We ladies like to have long, strong, pretty nails. We often use all kinds of nail hardeners and acrylics to achieve the strength and length our nails need to sport a pretty manicure. But wouldn’t it be great if you could strengthen your nails – not with synthetic materials – but from the inside, with the right food choices? Your nutritional intake is a key to maintaining strong, healthy nails. And nail that really are healthy, not just synthetically strong, are very important. Brittle or weak nails can be a sign of thyroid problems or an iron deficiency.
Your doctor can tell a lot about your overall health simply by checking your nails.
But no matter what causes nails that are weak or that don’t look their best, there are some steps you can take to get great looking, stronger nails. One of those steps is to make sure that you’re getting the biotin you need in your diet.
Biotin for Healthy Nails
Biotin helps give you energy, helps your skin look great and helps regulate glucose. Biotin is a water-soluble vitamin that’s part of the B-complex family of vitamins and one of the great benefits of this vitamin is how it works to help fight against weak nails.
Your body’s nails are made of keratin and what biotin does to help the nails is to aid in the production of the necessary proteins so that you end up with strong, healthy nails.
Biotin metabolizes the foods you eat so that your body can use the vitamins and minerals in the foods for whatever your body needs. There are a few different ways that you can get more biotin benefits for your body and one of those ways is by paying attention to the foods you eat and making sure that you consume foods rich in biotin.
Remember that as with many vitamins, when you prepare your food by cooking it, you do lose some of the mineral amount.
Biotin-rich Foods
Foods like eggs, specifically the yolk, are very rich in biotin. Not only that, but many people don’t know that eggs also have antioxidants – so they’re doubly good for you! You do want to avoid raw eggs when trying to increase your biotin intake, because raw eggs prevent your body from being able to utilize the very nutrient you’re trying to add.
Some meat foods are great sources to raise your biotin intake – including liver, pork and certain types of fish. Legumes and black-eyes peas also have high levels of biotin.
Consuming some extra helpings of beans like soybeans and adding some alfalfa to your diet are all ways to get the beneficial boost of more biotin. Peanut butter and oatmeal are great sources, too.
Fruits are a good source of biotin and you can find biotin in fruits like avocado, cantaloupe, watermelon, peaches, bananas and more. Peanut butter is a food that’s rich in biotin. With the many foods that contain biotin, it will be easy to change your daily menus to make sure you’re increasing the amount of this essential mineral.
If you’re eating plenty of foods rich in biotin, but would like some extra help for your nails, then consider using a supplement or multivitamin containing biotin.
