Natural Nail Recovery After Gel & Acrylic Removal: What to Expect

Question
I had my gel nails removed two weeks ago after wearing for a month and a month wearing acrylics. My nautural nails are bruttally sore. I have trimmed them down as afar as I can and no relief, also they do not seem to grow and are painfully thin. What can I expect and for how long please help thanks bev

Answer
Hi Beverly,

I understand you had enhancements on for about 2 months, acrylic and gel and they are now removed from your natural nail bed and the nail beds are extremely sensitive to the point of pain.
I'm not sure how you had they removed so I will take a chance and either say they were pulled, drilled or filed off and if theses were done in a salon they should have soaked your acrylic off with acetone and gels thinned and then soaked with acetone. When the enhancements are aggressively removed in any way they then take your natural nail layers with the product or if the product was drilled down into your nail bed this also weakens the nails, the inexpensive salons are famous for doing this when trying to remove the product quickly.

Since I am assuming this is the case with layers missing it will take some time for the nail to completely grow out with new healthy growth. You will continue to have tearing and breakage since the nails are so weak, I would recommend going for a weekly a manicure to have someone work with you to stimulate growth, this will be the fastest and healthiest way of doing it. If you choose not to go that route, the best thing to do is get a high quality natural cuticle oil such as Solar Oil, Avoplex, Dadi Oil(professional products), these will plasticize the nail giving it more strength and durability naturally. Stay away from mineral oil or baby oil they do not penetrate the nail to do any good. Keep you nails short, this will not be a quick fix but you will see results if applied every night before bed to the surface of the nail.
Please stay away from the cheap placed as most of them to do not know how to care for natural nails and could make it worse.
I wish I could give you an exact time frame till they are back to normal but thats impossible since not knowing the extent of damage that has been done. I hope this is helpful.
Thanks
Karen