Readers Write About Toenail Fungus

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Pls help...

From: lxxx@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, July 11
Subject: Plz help me

Am livin in Jamaica i am askin for your help please i have been to 2 the doctor so many time & it is still on my 2 foot.

Our opinion - this appears to be foot fungus, not nail fungus. Good for you to see your doctor for proper assessment.

Numbness on two toes...

Sent: Monday, May 02, 2011 7:05 PM
Subject: Hi

Hi I'm age 30 and have suffered for well over a year now with numbness on the tip of both my toes next to my big one on each foot my toe nails seams to be disintegrating slowely it's hard to describe it like skin peals of the nails my both dead toes also have very hard skin on the tips .I currently suffer from lack of B12 and receive injections every three months for life could this be the cause I don't suffer pain or notice a smell
Sent from my iPod=

Will I loose My Nail?

I wanted to make a post.. the website is down.. please help!
here is the post!

Will my toenail regrow?
Sorry to bother you but I have a question..
Background:
Around 3-20-2012 I got a blue purple mark on my 3rd toe. Nothing really on the big toe.
On 3-30-2012 I ran the Tel Aviv Marathon.
I noticed that my first toe (big toe) started to turn purple.
I stopped running but things got progressively worse.
By 4/17, today, I took more pictures. got much worse.

I saw the doctor around 4-11-2012. He said that the toe nail will not fall off. he said I have athletes' foot. He wrote me a prescription.
I'm using clotrimazole cream 2x/day and taking terbinafine in the morning

I keep it clean by washing it and then drying it. Today I added some talcum powder. After drying it I put the cream on. I wear sandals to "air" it out.

A friend told me to trim the nail. To keep it in "air" at night and covered in the day.
My questions
1. Am I going to lose the nail?
2. Any ointments or creams to make the nail grow back fast and healthy?
3. any other things to know?

Sorry if I am freaking out. Picture links in Google docs
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-vNWRLIr7gGQVd5VkdGMTIzMjQ/edit

Thank you!!!
xxx@gmail.com April, 2012
 

Not so Bad Anymore

When I first found out that I had a fungus on my toenail, I was horrified. But now I have learned to accept it and it doesn't bother me so much. I have bought the Purnail liquid and am using it. It is too soon to tell if it is working, and I understand that it can take months to show that it is. I have sent you a photo of the "before" shot, hopefully I will send one of the "after" photo (hope hope hope). Louise.

Thinks has Fungus after Injury

Hi, last winter I banged my bare toe something terrible when getting into my shower (please don't laugh) and after the swelling went down (a week), I noticed that my big toe's nail was badly cracked. I don't usually pay much attention to my feet, but after a few weeks, it started to get painful. Looking at your pictures you have on your website, it looks like I might have a toenail fungus starting. Do you think I should see my doctor?

Surprised at side effect

Hi, I have been trying the solutions that appear on your site and had a surprise at a small side effect I noticed. I have become so much more aware of other people's feet and specifically, their TOES! Everywhere I go, I look down at their feet and try to see the condition of their toenails - is this sick? Am I an odd-ball? Where I live, (California) we pretty well wear sandals all the time, so it is easy to observe other's bare feet. What a crazy observation of me observing, LOL. just thought you'd like to know, more LOL...

Became an expert...

Toenail fungus is one of those things that you can get when you get older.
Our natural defenses go down, as we get older, and the likelihood of certain diseases entering into the bodies functions and systems becomes higher.

It happened to me. Around the age of 45 or 46 years old I noticed discoloration on a small toe on my right foot. At first I didn't think much of it, although I did notice it, and left it for a few years.
It was a friend of mine, actually my girlfriend, mentioned that it might be fungus of the toenails.

So I went online and found out all about toenail fungus.
The best website I found for information was www.toenailfungus.org. It was kind of funny actually, because I gained so much knowledge that I considered myself an expert. Of course I didn't want to consider myself an expert in the matters of toenail fungus but I felt it prudent to become knowledgeable about what I had. I am using some of the product they sell on that site.
 

The best solution I found

Hi, just to let you know that I have been using Purnail for about 4 months and am very pleased at the results, the two nails that have fungus are growing out clear. I'm so happy about that. I read a lot of research online befor I bought some, and got clear about sticking to it. Many people and websites say that they want a cure real fast, but , hey, you have to go with nature and it takes months for new nails to grow out. Hope this helps someone.
Greg Green, San Diego, CA
Website: http://purnail.com

My problem was a major one - but fixed.

