why do we have a white half moon at the top of our fingernails?
In: Biology
Do you mean the lunula (half moon shape at the bottom) or the white of the nail itself? Because the reason the edge of your nail is white is due to your nail bed ending and the nail not being connected to the blood supply. The lunula is basically where your nail matrix begins, and they might be invisible on some fingers due to being underneath the cuticle/skin. Usually the lunula is naturally whitish, but discolouration can indicate a health issue such as certain kinds of poisonings or deficiencies. They can look anywhere from yellow to purple to blue to even grey or black. The reason the colour change is so noticeable is because that’s where the new growth of nail begins.
Are you referring to the cuticle/lunula or the white spots that show up sometimes? The lunula is the “master copy” of our fingernail, and the rest of it grows out from there.
There are many fucking horrible answers here.
After looking through the comments, I know that you’re referring to the region at the base of the fingernail.
The half-moon shape at the base of the fingernail is called the ‘Lunula’ in medical terms. This is the fancy Latin way of saying ‘Moon-like’. You and the person who named this fingernail structure both decided that it looked like a half-moon. Pretty cool if u ask me! We are no smarter than the people who came before us, but we have the benefit of their experience.
Anyways. You wanted to know *WHY* this region of the fingernail is discolored, or at least why it’s colored differently from the rest of the nail. The answer is that this region of the fingernail forms part of the NAIL MATRIX. This is basically the root of the nail bed, which is the region that’s responsible for the growth of the entire fingernail.
If you damage the lunula of the nail, then you can often see predictable results. This is the house where the rest of the nail is built. Much of the nail matrix lives under the skin at the base of your fingernail. Damaging the nail matrix will fuck up the growth of the entire nail.
You’ll sometimes see lines called Beau’s Lines if you damage the lunula or the portion of the nail that’s more proximal to it (google beau’s lines if you’d like). By looking at the distance of these lines from the nail matrix, you can tell approximately how long ago the injury happened. Many pathologies and infections (e.g. fungal infections) can affect the nail matrix, but I won’t go into detail about that shit bc this is ELI5.
If you have more questions about fingernails, medicine, or whatever else please feel free to send me a message.
Aight lads and ladies, let’s keep the top-level to explanations of the question at hand.
We don’t care that you may or may not have these lunulae. Keep that shit outta the top level if’n you please. Feel free to discuss it at lower levels, though.
It’s the visible part of the root of the nail. So, it turns out that that white bit is actually UNDER your nail. Wikipedia:
“Examinations concluded that the lunula is an area of loose dermis with lesser developed collagen bundles. It appears whitish because a thickened underlying stratum basale obscures the underlying blood vessels.”
Stratum basal is the deepest layer of your skin
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