Strong nails are not only a decoration, but also a true sign of your good health, besides, perfect manicure can accentuate beauty of your hands. Correct nail is even, slightly prominent, light-pink. Do you have such nails? Great! If no, take care of your manicure carefully…

Beautiful, refined nails are an important detail of our appearance. People understood this long ago. Pharaohs had slaves, who should take care of royal hands. Elegant matrons ordered cutting nails every 9 days.

Ancient Egyptians, for example, had thorough manicure: they colored nails green. Ancient Indians preferred red color. However, sometimes fashion took odd shapes, especially from the point of view of a modern person. Thus, in some countries of South-East Asia there were even peculiar competitions in nail growing. Record was 40-45 cm. a champion needed about 8 years to achieve such result.

From time to time you need to cut your nails. Maybe, you would like to know the way they are growing? On average, nails grow 1 mm per week, in summer quicker, in winter slower. Right hand is little more “swift”, than left.

Nail care

Beautiful nails always decorate hands. However, the first condition of beauty is their absolute cleanness. There is always dust under nail tips. However, it is absolutely inadmissible to make it noticeable for other people. Take cleaning surface under nail tip with a soft lathery brush as a rule. Do it at least twice a day. Keep such brush not only at home in a bathroom, but also at work. Do not clean nails using sharp metallic objects – metal scrapes nail surface and dirt eats into it. If you have to do some dirty work, for example, with earth, we recommend you rubbing nails with a wet piece of soap, and then remove soap excess with a cotton wool. When you finish work, wash out soap.

Even if your nails are absolutely healthy, they need constant care.

1. Every evening you need to massage nails and nail bed with a special cream.

2. It is better not cutting cuticle, but moving it aside. You should not necessarily slave over scissors to make your nails neat. Orange tree stick and cuticle remover – are everything you need. Apply remover on cuticle and move it aside carefully in a minute using stick. Use cuticle oil even on finished nails. Anyway, do not overdo, to avoid breach nail nutrition.

3. Different baths and masks are useful periodically.

4. When you finish with nails, apply nourishing cream on hands and massage them gently. Stroke fingers and hands towards forearms, as if you are pulling on tight gloves.

5. Do manicure every week.

Agnails

As a rule, agnails are a result of lack of regular nail care, nail-biting, chemicals and detergents influence. Cut agnails using cutting pliers for agnail removal. To prevent further agnail formation, use massage oil or cream once a week. If agnails cause unpleasant or painful sensations, apply moisturizing cream on them twice a day – this will reduce painful sensations and hasten cicatrization.

Nail fragility

Heightened nail fragility can be caused by derangement of metabolism in organism, wrong nutrition, chemical influence, nail varnishes and removers.

There are lots of recipes for nail strengthening and we want sharing some of them, maybe, they will help you.

- Prepare a nourishing wax ointment. Grind boiled egg yolk, add 4 g beeswax, drawn on water bath, and pour some vegetable oil to get ointment consistence. You can use this remedy every evening, better – before going to bed.

- This mask will be also good: mix 0,5 tea spoon red pepper, 1 tea spoon nourishing cream and 10 drops water. Heat on water bath and apply on nails for 10 minutes.

- You can make nail vegetable oil baths with addition of several drops vitamin A and lemon juice. Baths of vegetable oil and apple vinegar, mixed in equal parts, are also efficient.

- Mixture of lemon juice and warm olive oil is also useful. Keep hands in it for 10-20 minutes before going to bed. You can achieve great effect, if you put on soft cotton gloves after this (hands will be saturated with oil carefully in this case).

- If you have peeling or fragile nails, you should drop them into warm olive oil for 10 minutes, and then apply iodine on them.

- Put hands in warm olive oil and wait for 30 minutes. Repeat such procedure once a week. By the way, doing manicure after such bath is very easy. Hot baths are also an excellent remedy against agnails, they help removing peeling, reddening and dryness.

- Wax lip balm is a very efficient remedy to soften nails.

- Salt baths are also useful: dissolve 3 table spoons salt (better marine or iodinated) in 2 glasses of hot water and keep fingertips in the solution for 15-20 minutes.

“Correct” nail varnish

Nail varnish is the simplest remedy to accentuate beauty of female hand. Well, how should you choose the right varnish? Before you buy varnish, look at the bottle closely. Pay attention at shelf life.

It is better buying a bottle with a small metallic ball inside – it will mix slightly resinous varnish quickly. Open a bottle and drop varnish on your nail – a drop should flow from a brush during 5 seconds. Varnish should not be too thick and viscid – otherwise it cannot be spread over nail evenly. If varnish is high-quality, one coat will be enough (although, experts advise covering nails with 2 coats).

Brush’s nap should not be too rough or soft. However, you can test brush easily – put it on your nail: high-quality brush’s hairs will be spread in the form of fan. Varnish color seems bright and rich in a bottle. Do not delude yourself – it will look differently on your nails. As a rule, shop assistants offer transparent stencils-testers with several tints of different varnishes – this way you can choose appropriate color. High-quality varnish is evenly spread over nail surface, lasts during at least 5 days, does not chap and exfoliate.

Do not dry nails with a hair dryer. Varnish dries roughly due to too hot air, its surface can become muddy, rough, covered with bubbles.

To protect your nails from damages, cover nails with a special base before you apply varnish – such bases strengthens nails, prevents them from exfoliation and promotes even varnish distribution.

To apply varnish evenly, it should be applied on warn hands and dry nails. Constant varnish usage is not recommended, you should give your nails rest periodically.

Nails are a window to your health

Nail condition testifies your state of health. On East doctors still diagnose people basing on nail bed state. Nails have their specific diseases, but also can tell about organism’s diseases.

Too round nails say about lung problems. Pale and concave surface can indicate anemia. Heightened nail fragility usually says about metabolic disorder or endocrine pathology. Gynaecological disorders almost always worsen nail structure.

You can read many interesting things basing on “patterns” and marks on nails. Thus, lengthwise brown lags tell about heightened iron content or hormonal disorders. Dots appear due to skin diseases, for example, psoriasis. Bluish nails say about heart disease, pale – liver problems. Mycotic infection causes yellowness. Nails can become green, blue and even black due to yeastlike microorganisms.

Eutrophy

Sometimes non-aesthetic nail changes can be caused by lack of nutritive elements. Thus, while lack of iron or zinc, nails become uneven, relief. Fragility can appear due to lack of vitamins group B (contained in cabbage, brewer’s yeast, egg yolk, germinated wheat grains).

Vitamin A is also necessary for nail growth and strengthening (you can find it in liver, butter, green, tomatoes and carrot).

Iodine is useful – it promotes nail growth (contained in laminaria and spinach) and silicon (contained in fresh vegetables). Sulfur is also very important in nail bed formation (contained in cabbage, onion, cucumbers). Eat more sour milk produce, kefir, yogurt, cotton cheese, cheeses – they are rich in calcium, phosphorus, fluorine. Frequent marine fish consumption will also enrich organism with calcium.

Nails require regular care and weekly manicure. Do not forget about daily moistening. Protect them from cold, sun and take good care of cuticle. This is an optimum nail care.