How to Take Care of Hands and Nails at Home

Almost all routine chores are done by your hands. Your hands are busy throughout the day. Hands bear a heavy workload. That’s why it is very important to Take Care of  Hands and Nails at Home. Do you know that well-groomed and clean nails attract the attention of people? Hands and nails demand care as you cannot stop the aging process in your hands. Proper care, cleanliness and manicure can reduce the aging factor and make your hands youthful.

First of all, you should know the health status of your hands and nails. So that you may do proper care to these body parts. How you can acknowledge the health of your hands and nails? Read carefully the well researched qualities of healthy hands and nails then compare your hands and nails according to that. You will be able to identify the health status of your hands and nails after reading this article. Here are some properties of good and healthy hands and nails.

1. Pinkish -white colored nail plate
2. Existence of cuticle
3. Appearance of a semi circular white section at the base of the nail.
4. Even lengths of white tips of nails 
5. Light red or pinkish-white colored palm.

Importance of Hands and Nails Care: Your hands are sensitive to all types of allergens. Hands have thin skin and are vulnerable to aging. In addition your hands are more exposed to germs, dirt, harsh environmental factors and sunlight. Moreover there is no protective layer on hands like other body parts. Therefore, like facial skincare routine, you should necessarily follow a skincare routine for hands. Usually you thought that face skin is more important but recent research has proven that hand’s skin is more delicate than face skin. Cleaning and moisturizing hands is the part of skincare routine at home. Hands and nails should be protected from germs, dirt and chemicals. Common ladies in houses do not take care of hands and nails. They use strong chemicals of detergents and soaps. Therefore, they are more likely to have issues in hands and nails.

Benefits of Home Care: Dermatologist Dr.Crick worked on this topic comprehensively, with his team mates. They prepared a survey report about hand and nail care at home. The survey report revealed that many of the people do not pay attention to hand and nail care. They thought it was time consuming and useless. So it has become the hot issue of the day to educate people about the importance of hand and nail care at home because by neglecting hand and nail care, people are facing skin problems in hands. During our discussion with skin specialists, we understand that home care of hand and nails is the essential step of skincare routine and it is very easy to take care of hand and nails at home by using homemade ingredients. Here are some benefits of home care for hands and nails.

Healthy Skin: Everyone wants to have healthy and smooth hand skin. To fulfill this desire you have to perform some easy tasks at home on a daily and weekly basis. Such as washing hands regularly, using a good light moisturizer to soften your hands, avoiding harsh chemicals present in detergents and some cleaning materials, protecting your hands from direct exposure to sunlight. By doing such simple tricks you can easily achieve your goal to have soft and healthy skin. Skin and hand care at home is feasible and affordable. Healthy skin glows and gives your hands a pretty look. Females have a desire to be praised for their beauty. Therefore healthy hands and skin are their first priority.

Infection Prevention: If you wash your hands regularly and keep them clean and dry, you are doing best care of your hands and nails. Regular washing and cleanliness reduce the infection probability. You can prevent fungal and bacterial infection by keeping your hands clean.

Regulate Blood Circulation: It is very feasible for you to take care of your hands and nails at home because home care affects the hand and nails health positively without any side effects. When you dip your hands in warm water and give a light massage, this regulates the blood circulation in your hands. Poor blood circulation leads to various muscle and stress problems. Therefore, massage at home can make your hands healthy and relaxed.

Pain Reduction: Hands exercise must be done. Exercise has a positive impact on hand health. By taking simple hand muscle exercises, you can reduce muscle and joint pain in hands.

Beauty and Quality Enhancement: Often you ignore your nails, some of you eat nails, some don’t care about their cleanliness and some never take a look at nails to judge the outlook. You know your nails affect the beauty of your hands. So try to keep them at an even length and clean. A simple manicure at home will enhance the beauty and quality of your nails.

Another Interesting Article: Health benefits of Dark Chocolate 

Daily Hand and Nail Care Routine

It is being thought that the daily hand and nail care routine is tough. It is considered time consuming and expensive but it is not true. Daily hand and nail care is very feasible. Everyone can do it at home by simple methods. Just washing hands regularly, cleansing with a cleanser or Aloe Vera gel and after that moisturizing, will keep your hands and nails healthy, shiny and beautiful.

