What Your Fingernails Say About Your Health

Does something look off when taking a close look at your fingernails? Maybe it's the color or the texture. If so, a call to your doctor may be needed.

According to Ernestine A. Wright, M.D., FACP, a board certified primary care doctor with Mercy Personal Physicians Downtown in Baltimore, there could be several things going on.

If your fingernails look pale, it could be a sign of an iron deficiency. If there are vertical ridges on your fingernails, Wright said that could just be because of your age or possibly a zinc deficiency or an underlying health condition, like thyroid disease.

"We sometimes look for horizontal ridges, those are ridges that are across the nailbed, and those can be a sign of a more serious disease that caused a change in the way the cells that form the nailbed work and that could occur, say if someone was having chemotherapy or someone had a severe illness like a pneumonia or even severe (COVID-19)," Dr. Wright said.

For those who always have their nails painted, Dr. Wright noted that it is really important to take a close look at what's underneath the color when your polish is removed.

View Mercy primary care physician Dr. Ernestine Wright's interview regarding what fingernails reveal about your health.