Last year about this time I wrote in to tell you about my fungus, I even sent 3 photos, and I saw them on one of your photos pages. Thanks for that (no, I didn't refer to them when I was feeling sad and lonely late at night, LOL!). Anyway, I have to tell you that I did get some of the Zetaclear product and used it as suggested, twice a day. I was very pleasantly surprised that my infected nails started to grow out clear. It took quite a while (months), but I wanted to find a fungus cure, and it worked! I did notice that some times, when I would be out-of-town working, I would neglect to use the solution, and almost immediately the nail clarity went away, just a little. I watched very closely. Anyway, a good story! Thanks for the great site!
M. Hardie, Oshawa, Ontario

Home remedies for toenail fungus

Onychomycosis (toenail fungus) can be caused by many different fungi, and many other conditions like a psoriatic nail and paronychia can look so much like it that dermatologists still need to have a lab workup done. What was the causal agent, if any, of the wife's onychomycosis (toenail fungus) that was relieved with vinegar? How can anyone possibly give universal medical advice based on one person's kitchen experiments with the application of 19th century hygiene principles to an (I strongly suspect) undiagnosed condition?

Mercurochrome contains mercury and is banned in the US. All sorts of these common home disinfectants were tested against fungal skin and nail infections in the 1910's to 1950's and the only one that stood out as somewhat effective was Whitfield's ointment, with the active ingredient benzoic acid. But even it doesn't stand up to scientific comparison as a serious onychomycosis (toenail fungus) remedy. The common fungi causing dermatophyte onychomycosis are too deeply seated in the nail to be affected by materials applied to the surface (unless the materials are combined with chemical nail softeners under occlusion). Mercurochrome is commonly used in developing countries to treat fungal ear canal infestation (otomycosis), but there the fungus is right at the surface. Mercurochrome can't even penetrate to kill the endospores within spore-forming bacteria.

Toenail fungus isn't life-threatening but casual treatment recommendations based on anecdotes are no more helpful here than they are in any other disease. No doubt carrot juice and staying optimistic cured somebody's wife's cancer somewhere, but there's a serious ethical problem with extending this observation into a general prescription. Yes, any individual could make a novel observation -- but there's nothing novel about applying vinegar, iodine, garlic, lemon peel, oregano, etc. against fungal skin infections. It's been done. Tea tree oil is still being investigated but results are mixed (for references go to Entrez PubMed website and search on keywords: tea tree oil onychomycosis (or toenail fungus). Also: tea tree oil tinea. Also: tea tree oil dermatophyte). Keywords for the otomycosis statement above are otomycosis mercurochrome.

Summerbell 18:32, 26 September 2011
Remember, Wikipedia does not exist to provide medical or health advice. For medically oriented articles such as this one the focus of the article is etiology and the popular treatments, peer reviewed scientifically proven treatments as well as popular folk remedies. Even if these folk remedies are totally useless or even counter productive and dangerous. This provides those reading the article a good overview of all the available "treatments," and more importantly the place of the disease within our society as a whole. Besides anyone reading Wikipedia as their sole source of diagnoses and treatment information has greater problems.  9 October 2010

What is the life cycle of toenail fungus?

Mercurochrome cured it for me. Unfortunately, this probably counts as original research. -- Prove It  4 January 2010

Anyone interested in a picture for this article?
I could get one. The question is, would anyone really want to see it?
The article lacks a good quality image, go for it. Pgr 21 October 2010

Vinegar

My wife had an infection and cured it by soaking the infected toe for 30 minutes in vinegar every day for 3 months. She would keep the nail as trimmed as possible the whole time. Don't cause your body stress with something like Lamisil. Save your money and health.

FDA Topical Antifungal Monograph

I wanted to add something on the FDA OTC Topical Antifungal Monograph, but all I could find were some very general bits of info on the FDA website. I also haven't been able to find anything on the FDA's 1994 ruling that said that no OTC anti-fungal product was effective on nails, and required the wording "this product is not effective on scalp or nails" on all OTC anti-fungal products (even if they were still allowed to use trademarks such as Fungi-Nail!). The closest I could find was this DOC file Comparison of Labeling for All Topical Antifungals Treating Athlete’s Foot. Can anyone provide better information? BlankVerse  29 August

Ineffectiveness of Tea-tree oil - evidence?

Tea tree oil is a known antifungal. The topical application of high levels is a verified remedy for some dermatophytic skin infections although not for onychomycosis (toenail fungus), where the fungus is often too deeply nested in dense subsurface nail tissue to be full expunged by topically applied materials of any kind.

