Best Cuticle Remover Buying Guide
It is a given fact that mothers are one of the greatest creations in this world. A mom is an all-around chef, a fan's club president, a minivan driver, a specialized version of Siri, a storyteller, a bed-tucker, a kisser, and a hugger all rolled into one delectable package. Oh, and maybe she could be a corporate executive while she is at it. Basically, mommies are superheroes. But just because you are one hardworking firecracker does not mean your hands need to show it. Our hands are one of the most overworked part of the body. They do most of the work. Hence, they need the most care as well.
While we mommies are all tough cookies, we are also soft and delicate creatures. That is part of our magic. Our hands are our most important tool for it is through our hands that we caress our children with so much loving energy. It is our hands that we use to prepare their food, our hands that we use to dress them, and our hands that we use to drive them to soccer practice. We need our hands well taken care of and looking healthy. We wouldn’t want to be touching our kids with unhealthy looking and dirty hands would we? Not their food, not their clothes. Nope. And what about making that well put together impression that we want to maintain at work, or at parents-teachers meetings? These are the reasons why we should groom our hands, and part of hand grooming is nail care.
Why is nail care important?
Nail care is important because we need to maintain our proper hygiene, for the good of our children’s health and ours. Having clean nails can say a lot about a person’s character. It means a person has respect and love for his own body. It means a person values cleanliness, and this reflects on his or her character that he or she respects other people, too. Projecting a good image should only be secondary. A lot of illnesses and diseases could be avoided by just maintaining clean hands and nails alone. Dirty and unhealthy looking hands are definitely yucky and a turn off. Proper nail care ensures not only healthy hands, but beautiful hands as well. Health and beauty. Two things that us women value close to our hearts. We will say yes to both, always.
Proper nail care includes caring for the cuticles. The cuticles are a part of our skin. They are located and visibly seen as a sliver of skin at the nail bed base. Cuticles sit on top of the part of the nails that grows, also known as the growth matrix. The cuticles are delicate and they actually serve a very important purpose. They are not there just to annoy us, we promise. They serve as a barrier to protect your nail matrix. It protects you from infection. It is often advised to never cut your cuticles, only push them back or slough them off. Once cut or sliced, this barrier could then serve as a point of entry for bacteria and dirt. However, if left alone without proper care and grooming, cuticles may become rough, ragged and damaged. So what do we do then to maintain our cuticles looking well-groomed and healthy? We use cuticle removers.
You might think it is ironic that we are talking about cuticle removers when just a second ago we were advocating how important it is to never cut them off. Cuticle removers do not actually remove the cuticles. Are you familiar with skin exfoliators? Liquid cuticle removers work similarly. They are designed to remove only the rough, dead skin of the cuticle and provide you with a softer, smoother and healthier skin. There are actually different ways to care for the cuticles aside from liquid cuticle removers. Let us discuss them first.
When we say cuticle removers, we generally mean liquid removers. Liquid cuticle removers are products in liquid or lotion form. These products are applied directly on the cuticle. It will usually take a few minutes for them to do their jobs. They remove rough, dead skin by sloughing them off. Liquid removers are the easiest and safest.
Another tool that may be used to groom and maintain the cuticles are cuticle sticks. Cuticle sticks are used to push back the cuticles extending beyond the nail bed. They are used to even out ragged, irregular cuticles. Cuticle sticks are sometimes used along with cuticle removers for more desirable results.
The cuticle remover tool is the cuticle cutter. These cutters are used to completely remove cuticles by cutting them off. Experts highly advise against the use of cuticle cutters for the cuticles, as they may prove only to be damaging. Instead, they suggest using cuticles cutters for just the hangnails, which are torn skin hanging at the roots of a nail.
Nail Care with Cuticle Removers
The first step is to clean the nails. Remove any nail polish by using nail polish removers. Thoroughly wash your hands with soap and water. Make sure to dry your hands and check if the nail polish has been completely washed off.
You may now apply your cuticle remover by using the applicator brush that came with the product. Check how long the label instructs to leave the cuticle remover on. The typical length of time to leave cuticle removers on is between 2-10 minutes. After the remover has set, completely wash off with soap and water again.
Sometimes users find cuticle removers to be too harsh on the nails and skin around the nails. You may want to moisturize your cuticle by applying cuticle lotion.
As we have mentioned earlier, sometimes cuticle sticks are used along with cuticle removers. Orange sticks are recommended for gentle pushing of the cuticles.
Finally, for a beautiful and natural looking nail, apply cuticle oil to further restore your nail’s natural moisture. Dry the hands completely after applying the cuticle oil.
How to choose the best cuticle remover?
