After about fifteen years of wearing acrylic nails, my wife has decided to give them up. Nail salon operators having the motivations and incentives one would expect, she is being told left and right that her natural nails will never be healthy again.
So firstly, what is the likely level of accuracy of this assertion?
Secondly, if (as I suspect) it’s not an accurate assertion, what are some products my wife could start using to increase the health of her natural nails? She has old me that she’s not particularly interested in drinking liquid unflavored gelatin, although she’s not averse to the idea of some sort of supplement, such as a vitamin. She’s thinking more along the lines of a nail-hardening polish, or hand cream, though.
If she’s intending to go completely cold turkey, ANY type of polish would be detrimental to the total condition of the nail.
She essentially must wait it out until new nail has grown to replace the damaged nail she has now. The thumbnail can take six months to grow out completely.
I think gelatin comes in capsule form.
Here is gelatin from a supplier I use occasionally.
~VOW
I take gelatin capsules. You can sometimes find it at CVS or other chain drug stores, but not always. I also use a product made by Nutra Nail called “5 to 7 Day Growth Formula”. It’s a liquid you paint on your nails and cuticles and then massage in. It actually works for me, unlike every other of the hundreds of products I’ve tried. Nutra Nail has a couple of other products that are similar and one I remember has green tea in it, but they all basically work the same for me. Tell her, good luck and have patience.
She can try gel-format vitamin E capsules for her nails - break one open and massage it onto her nails and cuticles. It will help with the appearance and also keep the skin healthy.
The nail itself is dead, so it can’t really be helped. All she can do at this point is cosmetic.
To make them look less bad - cut them as close to the quick as possible so that less “ugly” nail is showing. She can do this probably once every three or four days, which will give her a sense of doing something. Make sure not to cut past the white, and be careful around the corners and the cuticle or she’ll end up doing more damage.
To make the nails grow faster - eat properly and well, and make sure she’s getting her vitamins. Jury is out on things like hand massages, heat treatments, and topical keratin or supplement treatments, but extra blood flow (from heat or massage) can’t hurt, most supplements are harmless (check your labels) and massages are always nice, so as long as she’s careful, what’s the harm?
To make the current nails look somewhat ok - apply topical stuff to them them with vitamin e, or keratin-containing serums (usually intended for smoothing flyaways on hair) which will make the nails shiny and the surrounding skin perhaps a bit healthier, but at least smoother and nice-looking.
Other than that, she’s just in for a long wait. Between 3-6 months is a good estimate of the total time to having all-fresh undamaged nails.
I wore acrylics for 8 years. When I removed them, yes, the nails were paper-thin. They grew back fine and I just used a Sally Hansen clear polish until they were grown in fully again. Took probably 6 months. During that time I imagined how much I might have had in a savings account if I had just saved all that acrylic money…
In the line of business I’ve been in for the last 10 years, nails growing past the end of my finger just get in the way and I keep them quite short. Now, if they do get just past the end of my finger before I get around to trimming them, I scratch myself and catch them on things!
Another vote for biotin. I also had good results with one of the Sally Hansen products for problem nails. And the Sally Hansen “Hard as Wraps” polish really made my nails much less prone to peeling.
It’s probably not sold in the US, but there is a supplement from Australian company Blackmores called Nails Hair and Skin - key ingredients being the aforementioned biotin, plus silica and zinc. Might be something similar available over there.
I haven’t seen it for awhile, but I used to see this stuff that was based on the cream rubbed into horses’ hooves to harden/polish them. It seems to have gotten started when horsewomen noticed that, when they used it on their horses, their own nails got stronger, too.
I never put that stuff on my horses’ hooves but I had friends who did, and they swore by it, even before it was available commercially.
It was a thick cream, and it smelled kinda funny (because horses don’t care). I tried it a couple of times but never bought any because routinely rubbing stuff into my nails isn’t something I’m good at. I’ll bet the version for humans smelled better and cost a lot more. The horse stuff came in a tub.
My grandmother and I were just talking about this very subject! After 20 odd years of acrylics she tried shellac. I was telling her about the various products out there now that weren’t available when she first started acrylics that she could use to strengthen her naturally thin nails, but she knew that she wouldn’t do all the up keep and decided to go back to acrylics.
