What do healthy horses’ hooves and your beautiful manicure have in common?
It seems that both can be achieved with the same B vitamin.
Sure, you can always go to a nail salon and have colorful plastic fingernails glued on. But have you ever longed for a healthy set of your own perfectly manicured, strong, chip-resistant fingernails? If so, you’re not alone, as dermatologists continually hear complaints about brittle nails that chip and break.
There’s only so much you can do externally to protect your nails: Keep exposure to detergents, harsh nail-polish remover, and other drying chemicals to a minimum, wear gloves when you do the dishes, rub moisturizer into your nails, and so forth.
Through the years, several oral remedies have been touted as nail strengtheners, including gelatin and the silica-containing herb horsetail. But under scientific scrutiny, just one nutrient has emerged with the gold star for the ability to banish brittle nails—the B vitamin biotin.
Veterinarians have long used biotin as a treatment for deformed hooves in both pigs and horses. So it wasn’t a stretch to figure that the vitamin just might work to toughen up human nails. Several small studies done in the late 1980s and early 1990s found that biotin does indeed help strengthen human nails.
In one study done in Switzerland, for example, 44 people with brittle nails took daily biotin supplements. Six months later, 63 percent had demonstrably stronger nails. In another small study, 91 percent of the people receiving 2.6 milligrams of biotin per day showed firmer, harder fingernails in just under 6 months.
Researchers recommend taking 2.6 milligrams of biotin for 6 months as a treatment for brittle nails. They have not determined how long nails will remain strong once treatment is discontinued. But biotin is safe even at much higher levels, so the treatment could be repeated when necessary.
Biotin |
2.6 milligrams daily for 6 months |