We here at ParentsNeed HQ have taken the initiative to try out the popular brands of cuticle removers that are available in the market. We decided to judge them for ourselves and see which would be good to recommend to our loving readers. Here are some of the things that we have included in our considerations for choosing the best cuticle remover.
● Price
It is actually a breath of fresh air to know that cuticle removers are quite affordable. These days any product that comes close to being a cosmetic is made out to be a wallet drainer, but not with cuticle removers. Bless you, conscientious manufacturers. For a very low price, you get to invest on your nail care. You may expect to shell out 5 to 10 dollars for a good enough cuticle remover. For salon-quality removers that are usually reserved for professional use, expect to pay twenty dollars and above. These pricier types usually have added ingredients that serve to moisturize the skin. That would be one less step to worry about.
● Value for your money
By this we mean to ask you to consider the size of the bottle that you’re getting. Try comparing the prices of differently sized products and see if you might be paying more for less. Sometimes buying bigger bottles will give you more at a considerably lower price. Consider also if you will actually need a small amount or a large amount. If you know that you will be using much of the product, then get the bigger bottle already. This will save you time and energy from running to the store and getting another one.
● Good for you ingredients
As mentioned before, some cuticle removers already have moisturizing components in their formulations. This will save you the trouble of having to restore your nails back to their moisturized state after all the sloughing off has been done. Good for you ingredients include aloe, green tea extracts and other natural oils. If you have allergic skin, choose cuticle removers that are gentle on the skin. Look for products that are hypoallergenic.
● Convenience
This is where the steps involved in nail care come in. If you are the type of mom who has got her hands full, we are pretty sure you would want keep the time spent on grooming your cuticles at a minimum. Some products will just take seconds, while others will take longer than 5 minutes and will involve several steps to work. We all know that 5 minutes in mommy time is too long, so a product with a one-step, shorter action time will be favorable.
Important tips and reminders to keep in mind
- As much as you can avoid cutting your cuticles, please do. Let us reiterate that cutting your cuticles will only open the door to infection. Why would you voluntarily remove your barrier of protection? There is not a good enough reason. Bacterial infection can disrupt the growth of the nails. It definitely does not look good, more importantly it doesn’t feel good. Aside from bacterial infection, cutting your cuticles may lead to other nail problems such as white spots, white striations and ridges.
- Orange is the new black. No, wait, that’s the title of some TV series. But yes, consider the wooden orange sticks available in the market, which are designed to gently push back your cuticles. Push back your cuticles if you want to make your nails appear longer.
- As with the rest of your skin, moisturize your cuticles. Although they don’t look it, they still are primarily composed of skin. Lotions, creams and ointments may be used. Petroleum jellies are also ideal, although they are more recommended for night use. They are quite hard to wear during daytime due to their thick formulation. The same goes for ointments, which tend to get messy and greasy, so they are recommended for night use as well. Lotions are your safest bet to keep your hands moisturized throughout the day, although their moisturizing property is not as intense as that of ointments and petroleum jellies. Another way to moisturize your cuticles, including your nails and the rest of the hand, is hot wax treatment. This is offered at salons and involves melting special oily wax in which clients will dip their hands. The heat is sealed in for about 15 minutes by putting on hand gloves. Hot wax treatment leaves the hands, nails, and cuticles feeling softer and smoother.
- Avoid aggressive nail technicians, or better yet, be your own manicurist! Excessive and aggressive cleaning or manipulation of the nails by careless manicurists may result to skin soreness and even infection. It is best to inform your manicurist to gently push back your cuticles instead of them cutting it off. If you were your own manicurist, you would know exactly what is gentle and what is not.
- Protect your hands from drying agents. Drying agents like dishwashing liquids and acetone-based nail polish removers can damage your hands, nails, and cuticles. Beauty gloves are recommended during dishwashing activity, and use acetone-free nail polish removers instead.
- Stop putting your hands inside your mouth, you know exactly where they have been. Biting your nails and nibbling on your cuticles are never good for you.
- For full nail care treatment, consider investing on a kit. This kit may include nail clippers, nail polish removers, cuticle removers, cuticle lotions, cuticle sticks, and cuticle cutters. Keep in mind however that cuticle cutters are only to be used on hangnails.
Our Recommendation
Now that we have listed a few things to keep in mind when you are out shopping for a cuticle remover, we hope we have brought you a few steps closer to choosing which cuticle remover to get. Let us further help you with our cuticle remover review. We here at ParentsNeed HQ have put together a list and have come up with our Top 5 Best Cuticle Remover. Find out here how Sally Hansen Instant Cuticle Remover became our number one choice among cuticle remover products.
Originally posted 2016-08-05 02:02:39.
The post Best Cuticle Remover Buying Guide appeared first on ParentsNeed.
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