Anyway, Hilarity N. Suze mentioned stuff made for horse hooves. I personally use Barielle Professional Nail Strengther Cream purchased from Sally Beauty Supply. It was originally made for horses and it awesome. They used to sell it at Ulta but they don’t seem to sell anything by that brand anymore. Its also available at drugstore.com but Sally’s has the best price. Be warned, when I first started using it, I had some wicked hangnails but that problem cleared up pretty quickly. There is also a similar product that I haven’t tried available at Sally’s called Hoofer’s Choice Nail and Cuticle Cream. It costs less than Barielle at either site. Since my pony by proxy needs hoof cream my sweet pea is thinking of getting a hoof cream for my grandmother and I to share with him. Should we ever do that, I’ll report on the effects.
Biotin is awesome for strengthening nails and its good for your hair too.
Personally, I find the more nice things I do to my nails the faster they grow, this doesn’t happen for everyone so I would suggest that she take good care of her cuticles with a nice cuticle oil (I have a million but my favorite is Solar Oil, a nice hand moisturizer (fave is Ahava hand cream* and put something on her nails based on her needs (which is a very personal decision). I had been using OPI Nail Envy usually for dry nails, sometimes original formula, but my nails were being cranky. I ended up switching to Seche Recondition and I can actually feel them become less dry when I apply it. I think one of the ingredients is awesomesauce.
I’m sure you’ll get oodles of advise here, and if you wife is looking for even more I’ve gotten just tons at MakeupAlley. They totally helped fix my dry nail problem … and created my I need another piece of furniture to hold my nail polish problem.
Good luck to your wife!
*Before the Ahava hand cream, I would have parts of my hands that would just crack and bleed. I stumbled into Sephora one day and said: Please help me. They did!
Yep, biotin really made a difference for me, too, along with regular use of cuticle cream. “Never” be healthy again is BS - as pointed out, they’re already dead. Assuming the nail bed is still healthy (and I don’t see how it could be affected by acrylics) they’ll eventually grow back same as before.
(Disclaimer: I never had acrylics. However, I used to have insanely thin, easy-peel nails and once I started using cuticle cream and taking biotin supplements regularly, they started growing stronger, longer, and healthier. Hair, too.)
No personal experience with acrylics, but look at your thumbnails.
See the pink part? It’s sort of square, right? My brother used to bite his nails so badly that people remarked on it; he once told me “I don’t see how that’s their problem, my nails are fine!” “No, they’re not. Compare the shape of my thumbnails and yours, bubba.” :eek:
His were triangular; he’d chewed on them so often and for so long that what should be a horizontal (if slightly curved) line at the top with his hands raised vertically was a diagonal.
It took over a year for his nails to recover, but after two you would never have believed he used to chew them. He too had been told “OMG your nails will never grow back”
[QUOTE=VOW;14614740
She essentially must wait it out until new nail has grown to replace the damaged nail she has now. The thumbnail can take six months to grow out completely.
~VOW[/QUOTE]
It can even take longer. I had my thumb slammed in a door and it took almost 11 months for it completely to grow back.
I’ve had great luck with hair and nail vitamins from GNC, but I’m told there are some sold at WalMart that are awesome. She can take those and use some sort of protein filler polish until her nails grow out. The current nails are “ruined,” but they will grow out and normal, healthy nails will grow in their place. If she takes the vitamins, it won’t take long at all, maybe 4-6 weeks.
Yes, Jello will work too, and it’s also great for aging joints and soft tissue, help keep everything pliable.
(My problem with Jello is it’s flavoured like Koolaid - yuck, unless you’re 8 yrs old! But I stumbled onto something really wonderful at the Chinese Grocery. Actual fruit flavoured Jelly mix. First I was hooked on Blackcurrant, then it was honeydew melon, and now it’s passionfruit. They are awesome! The flavour is delicate and mild, the colour pleasing and almost clear. Yum!) (Avoid Halal jelly mixes, in my experience, they never completely set up, like Jello.)
OPI’s Nail Envy works very well as a topical - she should put it on her nails once a day while they’re growing out - either the glossy or matte work equally well.
Its also available at 