The article that is referenced does not say that tea-tree oil doesn't work because the fungus is too deep subsurface. This needs more evidence or is WP:OR. 13 June

Removal of passage The section related to tea tree oil was removed from the 'natural remedies' section via this edit by User: Was this removal in accordance with consensus? --User: Ceyockey 1 July

I think it was because of the WP:OR reference to the fungus being too deep to be treated by Tea tree oil. If you want to put it back in and either find a source for this claim or remove it feel free. Personally I tried treating my fungus militantly with Tea tree oil, with four treatments a day. During this period the fungus, which had been advancing, went into remission in all my nails, but the fungus under a few toe nails was persistent. I eventually stopped treatment and the fungus has not returned in any nails, but has grown back in the nails where it was still present. 9 October

Here is a summary of this topic from an article in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy:

Based on both its inhibitory and fungicidal action, tea tree oil may be a useful agent for treating dermatophyte infections. However, exactly how this in vitro activity translates into in vivo effectiveness is unclear.
[... summary of two clinical trials ...]
Given that onychomycosis (toenail fungus) rarely responds to topical therapy and is therefore usually treated systemically, it is perhaps not surprising that the topical application of tea tree oil was of limited effectiveness in these two clinical trials. This emphasizes the need for more clinical trial data, particularly in relation to tinea pedis, which can often be treated successfully topically.

So it seems there is little-to-no evidence to support the claim either way. Furthermore, given topical treatments don't really work for toenail fungus, there are grounds for believing tea-tree oil won't work either. Pgr 94 9 October

Crocodile Oil

Crocodile Oil: There is something amazing in the crocodile’s immune system, there are strings of peptides that were only discovered very recently in the last eight or nine years and they are a powerful mechanism for fighting bacteria and fungal infections. Repcillin Crocodile Skin Balm is made in South Africa and uses the fat from CITES approved Crocodile farms in Africa.
Is this verifiable? WP:V Pgr94 26 June

This completely unverifiable: the only sources discussing Crocodile Oil are those selling it, usually trying to blind with pseudo-science. For more on this see the discussion for Crocodile Oil Almost-instinct  19 April

Wanted: images for each type of onychomycosis (toenail fungi)

There are different types of onychomycosis. It would be good to get images of each type. For example see  Pgr94  18 September 2011

Different types of toenail fungus will look mostly the same, be somewhat misleading (as for the most part, this is not a tool used to diagnose the type of fungus... and may be somewhat trivial to categorize. Certainly additional fungi photos of a general nature are always of value. —Preceding unsigned comment added (talk • contribs) 13 November 2011

Vinegar passage removed. As no evidence has been found for vinegar since Feb. 2010, I have removed it.

Distilled white vinegar. Drops are applied to the cuticle twice a day. This method does not kill the fungus, but the vinegar allegedly changes the pH (acid content) of the new nail formed in that 12-hour period. (The scientific perspective, however, is that vinegar is unlikely to penetrate the dense keratinous tissue thoroughly enough to have any significant effect. Instead, it may be absorbed by the skin above the nail and work its way to where the nail is actually forming.) As the old, infected nail grows and is cut away, it is said to be replaced by an acidic nail, uninhabitable by fungi. Several months of consistent application are involved. 29 November 2011

I went to a podiatrist who told me to soak my foot in white vinegar for three months but I won’t see the results for one year. June 1. —Preceding unsigned comment added  13 May 2011

Fungus location

If someone with access to good sources could examine these issues and possibly amend the article it would be appreciated.

The fungus "infects" the nail. Could this be clarified as to whether fungus is growing under and around the nail, or within the material of the nail itself?
Also the difficulty of treatment seems to be because of the difficulty of getting the treating agent to the best location. Is drilling holes in, or filing of, the toenail a workable option?

Thanks, Wanderer57 30 March 2012

Recent reviews (Aug 2010)
Short of time right now so this a note to self, or anyone who else wants to follow recent developments. see reviews PubMed and PubMed... check differential diagnosis of psoriatic nails.  20 October 2011

Listerine and vinegar

I've had severe toenail fungus for just over forty years. It started when I lived in the tropics.
At this writing, the fungus is completely expelled in two nails, is almost done being expelled in four others, and halfway gone in the big toes. Two were already clear.

How? I soak the toes in 50% Listerine, 50% white vinegar, for 30-45 minutes every night. I started about four months ago. I didn't make this up - a Google search for "Listerine toenail fungus" finds many testimonials, and occasional discussions of the method of operation. It seems that the fungi can't handle eucalyptol and thymol, plus the other assorted toxins that make Listerine lethal when a lot is swallowed.
Not sure if a photo of the half-clear big toes would be helpful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moon DJ  31 July 2011

Undiluted Bleach

On recommendation from my GP, using a cotton swab, applying a single drop of undiluted bleach twice a day underneath my toenail is rapidly removing the fungus. Half of the nail bed has recovered in 6 months. Application is quick and there seems to be no tissue damage. If considered, use caution though... Rudi Bosbouer  14 January 2011

The above info originated from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toenail_fungus