Nail care is an essential part of personal grooming. Usually women are conscious about their makeup, dress and overall beauty of their face and body.
But often they are careless about their nails and do not pay much attention to grooming healthy and strong nails.
You don’t have to rush to beauty salon for having healthy and beautiful nails. With simple home remedies you can get healthy and shining nails.
Effective Home Remedies For Nail Care
Protect Your Nails
We use our fingernails all day long for peeling an orange, strumming a guitar and even for scratching and itching. But overuse or misuse of the nails can make them brittle, broken and even susceptible to nasty fungal infections. When we do a lot of household chores, our nails easily get damaged. Wear rubber gloves while gardening, washing and cleaning with soap to protect your nails. When you have hygienic and healthy nails, it will not only enhance the look of your hands and feet but will also protect them from germs and bacteria.
Eat Healthy
When you don’t give proper attention to your nails, they become brittle and dry. Healthy nails are those which appear crystal clear and have a pink shine reflecting from them because of the healthy flow of blood in the nail tissues underneath. You need to have a healthy diet to keep your nails healthy.
Your diet must contain foods rich in silicon and sulphur, essential vitamins like B vitamins, fatty acids and minerals like zinc for healthy nail growth. Calcium and phosphorous are vital for strong nails, which can be obtained from milk, cheese and curd. Fish, onion and broccoli are good for nail health. Whole grains, banana and carrot juice are equally good for cultivating healthy nails. Drinking adequate water and fluids is also necessary for keeping the nails hydrated. Deficiency of these vitamins and minerals can make the nails dry and brittle and susceptible to cracking and chipping.
Trimming The Nails
Before cutting your nails, especially toe nails, soak them in warm soapy water for few minutes to soften them and avoid splitting. Wait until nails are little dry and then cut them straight across.
Use a nail filer to shape your nail and make the edges smooth. Inappropriate cutting of toenails can result in splitting up of the nails at the corner. The shorter your nails are, the stronger they will be. If you want your nails to be longer, they should be squarer.
Caring For Cuticles
Cutting the cuticles with mechanical instruments can lead to infection. Don’t use orange sticks. Use a nail brush dipped in baking soda for scrubbing and softening the cuticles and cleaning the nails. Gently push the cuticles back using a moist towel. This will stimulate new growth.
Moisturize Your Nails
For keeping the nails healthy, beautiful and shiny, these home remedies are very effective.
Lemon Juice, Egg White & Olive Oil
Combine egg white of an egg, equal quantity of lemon juice and olive oil in a bowl. Soaking nails in this mixture for at least 10 minutes will provide great results.
Try this before going to bed at least twice a week. Olive oil will moisturize your dry nails and the nutrients contained in egg whites and lemon juice will nourish and strengthen your nails.
Sea Salt
Soak your fingertips for 15 minutes in a bowl of warm water after adding 1 tbsp. of sea salt in it. Wipe your fingers and apply moisturizer or petroleum jelly. Repeating this process for a week every month will make your nails healthy and strong. Use this process for your toe nails also.
Remedy For Yellow Toe Nails
If you have yellow toe nails, it can be a symptom of bacterial or fungal infection. But there are many effective home remedies which you can use to clear up the fungal infection and bring back the natural color of your nails. Tea tree oil has antifungal and antiseptic properties and can be an effective for treating toe nail fungus.
Just dilute tea tree oil with olive or lavender oil and apply 3-4 times a day using cotton ball on your toe nails. Within 10-15 days, fungus will be gone and you will regain the natural color of your nail. Similarly, soaking the feet in Listerine which contain antibacterial properties, apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, which have a mild acidic effect can treat discoloration of the nail and infection effectively and restore nail health.
Messaging the nails with olive oil, coconut oil or any other moisturizing cream every day and wearing cotton gloves while going to bed will make your dry nails healthy and strong and give them a pinkish shine. A weekly manicure at home can do wonders to your nails and cuticles. Wear nail polish to protect your nails.
