What Your Finger Nails Can tell you about your health
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Wed Jul 2, 08 07:22 AM
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Health
Nails that are discolored, ridged, split, thickened, or misshapen may reflect improper hygiene and diet -- or may simply be variants of normal nails. Occasionally, however, they can also serve as important clues to serious disease elsewhere in your body.
Pale nails, for example, may be an early sign of anemia. If the anemia is severe enough, the nails eventually become brittle, and their surfaces may become flat or concave like a spoon. They often also develop longitudinal ridges. Bluish nails(cyanosis), by contrast, can signal exposure to a toix chemical such as excess copper or silver. If accompanied by shortness of breath and coughing, they can also indicate some degree of heart failure or a chronic lung disorder. Opaque, whitish nails may be a sigh of liver disease, particularly chronic hepatitis or cirrhosis, while a whitish colour at the base of the nail may signal chronic kidney disease. If the whitish half-moon that is normally present at the base of the nail becomes faded, there may be a problem with the pituitary gland.
Nails that develop horizontal lines and ridges may reflect exposure to some toxic chemical or poison, or a recent serious illness or surgery. Nails may split or become deformed when arthritis inflames the finger joints. Brittle nails that separate easily from the nail bed sometimes suggest an underactive thyroid gland. But if the nails are concave in addition to being brittle and loose, the problem may turn out to be an overactive thyroid gland.
If the only problem is a separation of the trimmed end of the nail from the underlying skin, the problem may be psoriasis, a condition in which silvery white scales cover parts of the skin, or a fungal infection. If bacteria enter this space, the nail may appear black or greenish. In any case, a dermathologist or other physician should usually be consulted, since the trimmed end of the nail may separate from the underlying skin in a variety of other conditions as well, including vitamin deficiency or clogging of the arteries with plague.
Clubbed fingernails, which are extremely rounded like the back of a spoon and, when viewed from the side, run into the skin in a straight line, may occur in many different diseases. These include congenital heart disease, lung cancer, long-standing infections, abscesses, chronic heart and lung disorders, and tuberculosis.
A woman who notices a painless "splinter" under her nail should consult a clinician right away, since this may actually be a small hemorrhage characteristic of bacterial endocarditis. This infection of the membrane that covers the interior of the heart is particularly likely in women with mitral valve prolapse, heart murmurs, or other defects of the heart valves. Splinter-like hemorrhages under the nails can also be due to trichinosis, an infection that can result form eating raw or undercooked pork, as well as from lupus and dermatoyositis.
Finally, chewed and bitten nails can be a sign of excessive emotional stress -- particularly when nails are gnawed to the point of bleeding -- though nail biting is sometimes nothing more than a disfiguring habit!
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