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Beauty Bible Beauty Clinic
Welcome to our new weekly column on the YOU magazine website, www.you.co.uk Below you will find the current question and our advice, with a list of where to source the products mentioned. To look at past columns, click here. And for lots more solutions to your beauty dilemmas, visit Q&A, just click here.
March 22nd, 2009: Weak, Flaking Nails
Q Could you help with my nails which are very weak and flake terribly?
A Oh dear, we know this one! In fact very few people seem to have strong nails – and we’re certainly not in the long strong group. A real inside/outside approach is needed here, with good topicals to go on and around your nails, and well-chosen nutritional supplements. But do bank on two to four months before you will see really good results: nails grow slowly. However, the look of them will improve almost immediately.
While chemical nail hardeners can work miracles in the short-ish term, they can also make them brittle and prone to snapping if you use them for too long. So we suggest oiling your nails, which although taking longer to deliver results will give you the goods long term.
In our book The Green Beauty Bible, four natural treatment oils did well, with Green Hands Cuticle Oil and Nail Strengthener, £6.80 for 5ml from Victoria Health, coming top with an impressive score of 8.61 out of ten, from our ten woman panel. It’s an intensive combination of cold-pressed jojoba and sweet almond oils with essential oils of neroli and frankincense – so the application is delightful! Comments included: ‘nails stronger and did not split or flake once, more flexible and much longer than usual; cuticles softer. I was surprised by how much difference this made’. A nurse who said her nails suffered terribly from the strong cleaning products at work reported: ‘my nails now look better, are stronger and lot smoother, and don’t break so easily – I would recommend this product to everyone’. Other top products were The Organic Pharmacy Lemon and Neem Oil(scoring 7.51/10) £18.55 for 30 ml, Dr Hauschka Neem Nail Oil (7. 45/10) £22.51 for 30 ml, and Decleor Aromessence Ongles (7.33) £35 for 15 ml.
Lashings of hand cream will also help. Sarah, whose nails suffer dreadfully from horses and gardening (although she wears gloves all the time, promise!), finds that Seven Wonders Miracle Lotion, £12.95 for 237 ml from Victoria Health, with seven natural oils and 14 herbs does an amazing job at strengthening her nails, softening cuticles and of course hands all over. You can see an instant difference when you put it on, as nails become rosier and less parched looking. Also the flaking peeling layers seem to get ‘glued’ together so they can grow.
A couple of other things: do wear gloves of course whenever you are washing up and consider also wearing them if you handle a lot of paper – it’s the most drying thing ever. And don’t, please don’t, buff them: it makes weak nails much weaker. Keep them short and file any snags immediately. Use an emery board that’s designed for weak nails:
The Crystal File by Essie, £11.95 for one pack from Victoria Health, and Tropical Shine Files, £1.35 for a single file and 4-ways buffer £2.95 from various stockists, and Natural Nail Company Emery Boards £2.25 for a pack of two from appointed Jessica Salons nationwide and mail order.
As a nutritional supplement, go for oils again. The essential fatty acids are just that, essential – for your nails, hair and skin as well as everything else. We like to takeEssential Oil Formula by Harmony Formulas, £15.95 for 90 capsules, from Victoria Health. Sarah also finds that when she remembers to take Sun Chlorella daily, her nails grow gorgeously (it helps lots of other things too, including skin). £15.95 for 90 capsules from Victoria Health.
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Lancome Definicils High Definition Mascara, £19.50 (at department stores everywhere). We get sent literally dozens of mascaras each year to try, but which would we splash out on with our own cash? In a mascara S.O.S. recently, Jo went straight to the Lancôme counter to return to this beauty classic, which is simply the best for anyone with shorter, sparser lashes: it lifts, defines every last lash – and never clumps.
WHERE TO FIND PRODUCTS:
Beauty Bible Beauty Clinic - Archive
March 29th, 2009 - Are Sunbeds Safe?
March 22nd, 2009 - Weak, Flaking Nails
March 15th, 2009 - Puffy Eyes
March 8th, 2009 - Camouflaging Red Cheeks
March 1st, 2009 - Hair Colouring in Pregnancy
February 22nd, 2009 - Thinning Eyebrows
February 15th, 2009 - Acne
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