The end has come!! As promised today I'm going to be showing you the difference between using a nail strengthener and simply not polishing your nails. Above you see my final results of four weeks of butter LONDON Horse Power. As I mentioned in my last post I had a bit of peeling but nothing really major and most of it on a previously injured nail. You can see that there's some significant growth and no breaks so that's definitely a plus! On this hand I went polish free with just strengthener for the first week and then after used the strengthener as a base coat under polishes. On my other hand I used NO products. Here are the results of that...
Several things to note here. One is that the color is very different. Even with a good base coat nails will still show some discoloration from long term polish use. You can certainly buff this off but buffing frequently also weakens nails (especially if done improperly!) so it's always easier to prevent! Obviously no peels here either which is pretty typical for me as my nails normally stay very strong and healthy without any treatments. The length is the last thing to note. I do not have pictures of the original starting point of my left hand so while you can see that there is more growth on this side than the other I know some of you out there will say it's a lie since I have no proof of my start. You can take my word for it or you can choose not to but it's really a smallish amount so it's not super important. Here's what I really want to show you. Look at the shape of my nails on my right hand vs my left. The hand I left product free has much wider nails and they seem more square. This is NOT because of shaping. It's because of this:
The C curve. See a lot of people, even professionals, want you to believe that polishing your nails does ZERO damage. Well as a professional, a freelancer and a fellow polisher....I want you to know that this is false. Let's look at this like your hair. Now some hair products and hair professionals will tell you if you use this product or that or the other, that heat will not damage your hair. But you know this is not true. Heat, dye, even shampoo damages hair. Now if I bleach my hair it's obviously much more damaged than if I simply blow it out. But damage is damage. Acrylics are a little like bleaching and polish is more like flat ironing. But still you can see the damage. I DO moisturize my nails regularly. They get cuticle balm twice a day and lotion at least that and most days more. Previously I've even used a moisturizing base coat but these things will NOT prevent damage. They just minimize it. Some of you may not see right away what I'm talking about so I've drawn some lines to help you on the below pic...
Look at the height of my C curve on the right vs the left. It's nearly double. This is caused by the polish. It creates dryness which causes the nail to curve under more. THAT in turn makes it easier to break the nails. Over dryness can make them more brittle which increases this risk. But in general this is simply changing the shape of my nail. It can be more slight on some people than others but I think that most of us are simply too used to the polished shape to realize that it's not the one we were born with! Is it serious? No. Will it hurt you? No. But is it better for your nails to grow out polish free? Well...let's just say, it will give you a much stronger base to start polishing!! :) (as a side note: you can also see in this picture that the Horse Power did not add any thickness to my nail!)
Have you ever tried this experiment? What were your results?
- 7:00 AM
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