Minutus

Hi Tanya,

Sorry the gremlins wiped the first reply to post. Now I have to see if I can remember what I wrote. It went something like....
Maybe your heels are a susceptible area at the moment and you're proving the silica.
I looked up my nail health information and found:
Very dry or brittle Nails may occur as a result of Calcium deficiency.
Iodine may improve the health of the Nails.
Brittle Nails that split easily, vertical ridges on the Nails and/or “spoon” Nails (Nails that have a concave-shaped appearance) may occur as a result of Iron deficiency.
Silicon (applied topically to the Nails or administered orally) may improve the health and strength of the Nails and may alleviate brittle Nails.
Sulfur concentrates in the Nails.
Brittle Nails that split easily and/or white flecks or lines in the Nails may occur as a result of Zinc deficiency.
Biotin may alleviate Brittle Nails
Excessively dry or brittle Nails may occur as a result of Vitamin A deficiency.
Excessively dry, overly-rounded and overly-curved Nail ends and/or darkened Nails may occur as a result of Vitamin B12 deficiency.
Also important are the omegas, oils, Bs, especially B2, Folic acid, and proteins
You can check your B12 levels by looking for prominant moons on all your fingernails. Good levels mean you should have moons even on the little fingernail. The thumb moons are the last to go and first to return.
And these are from that recent article on fingernails and miasms:
Dry, harsh nails are Psoric. They look rough. They are not the eaten up appearance. They
are not glossy. They are dry. Psora has dryness.

"Wavy nails are Sycotic. The key word for Sycotic is in-coordination. They should have waves or ridges
or corrugated either vertical or horizontal. These are not the concave nails. These are the long ridges or ribs on the nails. The ridges are a proliferation - a hypertrophy, Hyper is Sycosis."

"Thickness of the nails is also Sycotic."

Spoon-shaped or concave nails are Syphilitic."

"Convex nails are Sycotic."

"Brittle nails which split easily are Syphilitic."

"Glossy nails are Tubercular."

With curving nails and cracking heels it sounds like there are uneven growth and repair issues. For the nail to curve some cells are working more than others - I guess the top layer is growing faster than the bottom layer. With the heel cracks, maybe the silica is stimulating a repair process - but some areas are stronger than others - like putting a patch of new material onto old cloth - the old cloth will tear just because of the uneven tension created. Could also have something to do with peripheral blood supply issues.
Gail.
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thanks for this info. very useful.
i find it interesting that you think i am proving the
silica cell salt in such a brief period of time (about
2 weeks.)
but i also think some of the info that soroush sent was
very germain about foot/skin health.
gives me some good material to think about and research
further.
tanya
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Hi Tanya,
If you have susceptibility or sensitivity you can produce symptoms from a remedy very quickly, no matter what the potency. For some people all it takes is a sniff. Labelling a remedy as a tissue salt doesn't stop sensitive people from proving it.
If you look at how much of remedies need to be taken to produce the symptoms for provings, it can be tiny. So many times in Clarke's MM he talks of people taking just one or two doses to produce quite extreme symptoms. I've never thought about it before but I wonder how long Hahnemann took quinine before he experienced the symptoms of malaria? And weren't the original provings done with very low potencies?
The best way to check would be to not change anything else and just stop the Silica to see if the cracks heal. Once they do you could start the Silica again and see what happens.
I am always in awe of the symptoms in the Materia Medicas because I think a lot of them are from people prepared to suffer for experimental purposes - like Herring with Lachesis, and Kent talking about that some of the Lachesis provers continued to express the symptoms annually for the rest of their lives.
Gail.
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you are definitely right in much of what you say.
i was just responding according to my general reactions
to remedies. i often need to take higher potencies in
more dramatic ways to get a response. i am not one of
those supersensitive people who agg on a whiff. of course,
every situation can be different, even with the same person.
i could stop the silica for a time and see what happens.
soroush's info indicated that the problem may be from
physical stress; ie, too much weight, metatarsal bones
not balanced correctly, physical stress accumulating over
the years and finally taking its toll--all conditions that
fit my bill.
thanks again
tanya
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Hi Tanya,
It was just because you said that the Silica was the only thing that was different and because I don't know you or your usual reactivity I didn't dismiss it as an aggravating factor.
All those physical factors are important aggravating factors - just like that finger cracks are aggravated by cold weather. But, for example, I am prone to cracks on my fingers which do get worse in cold weather. I am also have to be very careful with my zinc intake because it doesn't take much for me to become deficient, and the finger cracks are much worse when my zinc levels are low. I've discovered that by trial and error. Before the fingers start cracking the number of white spots on my nails increases. If I start supplementing with Zinc the cracks heal quickly and I have nice smooth fingers again, and sometimes I even have no white spots on my nails.

So for me finger cracks are a symptom of Zinc deficiency which I can manage by supplementing - if I didn't know that, I could manage the finger cracks by avoiding water, wearing gloves, moisturising, etc. But I also register that doing any these things doesn't actually cure my susceptibility to zinc deficiency or finger cracks, for that I need a miasmatic remedy. So any of the remedies mentioned for finger cracks, (petrol, Ant c, graphites, and others) may actually hold that miasmatic cure, or they may palliate, aggravate, or suppress.
Gail.
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