Nails have a fleshy bottom layer attached to them that somehow doesn’t come forward with the nail as it grows, why is that?
In: Biology
The ‘fleshy bottom layer’ (or nail groove) contains the dividing cells. The way you can see it is that when the cells here divide, one daughter cell will remain and will keep dividing. The other one will migrate up towards the nail, start to produce a lot of keratin (the stuff that makes our nails so strong) and will eventually die and become part of the nail itself. So the nail groove doesn’t move, but continuously pushes new keratin into the nail, this pushes the already existing keratin further up, thus our nail grows.
Edit: just to make sure this isn’t misunderstood: the nail groove is at the base of the nail, not the whole skin UNDER the nail, that’s the nail bed (the nail groove is it’s most proximal part, so there where the nail bed and nail itself meet (this needs a picture…)).
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another question id like to add: why do we grow nails?
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The flesh of the nail bed is actually a very thin epidermis. It’s one of the reasons your nails appear red because the the dermis underneath is full of blood vessels. Your nail grows over this epidermis starting from the nail fold, an area under the cuticle. The nail grows towards the tips of your fingers over the nail bed, while the cells of the nail bed contribute to the thickness of your nail. Just like the cells of the epidermis on the rest of your skin, the cells of the nail bed that contribute to your nail fill will keratin, flatten, and die, causing them to detach from their neighbors. This is why the flesh isn’t pushed forward as the nail grows.
My sister is a nail tech and it DOES grow. If properly treated your nail bed become longer (more pink less white) this is needed for nail art competitions. In 6 months mine have grown 3mm.
If you want to do it don’t cut your nails only file and moisturizer.
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Speak for yourself, I left my big toe untrimmed too long and now that skin has grown out some and I can’t cut the nail back as far as it used to, very irritating…
The nail starts stacking up from the beginning, but the hyponychium (the skin just below the nail that completes the seal) stays mostly at the same place. However, I have a condition in which the skin does grow and the hyponychium may go past the nail. I may occasionally tear that skin when doing something with my hands.
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