Does it mean you have a serious illness if your nail health circle disappears?

In most cases it is not, so don’t scare yourself. Only in rare cases accompanied by other systemic abnormal symptoms do we need to be alert to potential disease risks.

I just said this to the post-95s girl who attended the outpatient clinic three times last week. She came across a short video that said "all the crescent moons are a sign of cancer". She counted on her hands for half a night and found that there were originally five crescent moons and only two thumbs were left. She was so scared that she couldn't sleep for three days. When she looked at it again, she found that even the crescent moons on her thumbs were almost gone. She hurriedly came to register, took full blood and did a full set of physical examinations. There were no problems, just that she was getting through it.

Let's first clarify what the "health circle" we are talking about is - it is the small white crescent at the base of the nail. The scientific name is the nail half moon. To put it bluntly, it is the "little growth tail" of the nail. The newly grown keratin is milky white. As the nail grows outward, it will slowly harden and become transparent, which is the part of the nail we usually see.

Don't tell me, my mother used to talk about the crescent moon. Every time she saw me, she would break off my fingers to look at it. She said that my lack of crescent moon meant that I was weak, and she wanted to make me some chicken soup. I used to think that the old lady was just being picky, but after talking to my colleagues in the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, I realized that this statement is not completely unfounded. In the syndrome differentiation system of traditional Chinese medicine, the state of the first half moon is indeed one of the reference items for judging the flow of qi and blood and the level of metabolism, but please note that it is "one of", and it must be looked at together with the tongue coating, pulse condition, and the overall mental state of the person. It is impossible to judge whether you are sick or not just by looking at the number of crescent moons. For example, two years ago, I attended a national academic conference and stayed up for seven days. Originally, only two of my four crescents were left. My colleagues in the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine said that I had consumed too much energy and blood during that period. Later, I adjusted my schedule for a month and slept seven hours a day, and the crescents grew back on their own without any problems.

From the perspective of Western medicine, this matter is even simpler. There is no concept of a "health circle" at all. There are huge individual differences in the methyl nails and half moons. Some people are born with the methyl nails in the front, and the newly grown keratin is exposed before they are keratinized, resulting in more lunulae. ； Some people are born with methyl groups at the back. By the time the keratin is exposed, it has completely hardened and become transparent, so naturally the crescent moon cannot be seen. This is all natural and has nothing to do with health. My aunt's cousin has only been able to see the crescent moon on his two thumbs since he was a child. He is 28 this year and can even place in a half-marathon. He rarely catches a cold all year round.

Of course, that doesn't mean you don't need to pay attention to the changes in the crescent moon. If you used to have four or five crescents all year round, but suddenly they disappear within a month or two, and you are also accompanied by other discomforts - such as inexplicable fatigue, sudden weight loss of more than ten pounds without deliberately losing weight in a month, nails becoming brittle and easy to break, long black lines or gray-yellow patches, then you must go to the hospital for a check-up. However, at this time, it is not that "the disappearance of the crescent moon causes illness", but that there is something wrong with your body, such as abnormal thyroid function, severe anemia, and extreme nutritional deficiencies, which affects the growth rate of the nails, and the crescent moon just disappears. It is just a "signal light" that appears by the way, and it is also an inaccurate signal light and cannot be used as a basis for diagnosis alone.

Nowadays, the sayings on the Internet that "less than 8 months old is a sign of physical weakness" and "missing a month old is a sign of cancer" are really just a source of traffic. Last month I saw a 62-year-old man who had full crescents on all ten fingers. He had not been diagnosed with high blood pressure and high blood lipids, so it was of no reference.

Harmful, to put it bluntly, most people's crescent moon disappears because they have lost weight recently due to overeating, eating irregularly, and dieting. If you adjust your work and rest for half a month and eat well, most of them will grow back. There is really no need to look over and over at a fingernail to scare yourself. I really felt unwell and went directly to the hospital for a checkup, which was 10,000 times more accurate than looking at my nails through ten short videos.