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Your hands reveal a lot about your health, especially your nails. Just like your skin, they can start to lose moisture, causing them to feel brittle, weak, and dry. And there's a lot more to your nails than meets the eye. In fact, what you see on the surface has been in the works for a while, growing out from the nail matrix—the living tissue below your cuticle that supports nail growth—deep in your fingers.
So if it feels like you can’t keep your freshly painted mani intact, don’t ignore the constant breakage. It’s a complicated system, and when your nails start looking not-so-hot, any number of things could be to blame. Here, ten common causes of brittle nails, and exactly what you can to prevent the breakage.
You constantly bite your nails.
Whether you do it out of concentration, nervousness, or boredom, biting your nails not only makes them break easier, but it also opens you up for infections. “Saliva, which is a digestive enzyme and is meant to break down food, dissolves nails and the cuticle skin, making them weak and brittle. With a suboptimal barrier, fungus, yeast, and bacteria can invade through the area around the nails and cause infections,” says Rachel Nazarian, MD, a dermatologist from Schweiger Dermatology Group in New York.
The fix: Keep your nails neat and short, which makes it more challenging to really gnaw on them, says Dr. Nazarian. You can also try a nail treatment that tastes bitter (like this one from ORLY) to motivate you to quit the habit. If all else fails, IDing your triggers and addressing any anxiety at the source may also be a good approach.
Iron does not make a regular appearance on your plate.
Concave or depressed nails (think: the shape inside of a spoon) can be caused by low iron levels, or anemia. Iron helps form hemoglobin, a molecule that shuttles red blood cells loaded with fresh oxygen to your nail matrix, explains Ella Toombs, MD, a board-certified dermatologist based in Washington, DC. Without it, you get stunted nail growth.
The fix: If you see depressions in your nails, that’s your cue to head to the doc for a blood test and to load up on iron-rich foods, like grass-fed beef, spinach, beans and legumes, oysters, and even dark chocolate.
...or you’re lacking a certain B vitamin.
You might think beauty supplements are bunk, but there’s evidence behind biotin, a B vitamin that’s widely lauded as a hair-and-nail strengthener, says Dr. Stern. A study published in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology found that taking 2.5 mg of the B vitamin daily improved nail strength and reduced brittleness after six to nine months. While protein deficiency is rare, if your nails are peeling at the tips or showing lengthwise ridges (both signs of brittleness), biotin could help.
The fix: If your diet lacks biotin-rich foods—like eggs, salmon, beef, sweet potatoes, and almonds—Dr. Stern recommends a 2.5 mg dose of biotin once a day to reduce brittleness. Just keep in mind that takes several months to see results, and be sure to talk to your doctor before you start taking it.
Texting and typing is doing some damage.
You know that clickety-clack sound your nails make when you’re firing off emails and texts? Well, you’re damaging more than just the patience of the people around you. “If your nail is making contact with your keyboard or smartphone screen over and over, it could cause it to split, fracture, or fray at the edges,” says Dr. Toombs.
The fix: File or trim nails so that just a bit of white tip is left (but still below than the fleshy top of your finger). That will make it possible to text and type with just the pad of your finger.
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You only apply hand cream in the morning.
Time for a dose of reality—you have to reapply hand cream every time you wash your hands. Water dries your skin out, and if the skin at and below your cuticles is dry, then the underlying nail matrix is, too. That means the nail it forms will be prone to splitting, breaking, and cracking, says Ellen Marmur, MD, associate clinical professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai in New York City.
The fix: Find a fast-absorbing lotion like the L’Occitane 20% Shea Butter Hand Cream and apply it throughout the day, paying special attention to the area above your matrix: from the cuticles all the way down to the second knuckle of your finger.
You overdo the hand sanitizer.
Just like washing your hands frequently can cause brittle nails, so can constant application of hand sanitizer, thanks to its high concentration of drying alcohol, says North Carolina-based board-certified dermatologist Sheel Desai Solomon, MD.
The fix: If you’re in a pinch and need to use hand sanitizer, try to avoid the area around your nails until you can properly wash your hands. (Using hand sanitizer wipes can make this a bit easier.) But if you prefer to use a liquid product, just be sure to follow with hand cream to rebalance with moisture.
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Nail polish stays on for way too long.
All nail polishes contain drying ingredients that sap moisture from the nail plate and weaken it, and that drying effect doesn’t stop once the polish has hardened, Dr. Marmur says. Even non-toxic five-free nail polishes—which skip the solvent toluene and the plasticizer dibutyl phthalate, along with other potentially irritating ingredients—can still leave nails high and dry (something has to make the polish dry once it’s on your nail, right?).
The fix: Dr. Toombs recommends taking polish off after five days—when most formulas will start wearing down anyway. Then give nails a few days of downtime before hitting the paint again.
Acetone nail polish removers aren’t doing you favors.
If gasoline and grain alcohol had a liquid lovechild, we imagine it would smell like nail polish remover. So it’s not shocking that polish strippers aren’t exactly health tonics for your nails. Acetone in traditional remover strips the natural oils in your nails along with the polish, leaving you with brittle nails. “Even in non-acetone removers, the solvents can be very drying,” adds Dr. Toombs.
The fix: Shop around for a soy-based, acetone-free option with oils that leave nails moisturized, like this one from Ella+Mila.
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A base coat should not be your first step.
Here you are, thinking you’re doing the right thing by never skipping your base coat, and it turns out you’re wrong. Despite its name, a base coat shouldn’t be your first step—if you put polish directly on naked nails, the chemicals (like solvents ethyl acetate or butyl acetate) can eventually eat away at the nail plate, making it weaker and more likely to break, Dr. Marmur says.
The fix: It’s the opposite of what happens in salons, but trust us, it works: Apply a little hand lotion to your nails before polishing. “The lotion will fill in microscopic gaps in the nail, like a primer, and hydrate it so it’s not as susceptible to damage from what you put on after,” Dr. Marmur says. Let it dry, wipe off any excess, and the polish will go on like normal.
You can’t leave your cuticles alone.
Back away from the cuticle snippers. These bits of skin at the base of the nail are essentially protective grout between your nail and skin, shielding your nail from water, bacteria, and anything else you touch. “Cutting the cuticle is like removing that grout—and then there’s nothing left to prevent water from entering and causing an infection,” says Dana Stern, MD, dermatologist and assistant clinical professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.
The fix: Tame cuticles by gently pushing them back with a washcloth after you shower—no cutting allowed, ever.
Additional reporting by Stephanie Dolgoff and Krissy Brady
Jessica Chia
Jessica is a freelance writer and certified aromatherapist with an MBA from the University of Southern California. Her work has previously appeared in Allure, Vogue Japan, Brides, Brides UK, Women's Health, and Prevention.