Contents:
- Medical Video: Can diabetes cause yellow nails ?
- Diabetes, one of the causes of yellow nails
- How to treat yellow nails for diabetics
Medical Video: Can diabetes cause yellow nails ?
Nail appearance can reflect the health of your body as a whole. Yellowing nail color is usually caused by aging or smoking habits. However, yellow nails can also be an early sign of diabetes. Why does diabetes make yellow nails?
Diabetes, one of the causes of yellow nails
Indirectly, the cause of yellow nails in people who have diabetes is the body's inability to produce enough of the hormone insulin, so it cannot break down sugar perfectly. That is why the blood sugar levels of diabetic people are always high. This then impacts collagen production. Collagen is a type of protein that forms nails. The lack of collagen production in nails can make your nails look broken, dry and dull yellowish in color.
The cause of yellow nails in people with diabetes can also be a complication of the side effects. An increase in blood sugar levels that are not well controlled, aka hyperglycemia, causes the body's resistance to slow down to fight disease. As a result, diabetics are very susceptible to fungal or bacterial infections. High glucose levels in the body can increase the ability of germs to multiply faster.
In addition, diabetes can also cause damage to the peripheral nerves which causes diabetics not to realize that germ and bacterial infections have gnawed at the fingers, which enter through the nail gap. This is what makes diabetics more at risk of developing fungal infections of the nails (onychomycosis) than those who do not have diabetes.
How to treat yellow nails for diabetics
In most cases, yellow nails are not dangerous and do not need to be treated. But yellow nails can be a sign of infection from diabetes complications. If your finger nails are thick, brittle, and yellowish, the main cause is fungal infection.
Thickened nails can make you feel sick to walk. Thickening of the nails is also a risk to grow into the skin and cause injury, which further increases your risk of infection. If the infection is already severe, the doctor mayremoving infected nails as a last resort. New nails will then grow in the same place. But this new nail growth process can take up to a year until new nails grow perfectly.
Moreover, if the nail infection has spread to the skin and causes injury, this tends to be difficult to cure. Even for some cases amputation needs to be done.
For that, as much as possible keep taking care of your nail health. Keep nails clean and short every time. Your doctor may also prescribe an antifungal cream to treat yellow nails caused by infection. Terbinafine (Lamisil) and itraconazole (Sporanox) are antifungal drugs that are often prescribed for diabetics.
