A child’s fingernails are peeling: possible causes, symptoms, treatment

Causes of split nails in a child

Without eliminating the provoking factor, there is no point in treating peeling nail plates. In some cases, parents are able to independently determine what led to the development of the pathological condition. To do this, you need to remember how their baby spent the last days: did he violate the regime, did he get injured, how did he eat, what was he sick with. It is important to tell the specialist who will examine the child about all this. It is also useful to pay attention to accompanying abnormalities that can act as indirect symptoms indicating the root cause of the pathological condition of the fingernails or toenails.

Injuries

If mechanical damage occurs (bruises, pinching, blows), after them, as a rule, hematomas (purple-bluish or black bruises) form on the nail plates. They dissolve and lighten over time. When a new nail grows, the described symptoms completely disappear. On the feet, nails often peel due to wearing narrow socks or tight shoes, which strongly compress the toes and soft plates.

Avitaminosis

Lack of vitamins and minerals is another reason that can provoke delamination of the plates. In this case, the base of the nail is involved in the pathological process. In this way, the body reacts to a lack of vitamin D and calcium, iodine, silicon, zinc and iron. Vitamin deficiency can be diagnosed by additional symptoms: the color of the plates changes from light pink to brown, nails do not just peel off, but break off, hair becomes dull, split ends, falls out, jams appear on the lips, the skin becomes tight and dry.

Nervous disorders

Their appearance may be associated with the baby’s adaptation period when entering kindergarten or school. Due to stress, the child tries to constantly suck his fingers or bite his nails. At the same time, he sleeps anxiously at night, cries for no reason, and throws hysterics.

Color change

Normally, a child’s nails are a soft pink color with a pronounced whitish hole at the base. What factors change their color? What might a certain color indicate?

White

Sometimes white spots appear on the child's fingernails or toenails. This condition is medically called leukonychia.

There are several forms of it:

total, the entire nail plate becomes white;
stripe-like, transverse white stripes are formed;
dotted, white dots appear on the child’s nails;
limited, manifests itself in the form of elongated spots of small size.

People believe that white spots occur due to excessive intake of vitamins and minerals, but in fact this is not the case. The causes of white spots on a child’s nails are long-term minor injuries, mechanical damage to the growth zone, and the habit of biting nails. Such changes may appear on your feet due to improperly selected shoes. White spots on a child's nails may be a manifestation of a fungal infection (onychomycosis).

Among systemic diseases, leukonychia is caused by iron deficiency anemia, pathologies of the liver, heart, intoxication, impaired protein digestion, psoriasis, and eczema.

The white spots and stripes on a child’s nails themselves do not require treatment.

In most cases, this is a temporary cosmetic defect that disappears as the nail plate grows. If they appear again, you need to consult a doctor, undergo an examination, and find out their cause.

Yellow

Yellow color is almost always a sign of onychomycosis. This disease is much less common in children than in adults. But it cannot be ruled out. Another yellow color is characteristic of psoriasis.

In addition, the yellow color of a child’s nails is provoked by abnormalities in the liver with impaired bilirubin metabolism, jaundice, pathologies of the endocrine and lymphatic systems, and chronic inflammation of the mucous membrane of the paranasal sinuses.

Red

The red coloration of a child's nails is associated with inflammatory processes in the soft tissues of the nail bed, impaired blood flow in the capillaries, and dilation of small vessels. It is often observed with high temperature and fever.

Red or brown stripes or dashes are the consequences of damage to small vessels under the nail plate that occur as a result of injury.

Black

One of the common causes of black color is household injuries. For example, if a child pinches a finger with a nail in an interior or entrance door. After a severe bruise, swelling occurs, hemorrhage into the soft tissues of the nail bed, and a hematoma forms. After 10 hours, the child's nail turns black or blue, depending on the severity of the injury.

To help your baby, immediately after an injury, apply a cold compress to the sore spot or place the injured finger under a stream of cold water from the tap.

The resulting hematoma resolves within 4 to 6 weeks.

What to do if your child’s nails are peeling

Without eliminating the cause, treatment for nail separation will be useless. Therefore, when drawing up a therapeutic regimen, each specific case develops its own tactics.

For example, if a child constantly bites his nails, parents are advised to try using special varnishes (“Belweder Bitter Lacquer”, “Nekusayka”). Their coating has a persistent bitter taste, it helps to quickly wean the baby from a bad habit. If this treatment does not help, you need to contact a child psychologist.

