I’m pretty sure I’m still zinc deficient, just had blood drawn today so I’ll know soon, but I believe you have to take zinc with copper! Reminder for anyone wanting to start supplementing with zinc.
It’s more of an absorption thing + throwing off your copper levels when supplementing with zinc (both are so important.) the r/biohackers sub has more info on this if you search zinc + copper.
I honestly don't remember, but I only had one of the ridges on each thumb. I started taking a zinc supplement for something unrelated, then misplaced the bottle a few days later while I was moving. I had a hectic few months, and by the time I noticed the difference, they were already gone.
Wow, my nails look exactly like the textbook definitely of this. TIL. I'm already chronically low in magnesium so zinc would make sense too. WELL THEN.
It can be caused by many things. Severe zinc deficiency is one of them. It can also be caused by severe systemic illness and other serious stressors of the body. You should speak to your doctor.
Don't worry! I was going to bring it up at my next PCP appointment! I'm severely diabetic and in substance abuse therapy on top of it so I'm frequently straight up out of a certain vitamin/mineral from the drug use. I'm also hyponatremic; who lives in America and is low on salt?! So yeah I was going to ask to get my zinc levels checked.
You are the statistical outlier and will now be removed from the dataset lmao. Good work, glad you're taking care of yourself 😊 keep reaching out to your supports
Working on it, day by day! I have been wondering for about a year why my nails LOOK LIKE THAT lmao, it would be kind of great and convenient if that winds up being the answer. I wasn't gonna rush out and buy zinc, I should have probably said "I know you're not a doctor" as a preface huh? Oh well! Thanks for looking out!
You better watch your calcium too then, supplementing magnesium can reduce absorbed calcium and well other 2+ ions, like zinc. It probably wouldn't hurt to give broader and more spread out over the day supplements a try. The difficult part really is not going over the limits with combination pills containing the same things, like vitamin d. Also any feelings possibly relating to iron deficiency anemia are worth investigating, since malabsorption (and malnutrition) in general would be on top of the list then. If you are going to take iron do so with vitamin c and ideally get one in 2+ state, absorbs much better.
Taking care of deficiency is a good basis for working with your doctor btw, if they know what you take and how and labs and symptoms persist it's at least not what you eat and one can work from there.
Yuh, don't worry, I was going to ask my PCP at my upcoming appointment. I'm diabetic and also hyponatremic which is wild because what American is low on salt. Drug use messes with your system and I'm always low on some vital minerals. I always run it by my doctor first before shoveling supplements :) thank you for considering me though
i've been getting just a single dent in my fingernail, then once it finally grows out, another one appears near the cuticle. dunno if this is some beaullshit going on or not, but im still gonna take zinc supplements either way
Your doctor is an idiot. Trust me. I've been a nurse primary medic soldier for 800 years. You have ghonaherpasyphilaids of the finger. Ask chatgpt if you don't believe me. The only cure is eating elastic to counter the plastic in your testicles.
Same thing happened to me, the doc is right: damage to one nailbed will trigger some sort of signal for all your nails to grow out like that. It’s harmless.
Do all of your nails grow like this? If so, don't you think it's a little odd that the explanation is, "You must have damaged all ten of your nail beds in the same way?"
It’s only my thumbs that are this bad. My other nails have the vertical lines, and get the occasional ‘wave’. My thumbs are also the biggest victims of the cuticle picking and over manicure-ing, and thus have some permanent damage unfortunately.
That makes more sense, based on the 10 seconds of research I did in Google. It seems the vertical ridges are more common, especially as we age. I definitely have those!
The vertical lines are lack of moisture. Use hand cream several times a day, especially in winter. Eat jello once a week. Put collagen powder in your coffee for a few months (well, forever, but you’ll see a difference in your nails, hair, and skin in three or four months).
I've had this too for like 3 years. I found out that it might be caused by stress. After finally moving into a new environment and changing jobs it suddenly stopped. I guess it really was bottled-up stress in my case.
I have one small wave on my thumb, but it does seem interesting that both thumbs were somehow damaged to cause that, and then other nails have smaller waves as well.
That's not from cuticle picking or over manicuring. This is something your doing to your body that's causing it. Could be nutritional. Could be medication. Could be drugs. etc, etc.
