Does it mean you have a serious illness if your nail health circle disappears?

In most cases, it's not the case at all, and there's no need to worry too much about it.

The health circle we often refer to is the milky white crescent at the root of the nail, which is scientifically called the nail half moon. It is essentially a new nail plate that has not completely hardened and keratinized. What many people don’t know is that this thing is not standard equipment for everyone. I have a colleague from the dermatology department who has only two obvious crescents visible on his thumbs since college. He has received excellent results in all physical examinations every year. He rarely catches colds during seasonal changes. It is purely due to genetics that the nail matrix grows farther back. The keratinized nail plate is blocked by the skin behind it and cannot be exposed. There is no problem at all.

Many doctors who often do clinical work like me have a consensus: the size of the crescent moon has a great relationship with your daily hand habits. The courier guy who came to us for treatment of ringworm in the past two months found that the crescents on the ten fingers of his outstretched hand were all round and full. As a result, his physical examination report also showed a slight hyperlipidemia. After asking, I found out that he runs express delivery every day, polishes his fingers frequently, and his nails grow quickly, so his new nail plate is naturally more exposed, which has absolutely nothing to do with whether he is in good health or not. The same goes the other way around. Many girls who work in offices rarely do menial work, their nails wear out slowly, and their crescent moons are already small. If the light is bad one day and they don’t look at them, they’ll be scared to death. It’s totally unnecessary.

Of course, many people think that the crescent moon can reflect the state of the body. There is indeed a similar statement in traditional Chinese medicine, which links the number of crescent moon to the rise and fall of qi and blood. This is not completely wrong. I have treated several young girls who were on a diet to lose weight in order to wear small-size clothes. After losing weight for more than half a year, all the seven or eight crescent moons that they originally had were gone. At the same time, they were indeed accompanied by cold hands and feet, scanty menstrual flow, and breathing problems after climbing two floors. Later, I adjusted my diet and replenished my blood for two months, and the crescent moon slowly appeared on the thumb again. This is actually a sign that your metabolism is slowing down in the short term and your nutrition cannot keep up. To put it bluntly, it is your body reminding you that "it's time to eat and sleep well", and it is far from a serious illness.

To be honest, over the years I have been practicing as a clinician, I have seen too many people come for medical check-ups because of missing crescent moons, more than for real nail problems. A while ago, there was a young man who was watching a short video and saw that "the complete disappearance of the crescent moon is a sign of kidney failure". He was so frightened that he stayed up for two nights to check the information. The more he looked, the more he felt that he was not going to die soon. When he came, his eyes were red. As a result, he took blood to check that his kidney function was normal. Chang, after further questioning, I found out that he had been drinking cold beer with his friends every day for the past month, and stayed up until two or three in the morning before going to bed. His metabolism was disordered, and the crescent moon naturally retracted. After going back to adjust, less than a month later, he sent me a message saying that the crescent moon had returned to its full length.

Of course, this does not mean that the changes in the crescent moon have no reference value at all. If you originally had obvious crescent moon, all of them suddenly disappeared in a short period of time, and were accompanied by other clear discomforts - such as the overall discoloration and thickening of the nails, unknown black lines or dense pits, or recent inexplicable weight loss. If you always feel weak, low-grade fever, dizzy and panicked, you should definitely go to the hospital for a routine check-up to check for problems such as anemia, thyroid dysfunction, or onychomycosis. However, most of these problems are preventable and curable, and are incomparable with serious diseases such as "cancer and terminal illness" mentioned on the Internet.

To put it bluntly, the crescents on your nails are like the dimples on your face. Some people are born with them, some are born without them. Some people only show them when they smile, and some people are obvious even if they don't smile. If you are really worried, instead of picking your fingers against your nails and counting the days, it is better to check whether you have been eating and sleeping regularly recently, and whether you feel uncomfortable in any way. If you are really confused, go for a routine physical examination, which is more reliable than anything else. If you can't eat or sleep well because of a translucent little guy, but if you really suffer from problems because of a translucent little guy, then the gain outweighs the loss.