Possible reasons

It is not so difficult to understand the reasons for the layering of nails in a baby. To begin with, it’s worth remembering what happened to the child in the last couple of days, how he felt, where he was hit, what he ate and what regime he followed. It is all such banal and everyday factors that determine the lamination of a baby’s marigolds. Therefore, before panicking, parents should first remember the possible causes of peeling nails.

Mechanical injuries. Children get injured , and sometimes it’s their little fingers that get hit the hardest. Even if a child slightly touches his finger, this is quite enough for it to begin to flake. Very often, with mechanical injuries, the nail begins to change its color: first blue, then purple and perhaps even black. If one of these shades is noticeable on the nail, then most likely it is because of this that the child’s nails began to peel.
Lack of vitamins. If the nails peel off only on top, then most likely the baby’s body will lack some vitamins or minerals, for example, iron or calcium. Defining vitamin deficiency is quite simple; if it is present, peeling marigolds will have a yellowish tint and small white spots.
Fungus. Small nails can peel off due to a fungal infection. If this is the case, then you should immediately go to a pediatrician who will prescribe the correct treatment. Only a doctor can cure the fungus, so you should never self-medicate, as this can be dangerous for the child’s health.
Mental disorders. If a baby bites his nails very often or his fingers are always in his mouth due to strong emotional experiences, then most likely the flaking is caused by just such factors.
Other factors. In addition to the reasons that have already been described above, a child’s nails can peel due to problems with metabolism, lack of iron in the blood, or even diseases of the adrenal glands. Such diseases can be recognized not only by the layering of the nails, but also by a number of other factors.

As soon as the cause of peeling nails has been established, it is worth starting to treat them. First of all, it is worth getting rid of the causes of lamination. Sometimes good old folk methods will help you cope with this.

Folk remedies

Some recipes are actively used as adjuvant therapy. Those that help disinfect the nail and strengthen it are used.

Best suited for these purposes:

Salt compositions for hands and feet. To prepare them, you need to take five liters of water, dissolve two large spoons of sea salt in them, heat the resulting solution to a temperature of 38 degrees and immerse your hands or feet in it (note that separate baths must be prepared for hands and feet). You can add decoctions of chamomile, sage, string or oak bark to the water, the therapeutic effect will increase. In this way, you can simultaneously strengthen the nail plates and disinfect them, relieve inflammation and stimulate regeneration processes. To prepare a herbal decoction, you need to take two tablespoons of raw materials, brew them with a glass of boiling water, bring the resulting solution to a boil, and then filter through several layers of gauze before use.
Garlic and salt lotions. They are prepared as follows: a tablespoon of salt is dissolved in a liter of water, a clove of garlic is grated on a fine grater, the juice is squeezed out of the resulting slurry, and it is poured into the saline solution. Before going to bed, the finished product is rubbed into the exfoliated plates using a cotton swab and left overnight. The procedure is resumed the next day, and so on until complete recovery. The specified proportions must not be changed under any circumstances. Children's skin is very sensitive, concentrated solutions can corrode it, so it is important to prepare traditional medicine strictly according to the recipe.
Oils for strengthening nails. To strengthen the stratum corneum, apricot, peach, almond oil, as well as flaxseed and olive oil are best suited. Any of them should be applied to the peeling nail, and then gently rubbed into it with your fingers for thirty seconds. If you add an oil solution of vitamins E and A to a small amount, the therapeutic effect will increase significantly.

Ways to strengthen peeling children's nails

Having started to eliminate the defect, it is important to follow a number of preventive procedures aimed at the general strengthening of children's nails. Such events include:

Lubricating nails with vitamins “A” and “E” in liquid form, which can be purchased at any pharmacy.
Rub olive oil into damaged areas.
Taking baths with sea salt (1 teaspoon), which together with iodine (3 drops) is added to a warm bath. It is necessary to bathe the child for 15 minutes, repeat the activity no more than once a week.

Parents need to wean their child from the habit of “biting nails.” For this purpose, you can smear children's nails with a special bitter varnish to discourage the baby from again wanting to put his fingers in his mouth. Avoid scandals in the presence of a child; the atmosphere in the family should be calm so as not to traumatize the child’s psyche.

Prevention of split nails in children

There are a number of rules, the observance of which helps prevent the development of the described disease. Experts recommend that parents:

Treat any nail injuries in a timely manner, treat any damage immediately with iodine or brilliant green, or any other alcohol solution.
Monitor your baby’s diet and include foods rich in zinc, iron, potassium, calcium, phosphorus and vitamins. There are many of them in fish and cottage cheese, in beef liver, in raw vegetables and fruits. Periodically, after consulting with your pediatrician, give your child synthetic multivitamin complexes.
Constantly strengthen your immune system (walk more in the fresh air, play outdoor games, do hardening).
Provide separate scissors for cutting your child’s nails and carefully monitor their cleanliness.

