The Counterintuitive Dos and Don'ts of Nail Health

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Sitting is unambiguously ruinous to the health, but sometimes it’s a necessity of life too.

  • Today’s featured video has some exercises to minimize the harm done!

• Nails are a quirky feature of health, and there’s a lot that can be good or bad for them, and there are differences between men’s and women’s nails, too.

  • Most of us would do well to take supplementary biotin for our nail health (also for our hair!) and get plenty of protein and plenty of hydration.

  • For men, keeping testosterone levels high is also important

  • For women, estrogen doesn’t have so much of a part to play

  • Giving our nails a break from polish is good, and we would do especially well to avoid acrylic or gel nails as those do terrible things for our nail health

  • Soaking is, counterintuitively, bad for nails.

    • See today’s main feature for why!

  • Moisturizing and/or oiling is generally good for our nails, though.

• It’s vitally important to keep our brains sharp as we age

  • Today’s sponsor, Brilliant, are offering 10almonds subscribers 30 days free use of their habit-building daily learning app

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

Do you sit a lot? These stretches reduce the harm

These exercises target the hip flexors, the biggest internal rotators of the torso and your spinal mobility. Individual needs may make other stretches beneficial too, and he has some suggestions about those as well.

But first, four stretches that will help anyone who has to sit a lot:

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❓ MAIN FEATURE

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

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 😎

❝I take a vitamin supplement for strengthening my nails (particularly one of my big toes!) - but they are running out! What do you recommend for strengthening nails? What is/are the key ingredient(s)?❞

Vitamin-wise, biotin (vitamin B7) is an underrated and very important one. As a bonus, it’s really good for your hair too (hair and nails being made of fundamentally the same “stuff”. Because it has exceptionally low toxicity, it can be taken up to 10,000% of the NRV, so if shopping for supplements, a high biotin content is better than a low one.

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.

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:

• Testosterone strengthens nails, and declining testosterone levels (as experienced by most men over the age of 45) 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 (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 be more 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.

  • Keep yourself hydrated, too! Hydration that comes to your nails from the inside will deliver nutrients, rather than removing them.

About those supplements: we don’t sell them (or anything else) but for your convenience, here are some great ones (this writer takes pretty much the same, just a different brand because I’m in a different country):

Magnesium Gummies (600mg) & Biotin Gummies (10,000µg) 

Enjoy!

❝I would like some info on core exercises and balance exercises. Thanks❞

We will definitely do a main feature on that soon! In the meantime, you might want to check out today’s featured book at the bottom of this email 😎

❝I was wondering whether there were very simple, clear bullet points or instructions on things to be wary of in Yoga.❞

That’s quite a large topic, and not one that lends itself well to being conveyed in bullet points, but first we’ll share the article you sent us when sending this question:

Tips for Avoiding Yoga Injuries

…and next we’ll recommend the YouTube channel @livinleggings, whose videos we feature here from time to time. She (Liv) has a lot of good videos on problems/mistakes/injuries to avoid.

Here’s a great one to get you started:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

📊 POLL

We turn the tables and ask you a question…

We’ll then talk about this tomorrow:

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

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Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

🌏 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Inflammation may increase dementia risk by 35%, new study finds

• Pharmacists' communication skills are associated with physician prescription changes

• Finger prick, venous blood can identify key Alzheimer disease biomarkers

• Private equity investments in healthcare associated with higher costs to patients and payers

• A novel drug screen identifies potential new therapy to lower bad cholesterol levels

• Heat waves are more dangerous than you think; how to stay safe

• How to get vitamin D without spending too much time in the sun

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Master Your Core: A Science-Based Guide to Achieve Peak Performance and Resilience to Injury – by Dr. Bohdanna Zazulak

In the category of "washboard abs", this one isn't particularly interested in how much or how little fat you have. What it's more interested in is a strong, resilient, and stable core. Including your abs yes, but also glutes, hips, and back.

Nor is the focus on superhuman feats of strength, though certainly one could use these exercises to work towards that. Rather, here we see importance placed on functional performance, mobility, and stability.

Lest mobility and stability seem at odds with each other, understand:

• By mobility we mean the range of movement we are able to accomplish.

• By stability, we mean that any movement we make is intentional, and not because we lost our balance.

Functional performance, meanwhile, is a function of those two things, plus strength.

How does the book deliver on this?

There are exercises to do. Exercises of the athletic kind you might expect, and also exercises including breathing exercises, which gets quite a bit of attention too. Not just "do abdominal breathing", but quite an in-depth examination of such. There are also habits to form, and lifestyle tweaks to make.

Of course, you don't have to do all the things she suggests. The more you do, the better results you are likely to get, but if you adopt even some of the practices she recommends, you're likely to see some benefits. And, perhaps most importantly, reduce age-related loss of mobility, stability, and strength.

Bottom line: a great all-rounder book of core strength, mobility, and stability.

Click here to check out Master Your Core and enjoy the more robust health that comes with it!

Wishing you a healthy and happy day,

The 10almonds Team