Parts Of A Fingernail

Fingernail are parts of the body that everybody has and most of us take care of it. Some do that because they know how important their function is, others do it because they were told to and the last category do it so their fingernails will look good, so there is no functional reason, just an aesthetic one.

One might believe that there aren't many parts of the nail, because in a normal case only one or two parts are handled, but if we can't see something, that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't exist.

I think that nobody can say which part is the most important, but if I had to choose, I would say that the most important is the matrix, which is situated under and beneath the nail fold. Its function is to produce keratin, a rough protein of which the nail is made, so we might say that this part is the reason of existence of the nails. If the matrix is damaged then the growth of the nails is affected so they can no longer regenerate. This is why I said that this gives the reason of existence of the nails. If they can no longer regenerate there is a high possibility that at some point they will disappear. The eponychium is the part that forms around the cuticle area and it can be lifted or trimmed during a manicure session. The paronychium is the skin around the cuticle, protecting the matrix. The hyponychium is the area of attachment between the nail plate and the nail bed.The most visible part of fingernails is the nail plate and we usually refer to this part when we use the term 'nail'. This is the biggest, translucent part of the nail, which is composed of layers of keratin, the protein I mentioned before. The nail bed is the tissue under the nail plate which is visible through the nail plate. That is why this part is responsible for the color of the nails and in the same time for the shape of it. The lunula is the only visible part of the matrix, a whitish crescent shape, also referred to as 'moon', which is only visible on larger nails. The next part is the nail fold, which is the fold of hard skin overlapping the base and sides of the nails. The free edge or distal edge is the part of the nail that extends past the finger Its normal color is white, and we should always leave free edge to prevent infections (so it has more reasons than just the aesthetic one). Last, but not least, the nail grove guides the growth of the nail, and it is located on the side of the nail.

On the picture above there are illustrated the major parts of a fingernail.

On this picture other parts of the fingernail are shown as well.

Now that we know what the parts of the fingernail, we know what we have to be careful about and especially, why.