Cleansing

Regular hand washing with water and soap or liquid soap is actually cleansing of hands and nails. Before and after doing any work or any household activity, washing hands is compulsory. After and before preparing and taking meals. After using the toilet after cleaning the house, toilet kitchen or utensils . After coming home from outside ,it is your first task to wash hands with water and soap. After sneezing, coughing or touching any body part, after touching animals you should wash your hands.

Choosing the Right Hand Wash: We consulted a top ranked Dermatologist in the UAE. about the specificity of the best hand wash soap. He guided us to choose the best hand wash soap. I concluded that the right hand wash should be 

• Made of natural ingredients
• Safe to use
• Have moisturizer
• Free of harmful harsh chemicals 
• Not causing dry skin and irritation 
• Actively perform to remove bacteria and viruses.

Proper Hand Wash Technique:

• Use hot or cold water to wet your hands
• Close the tap and put some drops of hand wash on your palm
• Rinse the both palms together to make lather
• Then rub and scrub the nails from outside and inside 
• Rub the outer skin of hands
• Rinse your hands with soap and water
• At last dry your hands with tissue paper or paper towel.

Moisturizing

Dermatologist Dr. Watten suggested applying moisturizing cream or lotion after washing with soap. Soaps or hand wash contain such chemical substances, which cause dryness in hands which results in irritation. 

Best Hand Creams and Lotions: Moisturizers actually save your hands from dryness and also protect them from allergens causing irritation. Frequent hand washing causes dryness, use of harsh detergents for cleaning purposes also causes skin problems. So it is essential to moisturize hands so that skin problems in hands may be eliminated. Apply a moisturizing cream or lotion to hydrate your thirsty hand skin. There are many homemade natural substances which you can use as hand moisturizer cream. As well as many good products are also available in the market to reduce dryness in hands.you should select the one which has more natural ingredients and minimum chances of side effects. You should take the one which has

• Aloe Vera
• Glycerin
• Butter Oil
• Jojoba Oil 

You should also protect your hands from exposure to heat because heat also causes dryness.

How to Apply Moisturizer: By using moisturizer creams or lotions on a regular basis, you can prevent dryness, irritation, and the aging process in your hands. Along with hand wash, moisturizing cream, sunscreen and exfoliation are also required by hand skin. In addition, a balanced diet with an excess of fruits and vegetables has a positive impact on hand skin’s health.You should follow the following steps to apply moisturizer on your hands.

Board certified Dermatologist Dr.MD. advised to apply the moisturizing cream or lotion on wet hands. This will lock moisturizer in your hand skin. Then massage your hands in a circular motion upward direction. Massage the area around nails and rub the nail tips to make them moisturized and smooth.

Nail Hygiene

Keep an eye on proper cleanliness of your nails. Clean the finger lines and white tips of nails to prevent the bacterial and viral infection. Proper hygiene of nails secure you from nail issues and also from other diseases which are caused by the use of untidy or contaminated nails. Ignorance of the hygiene of nails will lead you towards roughness and damage in your nails.

Trimming and Shaping Your Nails: Trimming and shaping the nails make your nails well-groomed and beautiful. It also makes them neat and clean and free from germs . 

Try to use a straight edge nail trimmer to cut the nails straight. It is better to keep your nails wet before trimming. After trimming, use a filler to shape the nails in round shape. After that wash the hands and apply moisturizer to make the nail tips smooth and soft. Females take great care of nail shape to enhance the beauty of hands.

Avoiding Nail Biting:  It is frequently asked by most of the females, how to control the habit of nail biting. Research reveals some methodologies to avoid nail biting.

• Apply nail paint on your nails
• Take regular manicure
• It is actually a disorder so try to divert you attention from this habit try
• Try to engage yourself to achieve your goal. 

Some emotional triggers may influence you to nail biting, you should identify those triggers and then replace those with some other habits .You can get rid of this bad habit by keeping your nails short.

