Nail Changes: What They Can Say About Your Health

Your nails can offer clues about your health. Most changes come from everyday knocks, ageing or nail products, but a few are worth mentioning to a doctor.

Imagine noticing your nails becoming thin and curving upwards like spoons. You’re also short of breath on stairs and feel constantly tired. A blood test shows iron deficiency anaemia. Treatment restores your energy, and your nails slowly return to normal.

Common nail changes and possible causes

• White spots: usually minor injury to the nail base; harmless
• Vertical ridges: common with age
• Horizontal grooves (Beau’s lines): a pause in growth after illness, high fever or chemotherapy
• Brittle, splitting nails: frequent hand washing, chemicals, ageing, sometimes thyroid problems
• Spoon-shaped nails: iron deficiency
• Thick, yellow, crumbly nails: often fungal infection
• Pitting: often linked to psoriasis
• Clubbing (rounded fingertips, curved nails): can be linked to lung, heart or liver disease
• Pale or white nails: sometimes anaemia or liver disease

But which changes need checking?

See a doctor for a new dark streak or band in a nail, especially if it’s widening or the colour spreads onto the skin, as it can rarely be melanoma. Also get checked for clubbing, nails lifting off the nail bed without injury, persistent changes with other symptoms like tiredness or breathlessness, or painful, red, swollen skin around a nail.

Everyday nail care

Keep nails short and clean, moisturise hands and cuticles, wear gloves for cleaning, avoid biting or picking, and give nails a break from gels and acrylics.

Sources: American Academy of Dermatology (Nail health), Mayo Clinic (Nails: how to keep them healthy), Cleveland Clinic, British Association of Dermatologists.