People believe (and TV pushes them to do this) that nails break from a lack of calcium. Some people swear by their mother that calcium supplements made their nails strong and beautiful.
It is believed that the idea of the benefits of calcium for nails came about after they found out that there really is calcium in the nails. Only there is only 0.03% of it. By the way, in our skeleton calcium is 20-25%.
There are very few scientific publications on this topic. Simply because it never occurs to anyone to count the microscopic amount of calcium in the nails, and how it changes against the background of diet.
Somewhere around 2000, scientists from the University of Auckland in New Zealand broke down and conducted research on this topic.
They hurried up and at the right time wedged themselves into a scientific study, where they studied the effect of calcium citrate on osteoporosis on elderly aunts.
Aunties were fed real calcium or a placebo for a year. Then the participants in the experiment were questioned about the beauty and fragility of the nails. As expected, most of the grandmothers didn't notice. But there were also those who swore that their nails were strengthened.
Almost no one reported the deterioration of the quality of nails.
Then the results were compared, and it turned out that they did not differ from the placebo group. That is, it seems to people that the nails have changed from calcium, but there was no calcium there, but only a dummy.
And this is quite consistent with the results of those rare studies of the quality of nails, in which scientists indicate rather the content of some proteins or cellular composition.
That is, nails are appendages of the skin. They are alive and tender as skin. It's not about calcium, but about living cells and various organics.
I have here's another article about vertical lines on the nails. Read it.
