Growing healthy nails: silica supplements may make nails stronger and smoother - Beauty - Brief Article

Natural Health, Sept, 2002

TAKING SILICA HAS LONG BEEN touted as a way to repair weak nails, and a recent unpublished study has confirmed this use. In the study, all women who took silica supplements for eight to 16 weeks experienced smoother nails with less peeling and cracking. This study may be the first double-blind, placebo-controlled research on using silica for nails, says Steven Bratman, M.D., a natural medicine consultant in Ft. Collins, Colo.

Silica, a form of the mineral silicon, may help your body produce collagen and strengthen bone. If you have brittle nails, take 280 mg of supplemental silica a day, says James Belanger, N.D., a Lexington, Mass.-based naturopath whose patients have successfully treated brittle nails with the mineral.