Cuticle Care: Cuticle care is feasible at home. Cuticle is the protective layer of nail composed of dead cells, keeping bacteria and microbes away from nail bed to avoid germ attack. Cuticle care is easy at home. Proper manicure can also be done at salon but at home you just take warm water dip your nails in it for a while then push the overgrown cuticle then apply cuticle oil or coconut oil on nails. 

Nail Health Tips

We will discuss some nail health tips which you can use to take care of your nails at home.first of all try to maintain your cuticle, moisturize your cuticle, apply biotin then brush your nails on a daily basis. By following these tips you can take great care of your nails at home.

Preventing Nail Damage

Nail damage can be controlled by taking some useful steps for the prevention of nail damage at home. First of all clean your nails by washing regularly, avoid the nail biting, try to keep them dry, take a trim at proper time and in proper way with a high quality straight trimmer, don’t cut too deep, moisturize them on regular basis. 

Avoiding Harsh Chemicals: Try to keep away harsh chemicals to take care of your nails. Such chemicals damage the protective layer of nails, lessen the shine and decolorize the nails. These harsh chemicals also cause damage to nail beds and nail tips. So it is necessary to avoid such harsh chemicals.

Protecting Nails from Excessive Moisturizers: In some cases excessive exposure to water, has already made the hand skin and nails too soft and peel out easily.to avoid such damages, you should moisturize your nails according to requirement. Because excessive use of moisturizers can harm your skin and nails, try to use moisturizing lotion with natural ingredients.

Strengthening Nails

Factors such as weather changes, use of harsh chemicals and aging process, affect your nails badly. To strengthen your nails, you should take great care of them. You should use hand soaps with less chemicals, avoid excessive use of detergents, moisturize your nails with homemade moisturizers, cut the nails with a high quality nail cutter and file them properly, avoid excessive moisturizing, protect your nails from cold water and take manicure after one month.

Diet and Nutrition: A balanced diet protects us from many damages and diseases. Same is the case with nail care. Use of a proper and nutritious diet can strengthen our nails and keep your nails healthy.

• A diet lacking calcium leads to dry and brittle nails. Include calcium-containing meals in your diet.
• Protein deficient diets also weaken the nails. Take protein in balanced form to maintain your nail health because protein plays a vital role in bodybuilding.
• Iron is an essential element of a balanced diet. It is useful for healthy nail growth. Include an iron proficient diet.
• Dehydration causes dryness in nails, so it is important to maintain water intake .

Nail Strengthening Products: Oily ingredients available at home actually are the best nail strengthening elements such as olive oil is beneficial for nail strengthening. In addition, Vaseline is also a good nail strengthening product. Along with these natural remedies. You can also use nail strengthening products recommended by the dermatologists. 

• OPI Nail Oil
• Nivea Lotion
• Nail Aid Keratin
• Nutra Pro Nail Oil

Such products are highly recommended by the best dermatologists and safe to use to strengthen your nails.

DIY Home Remedies

Diet has a direct effect on nail health. To make your nail healthy and strengthen, take such diet plan which enhance the health of your nails. Diet comprises on calcium and protein can play important role for your nail health dehydration can damage your nail health.Try home made mixture of olive oil and lemon juice to keep your nails healthy, soft and shiny.

• Use vitamin B capsules to enhance nail health and beauty.
• Use more fruits and veggies to strengthen your nails.

Homemade Hand Scrubs:

1. Mixture of honey and coconut oil is best for nail care.apply this mixture on nails weekly.
2. Olive oil mixed with Epsom salt proves the best exfoliator for your hands. It is the best homemade hand scrub.

Ingredients and Recipes: 

• Lemon and Sugar hand scrub is a useful hand scrub. If you put some drops of coconut oil, it also will work as an exfoliator.
• Honey and egg white is the best remedy for nail care at home.
• One tablespoon of sugar, 2 tablespoons of coconut oil and half cup coffee, make this mixture at home. Apply on your hands and nails. Enjoy the amazing results.
• Almonds powder 1 tablespoon and half kg ginger powder mixture is the best scrub for your hands and nails .
• Blend some strawberries with sugar. Scrub your hands with this mixture. It will enhance the beauty, shine and softness of your hands.

