While in college, I had long, beautiful fingernails that were strong. Unfortunately, time is not kind with the changes it can bring to your fingernails if you are noticing more ridges, which are the equivalents of facial wrinkles. Therefore, I started relying more on commercial nail products before experimenting with DIY nail soaks to restore the condition of fragile nails.
Brittleness and splitting nails can be more of a problem as you age as well, just as lacking certain vitamins and minerals in your diet can cause those problems. So if these changes are happening to you also, then I thought you would be interested to learn how to strengthen and smooth your ridges at home using ingredients from your kitchen.
Start off making a homemade protein-rich soak for your nails and keeping them immersed for at least one half hour before rinsing while watching television or talking on the phone will pay off. Honey, olive oil, and egg yolk are the highly beneficial natural moisturizing ingredients feeding those starved nails.
Try one teaspoon each of honey and olive oil to one egg yolk for this protein-rich nail soak recipe.
Something that also will help improve the condition of dry nails is regularly soaking them in a little bit of olive oil that you warmed first in the microwave. This is not protein-rich as the first recipe, but it does help nails recover more than you might expect. It also is a wonderful treat for your cuticles. Keeping your fingernails in that oil for about ten minutes daily will make a tremendous difference in their condition.
Though you can try buffing ridges out or filling them in with a product, I have another suggestion that you might want to try on those dry, brittle nails as well. Believe it or not, ginger ale makes a great nail soak for those kinds of nail problems. It can accomplish smoothing and strengthening due to mono-potassium phosphate, which even helps bleach nail stains.
All you need to do is pour some ginger ale in a small container and stick your nails in for at least 10-15 minutes.
I hope you try these little suggestions because they can help keep you beautiful.
You also might want to read my earlier post with more DIY nail strengthening tips.
