What brittle nails say about your health
let’s start out with protein your nailis protein it’s a very specific type of protein called keratin and the thing that you need to know about keratin isthat it’s very high in Sulfur okay andalso amino acids because protein is justa combination of amino acids so doing adeep dive and understanding kind ofwhat’s making up this specific bodytissue can give you Clues on what youmay need to eat more of so the two mainsulfur amino acids are cysteine andmethionine and so for example if you’reeating foods that don’t have those twoamino acids or are incomplete that couldbe the reason why you are missing those amino acids and developing problems withyour nail and realize if you have aproblem with your nails it’s not just
happening with your nails it’s happening all over the place so you could eitherbe deficient in Sulfur okay which by theway the number one symptom of a sulfurdeficiency is brittle nails or it can bevery specific amino acids that you’redeficient in because you’re eating foodsthat are not complete with the aminoacids now rather than bore you and complicate things tell you all the foodsthat don’t have that I’m just going torecommend eating foods that containplenty of all of the amino acids thatway you don’t have to worry about tryingto focus on just you know increasing very specific amino acids you got to realize amino acids is not just aboutmaking your your nails your hair yourmuscle your skin it’s about making allthese other proteins involved with biochemistry energy production digestion
Everything your body has millions of different enzymes and they need these amino acids so what kind of foods canyou eat to get a complete amino acidprofile okay well the best foods you caneat would be animal productsspecifically things like eggs fish Meatsversuslegumes or grain type proteins withthose you’re always going to be missingone or two amino acids or those aminoacids are going to be very very low andyou’re going to have to do foodcombining to fix this problem you alsohave the factor of the hydrochloric acidin your stomach if if you don’t have enough hydrochloric acid you can’tdigest these proteins to extract the amino acids from the protein and so howdo you know if you have a lack of a
Hydrochloric acid well you have indigestion you have gas you have bloating heartburn if you have intestinal inflammationyou could also have a problem with aminoacid absorption now the other thingthat’s interesting about protein is thatyou may tend to not be satisfied whenyou eat unless you have sufficientamount of that balanced amino acids asyour requirements because out of all themacronutrients like carbs protein andfats proteins are probably needed as themost important survivalraw material and so in other words let’ssay you’re eating a lot of food butyou’re not hitting that requirement foramino acids the hunger won’t turn offyou’ll just stay hungry you’ll never besatisfied so this is one problem withvegans is that they’ll tend to try toget their amino acids from plant typethings and Grains and legumes but sincethey need to consume so much of those
foods to get the required amount ofamino acids they end up overdoing it onthe carbohydrates now if you want ageneral pretty good estimate of how muchprotein a person would need on averagenow this is on average it could go up itcan go down I would do this I would take0.64grams times your body weight in poundsthat you weigh and you’ll get a good estimate of roughly how much proteinthat your body requires you know whenyou’re deficient amino acids boy allsorts of things will happen not just the increase in appetite without being satisfiedbut you could even develop edema in your legs a swollen belly you can be
chronically fatigued but again I’m justemphasizing out of all the macronutrients protein is the most importantand if you’re deficient in amino acidsand it’s showing up in your nail realizeit’s also going to be affecting yourimmune system your endocrine system yourreproductive system the next topic istrace minerals and minerals traceminerals act as helper called cofactorsor coenzymes for proteins so we justtalked about amino acids which areproteins now to activate these proteinsthat help you grow nails okay you needcertain helper minerals or traceminerals which are just kind of minerals needed in smaller amounts so the most
important mineral would be sulfur youcan get it in cruciferous vegetables youcan get it in eggsyou can get it in meats and fish you canalso get it in garlic and onion there’salso a product that can help brittlenails called MSM but I would recommendtry to get it from the food then youhave zinc another very very importantcofactor where do you get zinc red meatanimal products shellfish Seafoodselenium is another one copper isanother one magnesium is a factor it’snot very common but the can show up inthe nails if you’re deficient inmagnesium and that would be more of theleafy greens but the amount of calciumthat’s in the nail is very very very
tiny so if you have a Calcium deficiencyit’s probably not going to show upnecessarily in brittle nails I meanpotentially it could but it’s morelikely these other elements silicon alsoa lot of people take silicon to improvetheir nails because silicon is involvedin the formation of collagen now anotherimportant vitamin to strengthen thenails is is vitamin C now typicallyyou’re going to get enough C if you’redoing leafy greens or sauerkraut orPeppers or lemons but if you’reconsuming a lot of sugar that is
definitely going to block your vitamin Cbiotin is another B vitamin that people take in very high levels to help theirnails and yes that will work but whatyou have to realize is that you producejust as much biotin as you get from yourdiet and chances arethe real reason why you might bedeficient in biotin has to do with yourgut micro Flora more than your dietmaybe you had an antibiotic maybe youhave some type of gut issue maybe you’renot eating right maybe you don’t eatenough Probiotic foods or Prebioticfoods and that’s why you’re low inbiotin but biotin is very high inchicken liver beef liver eggs salmon and
pork and a couple other reasons why youmight be deficient in biotin you drink agood amount of alcohol you’re on sometype of medication you have lowhydrochloric acid you are an athleteokay you exercise a lot that can createa major deficiency in biotin or you’regetting older and so the requirementsfor biotin go up B6 is another vitaminthat is involved in the production ofprotein but typically it’s not going tobe very common for you to have brittlenails if you have a B6 deficiency B12 isanother factor that can affect the blood
flow to the nail any type of anemiawhether it’s B12 or iron can show up inthe now as a brittle now choline isanother they classify it as a B vitaminif you’re deficient in choline maybe youhave a genetic factor that doesn’t allowyou to absorb choline like myself andthat puts you at risk for a fatty liverand if you want to eat foods high incholine eat more egg yolks now to keepthe Keratin strong there are two fatsoluble vitamins that are also very important vitamin A and vitamin Dwhere do you get vitamin A from I’m not talking about like spinach that’sbeta-carotene which turns into Vitamin A
but just a small amount you want to getyour vitamin A from egg yolk okay fishor animal organs like liver and thingslike that or even cod liver oil and ofcourse vitamin D is difficult to getfrom the food but cod liver oil has ityou can get it from the Sun and othertypes of fatty fish or seafood has some vitamin D in it now I created another
