Fingernails are made from keratin

This was bugging me for quite some time (about 3 or 4 years), but I've finally bothered to check what fingernails are made from.  Hard, curved plates of keratin - so there you have it.

They first form a few centimetres past where you first see your fingernail up to before the knuckle, and is also known as the matrix.

The white spots that you sometimes find on your fingernail are damaged nail, technically termed "leukonychia", and would have happened up to 8-weeks prior to their first appearance - by which time you'd have probably forgotten about whacking your finger/thumb.

Which means, apparently, that the white spots aren't a sign of calcium or zinc deficiency - which is what I was told.


And yes, I'm incredibly bored.