Next Time You Polish Your Nails, Please Do This First—It Could Save Your Life!

By Petra Guglielmetti, Glamour magazine

Hey, so, can we take a quick break from Fashion Week frivolousness to focus on something more serious? Just for a minute, promise! So clearly we know you ladies love to polish your nails, but have you ever taken the time to check them for melanoma? This Glamour reader's scary story--and a dermatologist's sobering tips/pics--will make you want to stop and do it right now.

Amy from Costa Mesa, California recently wrote in with this scary tale.

"I was diagnosed with melanoma in my nail bed last April. I had no idea that it was even possible and quickly found out that most people don't know about it. I eventually had my finger tip amputated, but was lucky that I caught it early. I thought it would be a great article to discuss what warning signs to look out for and what your finger nails can tell you about your health!"

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Wow, Amy--we're so glad that you caught this in time and are doing well, and that you wrote in with this post idea, because you're right--I think most of us have never thought to check our nails for signs of cancer!

So how DO we check them? I asked dermatologist Dana Stern, who lectured on this topic at a recent meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology.

Her tips:

- Melanoma appears as a brown to black lengthwise stripe on the nail (see two examples below, on Dr. Sterns' patients). Usually only one finger or toe is affected. (If more than one of your nails has a band, it's less likely that melanoma is the cause--but still get them checked out.)

- The index finger and big toe are the digits where melanoma most often appears.

- Also look for brownish or black pigment surrounding the nail.

- African American and Japanese women have a higher risk of melanoma under the nail than other ethnic groups.

Crazy, right? I would never think of skin cancer showing up as a stripe like this; I would have pictured a spot instead, more like a mole.

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So if you see a stripe down one of your nails, no matter how faint, go see a dermatologist NOW. "Only 1/3 of patients consult a physician at this stage, and it's crucial to do so, because if caught early, melanoma of the nail is completely curable," Dr. Stern says. "I recently saw a young Latina patient in her twenties who had been covering up a pigmented band on her nail for years with acrylics at her local nail salon. By the time she came to me for a biopsy, it had spread to her lymph nodes. Her thumb was amputated and her prognosis is not good."

Geeze.

So, are you all sitting there staring at your nails now (or removing your nail polish so you can do so)? Have you ever checked your nails for melanoma before? Do you track the rest of your body for suspicious spots/moles?

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