Rounded. Sorta. The nails on the big toes are so brittle that they tend to shatter a bit when clipped, so I just file off the edges and call it good.
I’ve never had an ingrown toenail because I wear shoes that fit!
Hmmm, that comment could sure leave someone to believe that ill-fitting shoes are the only cause of ingrown tonails. That’s not true at all. Besides the aforementioned toenail cutting mistakes that can cause ingrown tonails, they can happen in otherways too.
As one example; officiating football. All the sudden stopping and starting even with well fitting shoes would jam my tonails into the front of my shoes if they weren’t tied tight.
I’m a diabetic, and my podiatrist does indeed cut my big toenails straight across. Occasionally he’ll make a notch in them. He rounds off the smaller toenails. Then he gets out his Dremel and smooths down the edges and tops of the nails (seriously). If I have calluses, he’ll file those down as well. I am Strictly Forbidden to use anything rougher than a washcloth on my feet. After all this, he will give me a lecture on moisturizing my feet.
I used to get ingrown toenails all the time. I will still occasionally get them. They are quite painful. My podiatrist will sometimes trim out the side edges of my toenails when they start to get ingrown, but he knows what he’s doing.
I am allowed to get a pedicure at a salon, so long as the pedicurist doesn’t cut my toenails, or cut my skin. I am especially encouraged to get the delux pedicure, which includes extra moisturizing and massaging.
Toenail clippers? I just pinch the end and tear them off. Works best when the white part is about 3/16" long. Never had any problems.
Across with a slight curve on the toes, but never down into the edges. And that v thing? Never heard of it.
Fingernails curved.
Mostly motivated by what will snag least.
Ingrown toenail only once, due to (non trimming related) injury.
For both sets of nails, I follow the curve of the white part of the nail to make sure all the white is removed. I understand the straight line technique is to prevent ingrown nails, but these are only a ever a rare minor issue for me so I continue with the curved method.
I cut off whatever the clippers can get at, usually curved.
Sometimes when running the big toenails fall off (though this hasn’t happened in a year or so)
The one time I had an ingrown toenail I suffered with it for some weeks. Then one morning I was having breakfast and felt the most excruciating searing pain in my toe. Our one-week-old kitten had gently stepped on it. That was when I gave in and went to the doctor.
I stopped getting ingrown toenails when I stopped rounding.
Straight across. there’s a reason toe nail clippers are shaped differently than finger nail clippers.
I cut mine rounded. Occasionally I’ll get a sore spot where, I presume, my nail is starting to ingrow. I just get under the corner of my toenail with my fingernail, and pry it up a bit. The soreness goes away within a day. That might not work for everybody, but it works for me.
I can’t even conceive how you could cut straight across. The pink of my nail bed is rounded… if I cut straight across I’d be cutting into the quick in the middle of the nail. :eek:
Never heard of the V / notch thing, either, which makes even less sense.
Mostly straight across, but I have a couple toes where if I do just that, when the nail grows out the corner jabs into the toe next to it, so I knock the points off so that doesn’t happen. Call it straight across with slight rounding to avoid sharp bits. Never had an ingrown toenail in my life (although one hiking trip I did get a bloody foot from overlong toenails jabbing into toes, but that was almost 30 years ago)
Do you seriously think people here are recommending that you hack off the end of your toe?
“Cut straight across” essentially means that you don’t cut off the corners. And, yes, such a method helps prevent ingrown toenails.
Straight across is the safest. You can round them slightly if you’re careful not to cut past the distal aspect of the nail borders (where the skin folds adjacent to the nail plate). The main reason physicians don’t want you to cut into the nail borders is that it’s very easy to leave a nail spicule that can pierce the skin as the nail grows forward, causing an ingrown toenail (onychocryptosis). Being the farthest structures from the heart, toes don’t enjoy great blood perfusion, even in the best of circumstances and they often host a variety of nasty microbes. Infected ingrown toenails can wreak havoc in people with compromised circulation, like diabetics. Chasing gangrene up the leg with a MicroAire bone saw is, unfortunately, not an uncommon sequelae in these types of cases. So, don’t be a bathroom surgeon, don’t cut into your nail borders and if you have poor circulation, put your feet in the hands of a professional.
The v-notch is not effective according to the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons.
Hmm. It works for me.
I wonder how they tested this … did they talk a significant sample of people to notch only one toe-nail, and monitor the results long enough for the nails to grow a specified amount? Did they then switch toes, and determined if the ‘ingrowned-ness’ varied by the same amount for both feet?
How did they measure ‘ingrowned-ness’? The only metric I know is an attribute, not a variable, and it is pain/no pain, but medical professionals are very leary of accepting patient reports of pain as data.
I really want to see the raw data on that study.
Thanks for putting words in my mouth. I meant exactly what I said. I can’t conceive of it. I can’t picture it in my head. If I’m not following the curve of the nail bed, then yeah, the cut would come awfully damn close to the quick in the middle. Unless I let my toenails grow to rather obscene lengths beyond the end of my toes.
My toenails don’t have corners, they are rounded, as is the nail bed. I’ve never had an ingrown toenail, however I have hurt myself by letting my toenails grow too long. I run a lot, and if I don’t keep them trimmed, the hard toenails bang into the toes of my shoes, jamming them backward into the nail bed, which makes my toes hurt and typically causes those fun blood spots underneath the nail.
My toenails don’t grow square. If I grew them long enough to cut them square, the “corners” on either side would be long enough to extend past the (also rounded) tip of my toe, causing the aforementioned toenail banging problem. Ow.
The quick of my big toe nail is far enough back from the edge of my toe to allow a protected straight across cut.
When the nail is about 2 mm beyond the quick, I notch it to almost the quick; I re-notch every week or so, but only have to cut the nail about one a month. I really do smooth the points of the notch.
I have a similar problem to Kaio - if I don’t cut the nail rounded, the corners jut out and dig holes in my second toe. Sometimes similar issues between second and third toes sometimes.
So I cut my big toes round, and yes I have had an ingrow once, and it was painful, but so is having big gashes in my other toes.
These days I try to get in there with a pointy file and lift up the edges of the nail out of the nail bed to prevent another ingrow - that seems to have worked ok so far, but it’s not totally comfortable
Also toe nail problems come from bone damage.
I have had both great toe nails removed now.
I use a Dremel and a electric sander on my callouses.
My skin is so thick that it tends to crack a lot so moist and grind it down are the order of the day.