How Hot & Dry Conditions Affect Your Nails

By Ruslan Kozlov

The weather outside is anything but lovely in Houston, but most members of the community blame the weather on their nails. However, dry nail breakage is as much a phenomenon as humidity. It has nothing to do with climate.

Nails are growing out of the nail bed and cracking instead of growing in. The curve or “cupid’s bow” of the nail is referred to as a leading edge. Although there are many factors such as the way you dress and your work habits which contribute to dry nail breakage, it is usually because the nail grows so fast that it can easily go over the cupid’s bow. This speed is caused by the ligament or ribbon ligament of the nail. The ligament allows for mobility in the nail bed. Because nails are growing faster than the ligament keeps them in place, tension builds up on the ligament. The pressure of the nail on the ligament, or gossamer support, causes the fracture. It does not matter if the nail was soft or hard when it was first growing, it happens. On the other hand, the stress on the ligament from flat feet has to do with the skeleton of the feet. If the bone at the base of the foot is hard when you were small, it is because the bone is meant to be light. If you have to stress it over a period of time, the load increases and the bone becomes harder. When the pressure increases, the ligament starts to wear. To make matters worse, stress on the ligament is also transferred to the whole body. More work is doing damage to the ligament in these patients.

I remember when my mother ran a nail salon. She would call me up and say “did you get any dry callas yet?” I would not say no, but I would wait. I always thought that nail breaks occur due to this pressure. She would always say if you bend it further, it will break. Well, my wish is to make sure that you could still bend and that you could still wear a flat-footed shoe. The chances are slim, but if you can bend the ball of your foot then just see what you can do. The knees are strained too much from squats and peds for anyone to walk with flat feet. Whether you bend in the knee or ankle, the ligament always gets strained. This is a big reason why many of us end up in the hospital. An old joke was that people had broken bones but they did not break their knee ligaments, because their knee could bend. Sadly, this is not the case anymore.

Dry nail breakage has several symptoms. You may experience extreme pain or even breakage of the nail. This pain is often accompanied by feeling tenderness of the other nail or threads around the base of the nail.

I recommend a certain treatment.

First and foremost, you need a good strong clear nail clipper that you can use to slice and scrape the nail to the injury. You can also use this nail cutting machine to cut other parts of the nail, especially the other side of the “cupid’s bow”.