When the first signs of detachment appear, seek medical help immediately. In the early stages, the disease is successfully treated with conservative methods.

Change of structure

The surface of the nail plate is normally flat and smooth to the touch.

But under certain physiological or pathological conditions, relief stripes, pinpoint depressions, bulges, and grooves appear on it. Why does this happen, and what violations does it indicate?

Point depressions

Dotted depressions on the nail plate look as if its surface was poked with a needle. These multiple pits are called thimble syndrome. They are a characteristic sign of psoriasis. Also, pinpoint depressions can be associated with skin diseases (eczema, dermatosis, infections), alopecia areata (hair loss).

In infants, pinpoint dents on the nail plate are considered a physiological norm; as the baby grows older, they disappear on their own.

Transverse grooves

Transverse relief stripes on a child’s nails are called Bo’s lines. They are lines up to 1 mm deep, not different in color from a healthy nail plate. They are formed due to damage to the nail matrix (the place where the nail is formed). Their cause may be a lack of nutrients, metabolic disorders, mechanical injuries, impacts in the area of the hole, or taking certain medications. In children, Beau's lines appear after a high fever.

In infants, Bo lines are considered the physiological norm. They appear between 4 and 14 weeks of age and then disappear as the nail plate grows.

Their formation is associated with physiological changes and restructuring in the child’s body during childbirth.

Longitudinal grooves

Longitudinal or vertical stripes on a child’s nails are usually not dangerous. They look like parallel grooves running from the cuticle to the end of the free edge of the nail plate. Upon closer examination at close range in good lighting, you can see that every person has them.

If the longitudinal stripes are strongly pronounced, then this indicates a lack of B vitamins, zinc, iron, magnesium, and mechanical damage to the nail matrix.

If vertical stripes are combined with discoloration, loss of shine, brittleness and deformation of the child's nail, you should consult a doctor. This may signal chronic diseases of the respiratory tract, peripheral blood vessels, psoriasis, iron deficiency anemia, and lichen planus.

Methods for treating peeling nails

Treatment of peeling nails in children on the toes or hands should begin immediately after you determine the cause of the disease. Moreover, based on the cause of the delamination, you can independently select treatment for the baby, but in more serious cases, it is best to leave everything to a specialist who will prescribe a course of treatment and observe external changes in the damaged nails.

If the reason is a lack of nutrients necessary for the body, you can introduce multivitamin complexes into your daily diet. In this case, why not review the child’s menu and diversify it with foods fortified with calcium and iron. For example, offer your baby dairy products, dried apricots and raisins, almonds or nuts, and also increase the amount of grains and fresh vegetables.
You should not scold or punish your child for the bad habit of constantly biting his nails. This problem lies in the baby’s internal discomfort, constant worry and fear. In this case, you need to reconsider your attitude towards the child or seek the help of a child psychologist. But if the baby feels great, is active and cheerful, you should simply lubricate your fingertips with a special bitter varnish. Twice is enough for the baby to forget this bad habit forever.
If the problem is a fungal infection, you need to use medications in the form of ointments, tablets, varnishes and patches. Moreover, not only the baby, but also the entire family must undergo the course of treatment. For this purpose, it is also worth treating all children's toys, clothes and bedding with hot water.

It should be noted that absolutely any antifungal drug is prescribed only by a specialist. You should not experiment on your child’s health by purchasing medications that are not particularly effective.

If the baby has anemia, which is the reason for the separation of the fingernails or toenails, it is necessary to be with the child in the fresh air more often. If a child loves oxygen cocktails, it is recommended to drink them several times a day, as well as introduce iron-containing desserts or special preparations in this area into the diet.

How to identify hidden diseases of a baby by peeling nails

Almost everyone knows that you can recognize a particular disease by your nails. Therefore, if you notice that only one nail of a child is peeling, you should think about why and what disease this is associated with.

The surface peels off on the child’s thumb - this indicates an unstable mental state.
If your baby's index finger is constantly peeling, this indicates frequent colds.
A dissection on the middle finger indicates a metabolic problem and difficulties associated with intestinal function.
The ring finger is responsible for kidney function.
But the little finger can diagnose heart problems.