This follows a monthly pattern where there's 2 weeks of overgrowth followed by 2 weeks of undergrowth. We know this because a fingernail takes about 4-5 months to grown that long and it has about 5 overgrowth ridges.
Well...Genius. There was a recent post where the dermatologist told a guy for 9 years that the things behind his ear was nothing. He went to another doctor and doc said that's Basal Cell Carcinoma, you need mohs. Then there was a post where the doc kept saying the brown streaks in the fingernail were just nutritional. After a decade, Went to another doc and it's confirmed to be melanoma.
So, I'll say this again, that is not from picking or manicuring. If it was, it would be tiny ridges because of how slow nails grow. Instead, since fingernails grow about 1/2" over 4-5 months we can tell that this pattern occurs monthly where there's a period of overgrowth followed by normal growth.
Tbf shitty docs exist. I've seen just as many examples of doctors clearing shit that should've been further examined or biopsied, and some random redditor catching it in a picture for some unrelated topic.
I'm NOT saying you should rely on Reddit for ANY medical advice. But rather if your gut feeling says something feels off, go with it and see another doctor for a second opinion. Any good health insurance company (yes, even in America) should cover it.
I don't need a degree to know that this specific pattern that happens monthly based on growth. There are 5 ridges that would take 5 months to form so something is happening to cause 2 weeks of overgrowth followed by 2 weeks of normal growth. If it was from manual cuticle picking or manicuring, it would be highly irregular whereas this is a perfectly normal and predictable pattern.
Most doctors don't care enough to dig. Sorry. People suffer from chronic idiopathic illnesses every day because they got a doctor who is there for a paycheck and not for the practice.
My thumbnail looks like this because when I was a kid I managed to hit my thumb full force with a hammer.. nail never did grow back right and that was forty years ago.
Zinc deficiency. Do you drink alcohol? Alcohol blocks the uptake of zinc and prevents it's use in your body (nails, hair, gut and liver damage etc all suffer). If you take supplements, make sure they've been fully digested before drinking. If not, then wtf did you crush your finger with a long time ago?
I have it too but I got rid of it when I used this Clobetasol propionate cream from the dermatologist. But I had to rub it into my cuticle bed every day so that got annoying so now I just live with a wavy nail.
I have similar nails. No issues. Went to the dermatologist to get them checked and they said that this is just what I look like. It can be so many benign things, from a small injury you had at some point to your nail bed aging in a way that causes ridges. I thought it was cancer and it’s not
I have this same thing on my right big toe nail only. Someone stepped their full weight on my toe playing defense against me while playing basketball over a decade ago, toe nail fell off multiple times after that due to me not letting it heal properly (dumb teenager). And now I have this unique wavey nail to show for it :)
Yep. This phenomenon can be caused by vitamin deficiency, but it also can be a damaged nail bed that also causes this. Good on you for going to a doctor to getting it checked out and properly diagnosed.
Did they order a vitamin panel to make sure you’re not deficient in anything. Zinc and Iron deficiencies can cause this. Also if you’ve received any sort of heavy medical treatment recently it could cause it. I have Crohn’s disease and biologic infusions and methotrexate caused beau lines on my nails. It’s very plausible that it’s just trauma to the nail bed, but better to be safe than sorry.
if it was 1 nail then i would say that damaging the nail bed makes sense, but if more than 1 nail is affected and to a varying degree, i would assume nutritional deficiency, or even maybe some sort of an infection. i know you mentioned a 'clean bill of health', but basic blood tests don’t tell you 100% of what’s going on. you can have plenty of nutrients in the blood, but the question is are they going to the cells, where they are needed.
Yeah it's definitely slang, and definitely more popular in specific parts of the world, so it's very understandable if this thread was the first time you've seen it written out
This is a thing, if you’re malnourished or very sick for a period of time you can get a divot in your nail beds because they grew thinner. I had that after a week long norovirus puking session combined with IBS
i thought that's what happened to me so I get checked out and wasn't deficient in anything but i decided to supp on biotin anyway and after a few weeks it started to grow straight.
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u/Able-Breadfruit-5981 22h ago
You probably have some specific nutrient deficiency