Why Your Nails Are Brittle and How to Fix It

Of all of the minor health situations you come across in day-to-day life, brittle, unhealthy nails are one of the more frustrating. The state of your fingernails is something that rarely goes noticed when they’re great, but when they start to become worn and tired feeling, that’s when they become irritating. Why do brittle nails occur, though? And what can be done to help make them a bit better? We’ve taken a look and broken down the most common things to look for and the best ways to tackle them.

Brittle nails are just that: nails that become frayed, tough, chipped and damaged because they’re more fragile and tough than they should be. This comes about through a few reasons. Firstly, you could work a job that means you put your hands in and out of water regularly. Too much exposure to liquid can make your nails become unhealthy. There are many other reasons why your nails start looking like this, but it doesn’t merely happen overnight. If your nails don’t get the care they deserve, they could become unhealthy for long periods of time, and this can look unhealthy, uncomfortable or just plain gross. You’re in luck, though, because there are a few ways to counter brittle nails, and it is a lot simpler than you may think. 

Top-Up Your Iron Intake

One likely reason that you’ve not got healthy nails is due to a low intake of iron. Iron is a really important part of your life because great iron amounts help transport oxygen around your body, which in turn helps red blood cells, and in turn that keeps your body functioning correctly. A lack of iron can make the body act in all different ways. And a lack of iron can see a stark effect on your nails. If you suspect low iron in your blood, always seek a doctor as it can cause damage to your body in other ways and should be addressed immediately with supplements and sometimes even extra measures. Low iron can present itself in other ways, too, not just through the integrity of your fingernails. Keep an eye out for things such as flat, limp hair, pale skin, drowsiness, low immune system, and cold limbs.

Change Your Nail Polish Situation

You could easily find your nails becoming unhealthy merely from choosing poor make-up and polish hygiene. There’s plenty of changes that can be made if your nails start becoming dry and harsh-looking. If you polish them regularly and this change has happened only recently, maybe the type of polish you’re using doesn’t agree with you. Similarly, if you’re not taking care of exactly how you remove your polish from your fingers, this could have a negative effect too. If the polish remover is too harsh, or you’re not polishing well enough, the cuticles at the end of your fingers could become worn. This will damage how your nails grow, leaving them broken and sore.

Are you a Nail Picker? 

Although we all claim not to be, when nobody is around most of us like to pick and scratch away at somewhere, it’s a guilty pleasure, and the fingernails are an easy - and tempting - place to choose. But if you are biting nails and scratching away at the cuticle of your fingernail - that tough, edge part of the bottom of the nail, you’re likely to be encouraging some unhealthy fingernail growing in the future. The cuticle is a protective seal for your nails, helping them grow correctly and preventing infection or excess water damage. Without a fully healthy cuticle, you’re just asking for brittle nails.

Remedy Environmental Causes

As mentioned earlier, it’s not always health reasons that destroy perfectly healthy nails. You could also have outside factors causing this. For example, your job may be encouraging poor practice in for your nails. If you’re a cleaner, for example, you may be regularly putting your hands in water and liquid, and while this every now and again isn’t bad form, across a number of years you may find that your nails aren’t getting the time to recover, therefore damaging your nails across the long-term. To stop this easily, wear rubber gloves while cleaning and make sure you dry your hands thoroughly once you have finished.

Moisturize Your Hands

If you don’t dry your hands properly after they’ve been in hot water, or if you spend a lot of time in the cold, your hands - and these cuticles, yet again! - can become very dry, and very dry means sore, tough and brittle. The damage mentioned above to the cuticle could be happening in this instance too. But moisturizers could help much more than that. Your nails have tiny, microscopic holes in them, and these holes could seep in water, nail polish or other nasties. This could cause you do get unhealthy, sore and chipped nails. If you moisturize before you do anything with your hands, this can help as a first line of protection against getting sore nails, and even nail fungus. 

Dehydration

Although we’ve mentioned a few times above how you can let too much water get to your fingers, you can also fall foul to having too little water yourself, fall dehydrated and this can affect your body in so many different ways, and that includes your fingernails. You need to be taking water into your body by drinking. If you don’t your skin becomes dry, you can get headaches and you’ll also end up with tough nails. Your body can’t keep your nails fresh and growing if you’re dehydrated, so all that happens is they stop growing and they become dry, brittle and old. For your overall health, it is a great idea to make sure you’re keeping hydrated with water and liquids.

In most instances, brittle nail prevention is fairly straightforward. As long as you keep hydrated, make sure you’re not having your hands in excessive amounts of water and you keep a healthy moisturizer/skin care routine for your hands, you can’t go far wrong.

If you’re particularly concerned about your fingernails, then always seek a doctor’s advice. You can always be sure to get the best treatment from there, but the above tips should keep you fairly healthy and brittle-nail free. Out of all of the advice above, the easiest to implement is to avoid chewing, biting or picking at those nail-end cuticles. The healthier they are, the better your nails will look and feel.