gloves in the cold so that nails don’t become dry and brittle. Keep rubber gloves and work gloves around for doing the dishes in the sink or working in the garden. These are activities where nails are at greater risk.

Get Regular Simple Manicures

Professional care is the best care when it comes to nails. Regularly see a manicurist to clean and shape your nails. You can pretty frequently get a normal polish manicure as long as you remove it with an acetone-free remover and give your nails breaks.

Every once in a while, a gel or acrylic manicure is alright if done by a reputable manicurist. These are especially helpful if you’re trying to break the habit of nail-biting.

Easy Regular Nail Care

By just adding some simple upkeep to your life, you can always have beautiful, healthy-looking nails. Keep them trimmed, protect them with gloves, polishes, and moisturizers, and don’t forget to ask a manicurist for help.

Want more advice for personal health and hygiene? Take a look at our blog for more beauty inspiration.