By noticing the first signs of nail separation and taking all the necessary measures, you can not only quickly cure your baby, but also identify more serious problems that are easier and more successful to treat in the early stages. In addition, some treatment methods will help strengthen the body, restore immunity and enrich it with useful vitamins and microelements.

Basic Rules

Have you noticed that children's nails grow much faster than adults? And they have to be cut more often. Due to their high moisture content, they are soft, thin, flexible compared to adults, and therefore more vulnerable. The skin on the nail folds is thin and easy to damage, so the first rule of children's manicure and pedicure is caution.

How to properly cut a child’s nails so that they grow strong and healthy?

Use individual children's scissors with rounded ends and a fine-grit file to smooth the edges. This will reduce the risk of accidental injury during the procedure;
Before each procedure, wipe manicure tools with a cotton pad soaked in alcohol to prevent infection;
Don't cut your nails too short. This will lead to inflammation. Leave 1 - 2 mm of free edge (white stripe);
Give your fingernails a rounded shape, and cut your toenails in a straight line;
Do not trim or push back the cuticle. It is not necessary. In addition, the cuticle protects the root of the nail plate;
If you use a nail file, make movements in one direction;
Don't let your nails grow too long. Short ones break off less often and less dirt accumulates under them.

Before a child turns 9–10 years old, adults should cut his nails. It is important to gradually teach children the rules and carefully monitor their implementation at first.

If during the procedure the skin around the nail plate was accidentally injured, it is important to provide proper first aid to prevent inflammation. If there is bleeding, apply a sterile cotton swab or a piece of bandage with hydrogen peroxide to stop it. Then lubricate the damaged area with green paint. Children's skin heals quickly, so don't worry too much. But if the wound is too deep, large in area, or its condition does not improve within two days, consult a doctor.

Treatment of onychodystrophy in a child

Treatment of onychodystrophy in children consists of eliminating the root causes of its development and, if necessary, taking measures to correct altered nail plates.
To draw up his tactics, the podologist prescribes the child to perform dermatoscopy, microscopy of scrapings and, in some cases, mycological culture for differential diagnosis with onychomycosis. Consultations with related specialists may also be scheduled to determine the root cause of the deformity. To treat this pathology, it is recommended to eliminate factors that injure the nail (for example, wearing comfortable shoes, stopping toe sucking, treating a chronic disease). The treatment plan may include medications, physiotherapy, orthopedic and hardware correction techniques.

The Podology Clinic in Moscow is equipped with all the necessary expert-class equipment for the diagnosis and treatment of nail pathologies. The medical center performs all necessary types of physiotherapy, therapeutic hardware cleaning, laser therapy of nail plates. In difficult cases, a child or teenager undergoes nail prosthetics using high-quality artificial plates. All procedures are performed taking into account age characteristics.

Treatment of onychodystrophy with PinPointe laser

Doctors at the Podology Clinic are the only ones in Moscow who provide laser treatment for onychodystrophy in children using the innovative PinPointe device. Nail restoration begins from the first session! The procedures are absolutely painless and stimulate the growth of a healthy nail plate without removing the affected nail or taking medications. The high efficiency of laser therapy is explained by the unique ability of the device to deliver laser beams and uniformly heat the plate tissue to a temperature of 79°. At the same time, metabolic processes are stimulated, the trophism of the nail bed is restored and a healthy nail grows without complications or side processes.

Forecast

The Blade of Podology employs experienced and tactful doctors. The center has all the necessary equipment for high-quality and accurate diagnosis of the disease, including the PinPointe micropulse laser. During the treatment process, not only modern but also innovative methods are used to speed up the recovery of patients and guarantee excellent aesthetic results.

Prevention

In some cases, the following recommendations can prevent the development of onychodystrophy:

exclusion of traumatic factors;
balanced diet;
timely correction of hypovitaminosis;
elimination of excessive sweating of the feet;
timely treatment of flat feet;
compliance with personal hygiene rules;
prevention and timely treatment of chronic diseases;
refusal to use aggressive household chemicals and cosmetics;
correct selection of products for the care of hands, feet and nails in accordance with age;
preventing stress and increasing stress resistance.

Don’t let the disease take its course and don’t put off visiting a specialist! Remember that nails are an indicator of overall health! The specialists of the Podology Clinic will establish trusting contact even with the smallest patient and help him acquire healthy nails in the shortest possible time. Call the clinic or make an appointment with a podiatrist using the feedback form on the website - the doctors will select an effective treatment regimen for your child.