Natural Nail Care Solutions

• Use chemical free products for hands and nail care.
• Don’t pick off polish.
• Cut, trim and file nails regularly.
• Keep nails of even lengths.
• Keep nails in proper shape.
• Use high quality filer.
• Avoid nail biting.
• Avoid harsh chemical products.
• Deal the cuticle gently.
• Be careful about choosing nail paint.
• Use a high quality nail paint remover.
• Take balanced diet.
• Consult with a professional dermatologist.

Oil Treatment:

When you consider the nail care at home, the discussion turns around oil treatment, because oils perform active roles to treat nail problems. Oils have ingredients, considered best for nail health.

1. Almond Oil is a natural treatment for nail care. It contains such ingredients, which keep nails shiny and nourish the nails to promote strength.
2. Olive Oil has the best effects on nail care and it hydrates your nails. If you want long, strong nails then olive oil is your best choice
3. Tea Tree Oil is antibacterial and anti fungal. It helps to eradicate bacterial and fungal infections.
4. Argan Oil is full of minerals and vitamins. This makes it a fabulous choice for you to strengthen your nails.
5. Cuticle Oil is the best oil for nails. It contains vitamin E, helps to soften skin and repair nail edges.

Soaking Techniques: Soaking technique is the most preferable technique for getting strong, neat, clean and beautiful nails. Put some drops of lotion of your choice in warm water in a bowl. Drop 2 spoons of lemon juice in it. Soak your nails and hands in this solution for 10 minutes. afterwards, dry your hands with a paper towel by rubbing corners of nails and then apply moisturizer on your nails and hands. This will make your nails shiny, strong and healthy.

Nail Fungus

Fungal Infection in nails is very common. Many people suffer from pain due to fungal nail infection. Most of these are not serious however, some fungal nail infections may cause decolorization in nails and separation of bail from nails beds.

Causes and Prevention: How do people get nail infections? You may get nail infection through an injury, coming in contact with a person who has already had fungal infection. Weak immune system is also a cause of nail fungal infection. Sometimes bacterial infection may occur at the top of the nail and cause serious problems.

• Wash your hands regularly.
• Use less harsh hand wash or soap.
• Avoid harsh chemicals like detergents.
• Use moisturizers.
• Keep fingernail short.
• Cut and file the nails with high quality filer.
• Don’t wander barefooted.
• Keep your personal nail clipper.
• Use a sanitized nail filer or nail clipper. 

Treatment Options: There are many methods to cure nail fungal infection. The most considerable are as follows;

Topical Anti-fungal Medication: These  are medicines given to rub on nails to get rid of fungus. In severe cases it may work along with other medicines.

Oral Anti-fungal Medication: These medicines reduce nail and oral fungus. This is slow treatment and it took 2 to 3 months for complete recovery.

Laser Treatment: In this method special laser light is used to kill fungus in targeted areas of nails.

Dry and Cracked Hands

Your hands have to face all environmental factors directly. Your hands are usually exposed to sunlight, dirt, germs and harsh chemicals. These factors cause dryness and cracks in hands.

Causes:  Environmental factors, hot and cold water, harsh chemicals, excessive use of detergents, avoiding nail care routine are the major causes of dryness and cracks in hands.

Remedies:

• Washing Hands: Wash your hands with soap and water regularly. It is must for you to wash your hands after using the toilet, after cleaning the home, kitchen or toilet and after an outside visit.
•  Moisturizing: Use moisturizers to soften your hands regularly.
• Control Stressed Conditions: Stress also causes dryness in skin.
• Take Proper Medicines: If the issue has not been handled by ordinary means, consult your dermatologist and take proper medication.

Hangnails and Ingrown Nails

Hangnail is the condition in which the flesh or skin near cuticle tear out and produce pain sensation on touching. While ingrown nails are the parts of nail that penetrate into the soft fleshy part. It occurs commonly in toenails.

