Which Vitamins Are Good For Nails & Why You Should Care

If you read this blog, you most likely care about having healthy nails. Take a trip down the nail care isle & you will find all sorts of products you can slather on your nails to improve their health. Do these products work? Maybe, it varies from product to product. But let's take a step back for a moment & consider what our nails actually are.

Our nails are made up of a protein called keratin. Keratin is a really interesting protein because it is a major component of not only our nails but our skin & hair as well. Considering how different these three things are, it is really cool that one protein can play such a large role in all three. Highly simplified, our nails are formed by keratinized skin cells. Before we go on, let's break down the different parts of the nail so we can better understand how nail growth occurs.

• Nail plate - This is the part of the nail we see & polish
• Nail bed - Skin below the nail plate. The pink tint of the nail is due to the blood vessels found here
• Cuticle - Tissue that overlaps the plate & rims the base of the nail. The cuticle protects the new growing cells of your nails
• Nail folds - Skin folds that frame & support the nail on three sides
• Lunula - The whitish half-moon at the base of the nail
• Matrix - Hidden part of the nail under the cuticle - This is where most of the action takes place

New cells are formed in the matrix. As more & more form, the older cells are pushed out, packed together & flattened to form the nail plate. This means the majority of our nails are actually dead cells. That is why you can file & trim your nails painlessly. So while adding products to your nails might improve their appearance or temporarily reinforce them greater attention should be paid to improving the health of the living cells before they undergo the keratinization process. Like any organ in our bodies, nails are an external gauge of our internal health. Doctors actually will use the appearance of nails as an aide in diagnosis - here are a few examples of what your nail appearances could reveal about your health.  

I understand that isn't the answer most people want. We are used to quick fix products & instant results - hence why these products are appealing to people. But if you're patient & work on making sure your body is getting the essential components it needs for healthy nails you will eventually notice a difference. Nails need a few more things besides keratin to be healthy. Nails need a lot of vitamins, just to name a few...

• B-complex
• C
• A
• E 
• D
• Calcium
• Zinc
• Iodine
• Iron
• Folic acid

If we are lacking these vitamins or our bodies are having a hard time absorbing them our nails will become dry, brittle, dull and more prone to breakage & peeling. So how do we make sure our nails have all the vitamins they need? One way is diet - a diet rich in fruits, veggies, eggs, fish, seeds, nuts, & whole grains will provide our bodies with vitamins that make nails happy. But most people aren't going to change their diet just for their nails & some people flat out can't. This is where vitamin supplements come into play. Buying all these vitamins separately will drain your wallet & is not exactly convenient. Luckily you can find Hair, Skin & Nail (makes sense now, eh?) vitamin supplements that are pre-blended to help promote nail health.

A word of caution - do not let yourself get ripped off! When I went to CVS to purchase vitamins I found many brands charging $15 & up. The most important thing to do is check the label, the generic brand had all the same vitamins as the most expensive brands for a fraction of the price. Also, check the directions. The ones I bought tell me to take three a day but I stick to one - I honestly think that is just an attempt to get you to spend more money. If you look at the the percentage of daily value taking three tablets would put you at up to a 1000% of the daily value for some vitamins - which I personally don't think is necessary. That is a personal choice - look at the percentages on your bottle & decide for yourself. 

What other things beside vitamins promote nail health?

• Keep away from smoking. Smoking can cause nails to be yellow & brittle - not to mention it is gross & could kill you. 
• Use those base coats! Base coats provide a barrier between your nail & polish which can prevent staining. Also, a lot of base coats also contain vitamins themselves.
• Keep those cuticles moist & avoid cutting if possible - cuticles take care of your growing nail cells so be sure to take care of them. Also, avoid getting much polish on them if you can. I plan on doing a more in-depth cuticle post in the future. 

In my last post I mentioned I was working on getting some neon polishes so I could do a laser mani walkthrough - well here they are!

The two reds aren't neon, they were just on sale & I couldn't resist

Thanks to my lovely girlfriend I have striping tape on the way so I'm hoping by this weekend I should be good to go. So far my seran wrap nails are still looking great - which I have to credit to the Seche Vite top coat.

Thank you to everyone who has liked my Facebook page & followed me on Twitter - it is nice to know I'm not just talking to myself on here :)

Seran Wrap Nails

When I first started getting interested in painting my nails I browsed a lot of different nail blogs. I found a lot of really nice blogs - too nice. I felt really intimidated by the amazing designs I saw and my own lack of skill. That is why I decided to start my own blog by an admitted novice. I'm not an expert, I'm showing my learning process and the tips I gain along the way. The only way to learn is practice so I figured I would jump in. I have a whole list of techniques I want to try but I decided to start out with a simple technique - seran wrap nails.

