Can you tell I care a lot about my nails? We all have our beauty obsessions and mine is definitely skin and nails. Up until 2011, I never had long nails. They were constant nubbins and I really had to develop a routine of self-care to keep them long and healthy for nail art. One thing I have been struggling with for the past 2 years is splitting and breakage especially on my right hand as it is the dominant one. In these drier winter months, the nails on my left hand (my beautiful photo hand) have also started to fall prey to being easily broken and I have been rotating base coats and treatments to find the best solution and I have had some (so far) promising results with Vitry's Nail Repair Care* ($26.00 CDN).
Vitry is a French beauty brand that has been around since the late 1700s and though they carry makeup and skincare as well, I have only ever seen their nail care in Canada. The Nail Repair Care Sensitive Formula promises visibly stronger nails in 2 weeks using "74% of organically sourced ingredients". When it comes to nail polish-like products, I am not really sure how meaningful this really is as the only ingredients in this that I could see being "organic" is the hydrolyzed keratin, melaleuca and the tea tree oil which are in the bottom half of the ingredients list. I don't know what concentrations MAKE these good ingredients effective, but when it comes to "green beauty" and nail polish, I think there is only so much you can do to make it healthy until the product becomes compromised. All I look for is that there is no toluene and I am relatively happy.
There is also brightener in this formula which obviously adds to the overall look of health of the nails which may sound deceitful, but I think brighteners are a positive thing as you pick less at your nails when they GOOD. If they look bright and healthy, you will want to keep them that way!
Ingredients: ethyl acetate, butyl acetate, nitrocellulose (main component of nail polish), isosorbide, dicaprylate/caprate, adipic acid/neopentyl, glycol/trimellitic, anhydride copolymer, alcohol, sucrose acetate, isobutyrate, aqua (water), propylene glycol, polysorbate 80, benzophenone-1, N-butyl alcohol, hydrolyzed keratin, sorbitan stearate, cetyl palmitate, caprylic/capric hexanal, fluorescent brightener 367, lecithin, melaleuca, tea tree leaf oil, sodium benzoate, arginine, Cl 60725 (violet 2).
Final verdict: This can be used as a protective coat alone or base coat which is how I have been using it and it has improved the overall condition of my nails as of the beginning of December. I did suffer a breakage on my left hand, but that was because I jammed the corner of my nail into the dishwasher. No nail repair treatment can compete with that! My right hand was the true test and even though I still have splits in my nails, they aren't NEW. They are the old ones that have been growing out over the last couple of weeks and now my nails have actually grown ABOVE my skin instead of breaking! I will keep using this as a base coat because this is the most growth I have seen from my right hand in a looong time!
You can find Vitry Nails at Nail Polish Canada.
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