Hangnails
7 Tips to a Trim Finger
They're no big deal. Until you catch them on something. Trouble is, you catch them on
everything. Your hair, your clothes, the newspaper, your cat. Every time you use your hands, little jabs of pain remind you of their presence.
Where do hangnails come from? Those annoying little triangular splits of skin around the fingernails are nothing more than dead skin. The skin in that area, which does not contain a good supply of oil to begin with, simply dries out.
Who gets them? They're particularly common among women who have their hands in water a lot or who bite their nails. But, says Rodney Basler, M.D., an assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, anyone involved in an occupation that dries out the hands is at risk. "The worst cases of hangnails [as well as chapped hands and hand eczema] occur in letter sorters. People who work with paper all the time get terribly dry hands because the paper actually absorbs oil from their hands. Often they think they're allergic to ink on the paper, but it's just the physical effect of oil being removed from their skin."
http://www.mothernature.com/Library/...ooks/47/70.cfm