What are the best things I can add to my diet to improve the overall condition and strength of my nails? My nails are extremely weak, they peel and break and are very annoying. I know that nails need protien,calcium, and keratin. I have tried jello but I didn’t get any results. I assume one would have to ingest mass quantities of gelatin daily and indefinitely to achieve noticable results. I drink a lot of milk but that doesnt seem to help. I have tried a topical fortifying solution (not nail polish) which seems to be helping a great deal, but I want to make them strong from the inside-out.
MagicalSilverKey
Consider acrylic nail overlays. I have my nails done every two weeks, but keep them fairly short (only about 3/8 inch above the end of my finger) as I type quite a bit. They nearly always look perfect.
After more than a decade of struggling with trying to improve my natural nails, this has been by far the most sucessful route.
If you’ve tried all those things with no real success, and its something that’s important to you, consider acrylic nails.
This might seem a bit drastic - depends how much you want better nails I suppose.
Pregnancy.
Only time in my life that my fingernails (which sound just like yours) grew beyond the ends of my fngers. Stopped delaminating too.
Mind you, to keep long nails for the next few years, you’ll wind up paying a fortune for disposable nappies. Maybe acrylic nails were a better suggestion. Just pretend I didn’t speak.
I, too, suffer from the weak nail syndrome. I was told by a woman with HUGE nails (she claimed they were natural) that she took calcium suppliments every day. Actually, she took Tums every day, but I have since learned that much of a bass in your stomach can do MAJOR damage. So try taking calcium suppliments. Good for preventing osteoperosis, too.
My sister claimed she grew her nails out by putting nail lotion (you can buy it at any beauty store) on her nails at night, then wore moisterizing gloves to bed. The negetive is that you look like Mickey Mouse. But her nails DID grow.
Strange about the pregnancy, usually the fetus saps up nutrients like calcium from nails, teeth and hair. I asked my health class teacher in high school if they would qualify as a parasite. She was confused. 
A little persistance goes a long way. Announcing:
“I go on guilt trips a couple of time a year. Mom books them for me.” A custom made Wally .sig!
My grandmother owned a beauty salon for 40 years, and she swore by this: Soak your fingertips in warm olive oil every night. Has to be olive oil, as opposed to say, Wesson (don’t ask me why) and it needs to be as warm as you can stand it without deep-frying your fingers.
I can’t vouch for this one personally, because although my nails are naturally pretty tough, they’re also prone to catastrophic accidents. (Car doors, falling monitors, etc)
The gelatin works. You can buy the orange-flavored gelatin and put it in your OJ. (Not Jello. I can’t remember the name of the brand.) It’s pretty expensive though.
Years ago, when I worked at Mc Donald’s, my nails grew like crazy. I always assumed it was just all the grease from the meat I touched all day long.
Pregnancy works too. Everyone says that prenatal vitamins do the trick, but they are wrong. It’s some hormone your body produces while you are pregnant, not the pills. (I can attest to that, because I still take my prenatal vitimins and my nails look like hell 5 months post partum.)
So - soak your nails in grease (or olive oil as mentioned above) and take gelatin every day (not jello).
Swimmingriddles the unborn are parasites while inutero. They’re worth it though. You just have to make sure that you take care of yourself, especially if you nurse your baby. The baby gets his nutrients first; you get what’s left over. If there aren’t any nutrients left over for you, you lose teeth and bone and stuff like that.
Protein shakes! Get Designer Protein; it’s available at GNC. It tastes awful, so mix it with milk or a strongly flavored juice, and knock it back quickly. It’ll make your nails grow faster and stronger, and your hair grow faster and thicker.
“Hush, village idiot!”
Isn’t that Knox Blocks? I seem to remember adding that to regular jello to make it firmer.
The more I teaches you, the dumber you gets.
Yeah. MagicalSilverKey said she has already tried these things that are being suggested and not had any results though.
Sometimes, doing all these these things just doesn’t change a thing.
If nice looking nails are what you want, and you can accept a regular maintainance schedule that incidentally is FAR less time consuming than trying to maintain a nice mainicure on your own, think about giving it over to the professionals.