“Gio, I love your nail colou… wait! Why haven’t you removed your cuticles?!”
It’s a sin for a beauty blogger to paint her nails without removing her cuticles. But, I don’t care.
Cuticles may not look all that pretty. But they’re SO useful, and getting rid of them is never a good idea. Here’s why:
Why You Should NOT Remove Your Cuticles
Those little ugly things have a a very important job to do: they connect the skin of your fingers to your nails, creating a seal that prevents water and germs to get inside your body.
When you remove this seal, you’re opening the door to germs and bacteria that could give you an infection. Paronychia, to be exact. Paronychia makes your fingers all red and swollen, and takes ages to heal. Even with proper treatment (usually antibiotics or surgical drainage), we’re talking months.
It doesn’t matter how you remove your cuticles, by the way. You could cut them, bite them, or even just push them back. The result is the same: you’re risking a nasty infection.
Do you still want to remove your cuticles? Let me know in the comments below.
Nope! I don’t remove them and I even used to think it was kind of gross and painful before I knew what it really was.
Good news! I found my notebook of notes I took about web layouts. :] All the pretty pictures and tabs are just made in Photoshop and YOU drab guides to the pictures and areas that you want to be clickable. So you decide what site the guides lead to. Of course the viewer will not see the guides and think the picture is a button. So Do you have any idea of how you want your web layout? I think it’d be cool to have some side bar buttons.
Janessa, that’s good that you don’t remove them. 🙂
That’s great news. Mmm, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t wanna change it too much as I like simple layout, but I want to jazz it up a bit with some nice graphics and color. I like the idea of sidebar buttons too. 🙂
I meant to say drag* not drab. haha
Janessa, lol. No worries. 🙂
I don’t know if I experienced paronychia or something else, but yes.
I bit my cuticle while riding the bus and the next day… oh dear. Yup, antibiotics and minor surgery, but surgery nevertheless.
Yup, months.
Way to cure me from biting my cuticles 😐 – I haven’t bitten them since.
Ana, I’m sorry you had to go through that, how awful! I’m glad you don’t bite your cuticles anymore. It can seem harmless but it really isn’t. 🙁
I don’t remove my cuticles either! Nice post…..I’ll def share it with my readers in the favorite weekend reads section!
Harshleen, that’s great that you don’t. It really isn’t worth the risk. And thanks for sharing my post, I appreciate it.
I don’t like to remove cuticles!!! its harmful and does bleed sometimes when one tries to remove it.
Swati, I agree. It’s best to leave them alone than making them bleed and possibly get an infection too.
Very important information. Thanks a lot. I enjoy from your blog so much 🙂
Lidia, you’re welcome and I’m glad you do. 🙂
I have always pushed them back and removed the ones that looked ugly/too long (the more you cut, the faster those bastards grow), but a month ago one of my fingers got infected (!!!), really bad, I can’t even tell you how much it hurt. So I decided not to cut them any more. So you’ve got a point here.
Laura, I’m sorry you had to learn it the hard away, it’s really awful! Removing cuticles can seem such a harmless thing to do that will make your fingers look prettier, but it’s actually dangerous.
agreed with everything you posted. i don’t remove cuticle on my own, and some people that i know who frequently go for mani, have really bad cuticles :S i don’t usually go for mani/pedi also for the same reasons
Xin, I’m glad you agree. I don’t go for mani/pedi either, but if I did, I’d ask them not to remove my cuticles. It’s just too risky.
I usually just slab on some cuticle oil and massage it in, I did push them in a little but it doesn’t make any difference? but luckily for me, my cuticles aren’t in bad shape, so everything’s okay!
Plue, massaging them with some oil is ok, cuticle need some moisturizer too. But I’d avoid pushing them back, it’s too risky!