But before I start, I went shopping today!  While browsing Walgreens I stumbled across these Wet n' Wild polishes & for 99 cents a piece I couldn't help fill in some color gaps I had in my stash. I especially needed a yellow for when I attempt rainbow nails in the very near future. I was inspired to buy the gold by my excitement over receiving an early copy of Richelle Mead's The Golden Lily.

Yup, I have The Golden Lily early. I have a Barnes & Noble error to thank for that!

Anyway, on to the seran wrap nails! Seran wrap nails require at a minimum two different color polishes, so I chose to use Sally Hansen The Real Teal & Virtual Violet.

And of course, we need the seran wrap. The brand doesn't matter, you can find seran wrap at any grocery store & I'd be willing to bet the dollar store has it too. Before any polish comes out cut your pieces of seran wrap off the roll. It requires ten little pieces, one for each nail. This is much easier to do with dry nails. Also make sure to keep a trash can close for this manicure to discard of the seran pieces after they are used as to prevent a mess.

Before we get to painting there are a few things I need to take care of. Before I got to painting I would like to call attention to the unseen stars of all my manicures...

Here we have cuticle remover gel from Sally Hansen, a plastic cuticle pusher, & Seche Vite clear base & top coat. Since this is my first time outlining a manicure I thought I would go through my pre-mani routine. Unless I state otherwise this is my standard routine. I prefer not to cut my cuticles because 1. I heard cutting the cuticles can cause damage and impair growth and 2. I don't trust myself to not botch it and hack them to hell. So I use a cuticle remover gel. So far Sally Hansen's is the only one I've tried but once it runs out I will try another brand. It is easy to use, you simply apply it to the cuticles and allow it to sit & soak in. Once it has soaked use a cuticle pusher to remove the extra cuticle skin, with the gel it will come right off without any cutting. I prefer to use a plastic pusher since the gel moistens the wood cuticle pushers - plus they tend to splinter. 

Let it soak for 1-2 minutes but no longer than 10 minutes.

Next comes the base coat. Per the recommendations of many posters of r/RedditLaqueristas I used Seche Vite clear base coat. They were actually on sale at my local Sally Beauty Supply 2 for $10. Base coats are important for a few different reasons. The first is they help protect your nails from those pesky stains I was fighting with in my last post. They also often contain vitamins that contribute to the health of your nails. From an esthetic point of view they give your polish a smoother look & help the polish stick to your nails.

Base coat is now equipped. 

Now the fun part - the color! Paint the first color on your nails as you would with any regular mani. I chose to paint the violet polish on first & did two coats to get a deeper color. 

Before I decided to add a second coat. A little messy but since another color is going over it that is okay.

Before you start painting the next color on, keep in mind this next step needs to be done quickly & I found it easier to do it nail by nail instead of painting the whole hand. That being said...

Paint the second coat over the first completely. 

Time to use those seran wrap strips! After painting the second coat bunch the seran piece in your hands and dab it over the wet polish. Dab as much or as little as you please until you like the design. I found that if I took a little too much of the top polish off I could actually dab the wet seran wrap back on to restore a little bit of the polish with no negative consequences. 

Thank you to my sister Ashley for helping me take this picture

After repeating this process on all ten nails seal the design in with the top coat. This was my first time using the Seche Vite top coat and I loved it. It dried quickly and the shine was wonderful.

Pretty, but messy.

As you can see we have some clean-up to do. The dabbing aspect of this technique makes this an especially messy mani. In previous manis I had used q-tips dipped in polish remover to do clean-up but the shape & size of the q-tip made controlling the clean-up difficult. So for this clean-up I will be trying out the new brushes I bought & acetone.

This part is pretty simple. Simply dip the brush into the acetone and brush around the nail to clean up any polish on the skin. A word of caution - I decided to pour a little acetone into the lid rather than dip the brush right into the bottle because the acetone was actually removing the black paint from the brushes & causing a mess. 

I originally thought I would prefer the smaller brush due to not wanting to ruin the mani but I found the thicker brush actually worked better & with some patience didn't harm the mani. However it is still best to be careful & use the minimum acetone you can to avoid bleeding into your mani. Don't forget to moisturizing afterwards either. 

I was actually really happy with the outcome of this mani, but the Seche Vite top coat is so beautifully glossy that getting a decent picture without glare was difficult so I apologize for the somewhat poor lighting. I think when I do this mani technique in the future I will use colors with a stronger contrast to really get the full effect. Overall I'm happy with this quick, simple style.