If you don't have it, it can seem a very trivial, even a laughable, problem. If you do have it, it's no joke, even though it's usually painless and won't threaten your health. It's "nail fungus", and there is nothing like it for making you feel self-conscious and frustrated.
A nail that is harboring a fungus is thickened and discolored, usually yellow, but sometimes white or green. It pulls away from its pink nail bed at, usually starting at the tip end of the nail. The target of the fungus is not only the nail, but the nail bed under the nail, and the folds of skin at the sides of the nail.
Fungus is a microscopic plant form teeming in your environment. It's very similar to mold that grows on exposed bread, but is a different species.
You don't need close contact with someone else's infected nails to pick it up. Fungus is literally everywhere in your environment. Fungus may first invade the protective layer of dead cells coating your toes, resulting in Athlete's Foot. Then it can move into the toe nails.
Another point of entry for fungus infection is a bump that causes a bruise under the nail. That bruise creates a fungus-friendly pocket between the nail and the nail bed. Once a nail is infected, fungus can jump to other toenails. The most common pattern is for fungus to start on a big toe, then spread from nail to nail, and then from foot to foot, and sometimes to finger nails.
Other minor injuries may lift up the tip portion of the toenail, allowing fungus to enter. Once it gets in, the warm, moist, dark environment of your shoe helps it to grow. As it works it's way backward, it lifts the nail off the nail bed and causes the nail to become thickened and deformed, and sometimes ingrown into the flesh on the sides of the nail. Once the nail becomes thick enough, your shoe squeezes it down on top of the fleshy portion of your toe, often causing constant pain.
In the past, we had only two treatments available:
The first was topical treatment, with medications that you applied on top of your toe nails twice daily. This treatment method is still used extensively today, but has one major draw back: topical medications simply will not cure the fungus, because they can't penetrate the thick, fungus nail plate to reach the bed where the fungus actually grows. The best that topical treatment can offer is to prevent the spread of fungus to other toe nails.
The other treatment that used to be used frequently was surgical removal of the infected toe nails. This treatment is only occasionally used today, as there are multiple draw backs: the fungus can easily recur, the new toe nail often grows back thick and/or deformed, and the affected toes are quite sore for 3-5 days.
The treatment of choice today is oral medication....yes, another pill to swallow. Over the past few years, many advances have been made in the development of anti-fungal medication, comparable to antibiotics, with which we are all familiar.
No longer do you have to put up with unsightly or painful fungus toe nails. It makes good sense to treat fungal infections with anti-fungal medications, the same way we doctors treat bacterial infections with antibiotics.
DR. CHRIS ALBRITTON
2501 S. Willis
Abilene, TX 79605
325-695-8990