Your nails may be trying to tell you something – and checking them might be the easiest way (hands down) to spot hidden health issues.
Meaning “little moon” in Latin, lunula are the half-moon shapes at the base of your nails. This is where new nail cells are made and pushed forward. They are most visible on your thumbs and are smaller and less visible as you move toward the little fingers.
Researchers analyzed studies dating back to 1954, when research was first published on a particular type of unusual lunula, to find out exactly what mini-moons can tell us about our health.
The lunulae are usually white because the nail is thicker there, obscuring the blood vessels on the nail bed. That said, not everyone has them, and not having lunulae does not indicate that you are in poor health.
But when you have lunulae that turn red, it can mean danger. “Red lunulae may reflect both systemic disease activity or local pathology,” the authors wrote.
What the researchers found
Nails are very sensitive to changes in the body’s health. It needs a constant flow of nutrients, oxygen, and blood to continually grow, and changes to any of these will affect how they grow.
For example, GLP-1 use was recently shown to be associated with discolored and loose nails.
This is why we have considered our nails as indicators of health for so long. In this first report from 1954, researchers in London observed that 61% of people examined with red lunulae also had heart failure.
Everyone else with red lunulae had some sort of systemic illness like emphysema and chronic bronchitis (both known as COPD), cirrhosis (long-term scarring of the liver), and cancer, including polycythemia vera (a blood cancer that causes thick, slow-to-circulate blood), lymphoma (cancer of the white blood cells), and myeloid leukemia (cancer of the blood and bone marrow).
Since then, more and more research has shown that red lunulae are linked to autoimmune diseases such as alopecia areata (which causes hair to fall out in round patches), dermatomyositis (which causes skin rashes and muscle weakness), and systemic lupus erythematosus (aka SLE, which attacks healthy tissues and organs).
The author also notes links to congestive heart failure, psoriasis, carbon monoxide poisoning, and lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV), a sexually transmitted infection caused by certain variants of the Chlamydia bacteria.
But exactly why red mini-moons on your nails are linked to any of these conditions “remains unclear,” the authors say.
They point out, however, that the association only exists if multiple nails have red lunulae – if there is only one, something local, like an injury under that nail, is more common.
It’s also important to note that having a red lunula doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong, just like having white lunulas doesn’t mean you’re perfectly healthy.
The authors say the analysis simply shows that further investigation is necessary if a patient presents with red lunulae.
“Given the rarity of this event, its potential diagnostic relevance is often overlooked,” the researchers write.
“When identifying red lunulae, clinicians should consider links to underlying systemic or dermatologic disease. This subtle clinical sign may facilitate early detection and identification of salient systemic disease.”
Gn Health
