Often the status of your nails is a good indicator of whether someone is well cared for. The color of nail polish you chose this time is quite sparse, but what’s underneath sometimes speaks volumes. Do you see red lines under your nail? Then maybe this points to something. So check your nails first before adding the next color.
What are these red lines?
The red lines you see under your nail are called splinter hemorrhages. Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you have a splinter under your nail, it just looks like it. A splinter hemorrhage is actually just a vertical, small spot of blood under your nail. The splinter hemorrhages can often be found at the top of the nail. They appear on both your fingernails and your toenails.
How do these splinter hemorrhages occur?
The name of this bleeding sounds anything but pleasant, but fortunately it is usually painless. You probably don’t even know you have a splinter hemorrhage until you see it. The red line can easily arise from an injury to the nail. This could be a minor collision or a more serious ‘trauma’. With more serious injuries you will probably experience pain. Your nail may then turn red and your skin may swell. The splinter hemorrhages will disappear once the injury has healed, which may take a few months. With a bit of luck, a splinter hemorrhage from a minor injury will simply grow along with your nail and you will get rid of it in no time.
Other causes
While there’s a good chance that your nail has simply suffered minor trauma, splinter bleeding could also indicate something else. For example, it could mean that you have an inflammation in your heart or blood vessel wall or a fungal infection under the nail. It can also indicate diabetes or high cholesterol.
Now you don’t have to panic right away, because these conditions are accompanied by other symptoms that occur earlier. So if this is the cause of the splinter hemorrhages, you are probably already being treated for this. Splinter bleeding can also be a side effect of some medications. And they don’t even have to be heavy medications. For example, it can also be a side effect of ibuprofen and many other medications if you use them often. It may also simply be that no cause can be found for a splinter hemorrhage. In this case it is just an innocent abnormality in your body.
Do not panic
Do you often suffer from splinter hemorrhages, do you also have a lot of them and are you still a bit worried? Then of course you can always call your doctor. Splinter hemorrhages themselves can in principle do no harm, so as long as you have no other serious complaints, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Sometimes you can disappear the red line itself with the sharp edge of tweezers if it is not too deep. Please note: do not go too deep under your nail, as this can cause inflammation.
If you’re really annoyed, you can always apply a nail polish over it. Bye bye red lines!
