Home remedies · Mouth, teeth, eyes & feet
No home remedy here replaces treatment, and none is talked down. What has done good for generations does good — even if no one ever measured it. Where something is well studied, it says so. Where it is only experience, it says that too.
Grind cloves finely, put them in olive oil and heat to about 60 degrees — do not boil. Take off the heat, shake well and let it cool to skin temperature. Apply to the nail and its rim, wash off after thirty minutes. Morning and evening.
The active substance in clove is eugenol. That it inhibits dermatophytes — the very fungi that attack the nail — is well established in the test tube. Eugenol dissolves far better in oil than in water, and warmth speeds the extraction; hence the oil and hence the warmth. What is missing is a study in humans with exactly this preparation. What speaks for it are reports from experience.
The nail has to grow out — a fingernail is replaced in four to six months, a toenail needs nine to eighteen. Before that nothing can be judged, and the old part does not clear again. Little gets through a thickened plate: keeping it short and filing the surface thin does more than adding oil. Clove oil can irritate skin and mucosa; it does not belong on broken skin, and sixty degrees burns — let it cool first.
Have it checked once whether it is a fungus at all: a sizeable share of altered nails is not, but psoriasis, an old injury or eczema — against which oil does nothing. With diabetes or a circulation problem, with pain, redness or pus at the nail fold, and when several nails are involved at once, it should be looked at.
To the doctor or dentist: facial swelling with fever, toothache with trouble opening the mouth, a knocked-out tooth — that is an emergency with a short window. For the eye: sudden loss of vision, severe pain, flashes of light. Sore places in the mouth lasting beyond three weeks.