What the nails show
Age spots are usually harmless. They develop with increasing age. Sometimes they are congenital. However, individual furrows can also indicate skin diseases or rheumatoid arthritis.
White spots or Points often occur due to small falls or injuries. They are relatively harmless.
Spoon nails : If the nail plate is dented like a spoon and bent upwards at the front, iron deficiency, vitamin C deficiency or a thyroid or metabolic disorder is suspected.
Chipping nail edges : Similar to brittle nails. Also keratinization disorders caused by zinc and vitamin B deficiency.
Yellow, crumbly nails : Be careful, nail fungus. Very contagious. Must be treated.
Pinhead-sized grooves : Intruders can indicate incipient psoriasis.
Cross grooves can indicate an iron or biotin deficiency. They can also indicate poisoning or disorders of the liver, kidneys or intestines. If the grooves do not disappear, a doctor should be consulted.
Soft, brittle nails : If not caused by chemicals, nail polish or nail polish remover, it may be due to a deficiency in biotin, iron or calcium, or a thyroid dysfunction.
There are many other manifestations. Color and shape changes that cannot be attributed to other influences should be shown to the doctor. This is especially true for brown-black or yellow-white nail changes or nail plates that are completely or partially peeling off. In addition to the face and hair, fingernails are also an important public feature. They convey feelings such as affection and sympathy to other people. Nails play a major role in the impression people make on others. As early as 1844, the Frankfurt neurologist Heinrich Hoffmann described what can be seen on the fingers in his children's book "Der Struwwelpeter". In rebellion against his parents, Struwwelpeter no longer allows his nails to be cut. Even today, unkempt fingernails are a sign that someone is neglecting themselves. If someone chews on them, you can tell that they have big problems. Long, painted fingers still represent women who do not have to work with their hands. But such things have become so natural to us that we no longer think about them. We cut, file or paint our nails without paying much attention to them. But it is worth "looking at the soul" because a lot about the state of the body and soul can be read from the nails.
Skin, hair and nails are the Disease detection system of the body itself. For centuries, no doctor could avoid taking a diagnostic look at it. In ancient China, the quality of a doctor was measured by how many of his patients were healthy. His job was therefore to prevent anyone from becoming ill. He also used fingernail diagnosis for this purpose. Traditional Chinese Medicine relies on recognizing signs of illness as early as possible. No wonder, then, that the methods of visual diagnosis - looking at and interpreting physical characteristics - are so well developed in Chinese medicine. But even in our latitudes, a good doctor often looks very closely at his patient's eyes, tongue and fingers before moving on to further diagnostic steps.
The hand is considered to be a reflection of certain diseases. Gout or rheumatic diseases, for example, are the first to show their signs here. The finger joints are particularly revealing: from an incorrect or unbalanced diet to heart or lung diseases, psoriasis and, of course, fungal infections, a wide range of diseases can be seen, even if they may not have made themselves felt yet.
If you also consider illnesses as an expression of the soul, you can also tell from the fingernails how happy, balanced and content someone was at a certain time, because the nail is only present for a very precisely definable period of time. A nail grows from top to bottom out of the nail bed in six to nine months. If, for example, you find a distinctive spot on a certain part of the nail, you can date it back to a certain point in time and assign it to a related event, illness or drastic change.