Prevention and Care: Hangnails and ingrown nails can be cured by taking a balanced diet. It is often due to malnutrition of calcium and protein. So, try to include these elements in your daily diet plan.

To overcome hangnails and ingrown nails;

• Take warm water in a bowl 
• Mix some salt in it
• Dip your affected nails in it for 5 minutes
• Then dry the nail
• Put an ointment or moisturizing lotion onto affected nail

This procedure helps you to reduce pain and heal the hangnail and ingrown nails.

Lifestyle and Habits

Your lifestyle and habits affect your whole body’s health. Here the point of discussion is hands and nail care at home. So, it is better to say that your lifestyle and habits have a direct effect on your hands and nails health. Clean and hygienic lifestyle and habits keep diseases away from you. If you follow a balanced diet plan and include fruits and veggies in excess, you wouldn’t come across hand and nail health problems. If you avoid calcium and protein-containing meals, you might face more health issues in hands and nails. Wash your hands regular and keep them  clean, safe and healthy. But unhygienic habits like nail biting and ignoring hand wash or moisturizing can harm your hands and nails.

Healthy Habits for Hands and Nails

Healthy habits for hands and nails help you to keep your hands strong, healthy, neat and clean. By keeping your nails dry and clean by using moisturizer, by avoiding harsh chemicals, by avoiding exposure to the sunlight, you can make your hands and nails healthy.

Proper Hand Posture: Hand posture is of great significance in healthy habits for hands care. You can make your hands stronger and healthy by keeping them in the right posture. Keep your hands in line with your arm and wrist. Bend your hands slightly after some time. Use the whole hand to grip any object. Always keep your nail in the appropriate position.

Hand and Nail Friendly Tools:

Manicure tools are used to take care of nails and hands while using these tools, keeping in view their hygienic condition. Use sterilized tools. Keep these your manicure tools personal. Nobody is allowed to use the manicure tools of others.

1. Nail Cutter: It is used to trim your nails weekly. Keep it clean.
2. Nail Filer: It is used to smoother the edges of your nails. These are of different kinds to give different shapes to your nails. Keep it clean.
3. Nail Buffer: It is used to clean the lining of your nails. The Nail boundary is peeled with it to give a clear outlook to your nails. Keep it clean always. 
4.  Cuticle Cutter and Cuticle Pusher: When you ignore the nail care. The cuticle layer grows next to their place. It is necessary to push or cut an extra layer of cuticle. These tools are used in this regard.
5. Orange Sticks: These are multipurpose tools. These sticks are used to clean inside nails, remove extra nail paint and to push cuticles.
6. Cuticle Oil: This oil helps to moisturize nails and hands.This may be olive oil, coconut oil or Almond oil.

Nail Health and Your Overall Health

Nail issues often reveal some serious body health problems. It is said that a nail examination can tell about the health status of other body parts. For instance, white or red patches on nails indicate disease in the body. Nails also tell about deficiency of iron and calcium in the body. Nails decolorization discloses the deficiency of vitamins in the body.

Signs of Underlying Health Issues:

• Blue Nails indicate lack of oxygen in your blood.
• White Nails indicate diabetes.
• Pale Nails indicate anemia.
• Pinkish Yellow Nails indicate kidney disease.
• Dusky Red Half-moons indicate heart disease and Arthritis diseases.
• Blue Half- moons indicate poisoning in the body due to any infection.

Conclusion

Can you ignore hand and nail care at home? The answer is simply, NO. All of us suffered from a devastating pandemic, it opened our minds. After this pandemic, research work in the medical field has increased many many times more. COVID 19, proves that self care is the essential factor of healthy life. If any one ignores self care, he/she will suffer in the end. Research shows all types of pandemics spread through hands. So health care of hands and nails is as compulsory as oxygen for us. Hand and nail care at home is an easy task.

Hand and Nail care at home is beneficial in every manner. You can take care of your hands and nails by washing hands and moisturizing them regularly. To make your hands and nails healthy and strong, keep them away from harsh chemicals and dirt. Take special care to keep them clean and germ free. Keep an eye on unhygienic factors which can cause hand and nail diseases and try your best to eradicate all those factors from your surroundings.