Why Do Nails Suddenly Start Breaking When They Didn’t Before?

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝Lately my nails have started breaking much more easily, and they never used to. I don’t think anything has changed significantly E.G. Re Diet, is it just an age thing?❞

The good news or bad news, depending on how you look at it, is that almost nothing is truly “just an age thing”!

There’s very often an association with age, but the passage of time, by itself, it almost never the culprit.

As regular 10almonds readers will know, biological age is not really one thing, but many, as we can age in different ways at different rates, for example:

• Visual markers of aging (e.g. wrinkles, graying hair)
• Performative markers of aging (e.g. mobility tests)
• Internal functional markers of aging (e.g. tests for cognitive decline, eyesight, hearing, etc)
• Cellular markers or aging (e.g. telomere length)
• …and more, but we only have so much room here

Learn more: Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?

So, what’s going on with nails?

Something changed

As we say, age itself won’t change a thing, but some usually-age-related things, such as menopause, can:

Signs Of Low Estrogen In Women: What Your Skin, Hair, & Nails Are Trying To Tell You

Another common possibility is that something changed in your diet that you didn’t realize, because it wasn’t a conscious change. But say, your favorite product from your local supermarket got discontinued, and you stopped eating it, but hadn’t really considered that it was your main source of some micronutrient that you don’t have much of in the rest of your diet.

So, in terms of getting that coverage, a lot of products marketed as for “skin, hair, and nails” focus on vitamins A and E, which are good for the skin but aren’t so relevant for nails. Vitamin B7 (biotin) has mixed evidence, and it’s worth knowing that megadoses can interfere with some blood test results, so while that doesn’t make them dangerous per se (the maximum safe dose of B7 is very high indeed), it is something to bear in mind, and desist from taking vitamin B7 megadoses (if you were taking such) for at least a few weeks before any blood tests.

Nutritionally, getting plenty of protein (whatever form you normally take it is fine) is also important since keratin (as nails are made of) is a kind of protein.

Outside of nutritional factors, a few other considerations:

• Keep yourself hydrated, too! Hydration that comes to your nails from the inside will deliver nutrients, rather than removing them.
• Testosterone strengthens nails, and declining testosterone levels (as experienced by most men over the age of 45, and women over a certain age too, unrelated to menopause status) can result in weaker nails. So for men over 45 especially, a diet that favors testosterone (think foods rich in magnesium and zinc) is good.
• Because estrogen doesn’t do for women’s nails what testosterone does for men’s nails, increasing our magnesium and zinc intake won’t help our nails in the same way (but it’s still good for other things, including energy levels in the day and good sleep at night, and most people are deficient in magnesium anyway)
• Those of us who enjoy painted nails would do well to let our nails go without polish sometimes, as it can dry them out. And, acrylic nails are truly ruinous to nail health, as are gel nails (the kind that use a UV lamp to harden them—which is also bad for the skin)
• When nails are brittle, it can be tempting to soak them to reduce their brittleness. However, this is actually counterproductive, as the water will leech nutrients from the nails, and by the time you’ve been out of the footbath (for example) for about an hour, your nails will bemore brittle than before you soaked them.
• Use a moisturizing lotion or nail-oil instead—bonus if it contains biotin, keratin, and/or other helpful nutrients.

Want to do more for your nails?

Check out:

6 Rules For Stronger Nails

Take care!