Why I Stopped Getting Gel Nails | Nail Care and Alternatives

okay this is super random but it's very important to me I stopped getting gel nails might not look like it but I did gel nails have become one of those things where I feel like so many people get them tare fabulous tlook amazing tlast okay they're incredible I love them so much but I stopped getting them the reason that I stopped getting gel nails was because twere seriously aging my hands and I noticed it one day and I was like why am I doing this why am I doing this I don't like it I don't like the way it looks I don't like it at all um I'm gonna give you a nice deep Zoom so you can just take a quick look so if you take a look at the tops of my fingers you can kind of see it there a little bit dry right now but you can kind of see that like um almost pebbly look especially around my nails it's the skin is like a little bit darker in that area and then if I compare to the rest of my hand where I obviously am not exposing my nails to UV light the rest of my hand looks nice and smooth and it's lighter so I had been getting gel nails for God 10 years maybe more than that I don't even know a very long time consistently uh there were periods where I would like remove them but that didn't last long and then I would put them back on whenever you get gel nails you're nail polish has to cure under a UV light a UV light UV lights cause cancer why did I do that for so long I'm actually really mad at myself about it if this is something that you hadn't really thought about sometime just like compare the tips of your fingers like this area to your toes mine's drastically different my feet because I'm always wearing boots they're always shielded from the Sun and the light I just hide them away tlook like stunning they're I mean I have ugly feet but I'm saying like the skin so young so smooth so bright so I noticed this I noticed this and it was bothering me and I was moisturizing and I would go into the um salon and I would apply a ton of sunscreen and that area and it just didn't make a difference I know it's only for like a few seconds at a time it's like usually like 30 seconds or whatever but it really does age your fingers and increase your chances of getting skin cancer and that freaks me out and I don't know why I was so willingly oblivious to it I think I was just like didn't want to admit that that was something that could potentially happen and luckily a little bit of the vanity kind of like woke me up to it and I was like you know what I don't even like the way this looks so I wanted to share with you what I do now because obviously these look like gel nails so what I started doing um and this is like relatively recently I want to say like maybe I have no concept of time I want to say maybe I've been doing this for like six months maybe it's been more than that now truly cannot remember when I finally came to this realization and decided to do it what I do because my natural nails are very thin it takes so much work to grow them even a little bit thave to be square and I essentially like have to constantly be moisturizing them taking collagen powder uh using nail strengtheners and it's just a lot of work and then one will break and it just drives me insane so what I do is I go in to my nail salon I have her put the tip on the end of my nail and then she does the like dip powder or not the dip powder sorry it's not dip powder it's the I don't know if that's what's what the what tcall the gel because it's like that polishes the gel I don't know what the stuff tput on top of the tip is but that's essentially what she does she puts the stuff on and makes it like nice and hard and long and almondy and pretty and fabulous I love these and then that sets and then rather than going in with gel polish she just puts on regular polish now tdon't look as fabulous this time around because um I was running out of time I just had her put on a clear coat and then I did them at home so yeah they're not as like professionally done as tusually are but I would say at for at least the past six months my nails have just been regular polished personally I find that the regular polish sets on the like acrylic I guess it's acrylic is that what it is the acrylic stuff really well it lasts like it lasts as long as ttake to grow out so my nail polish doesn't get messed up it's the fact that tgrow out and then I like go in and have them done again the only downside is it's not like it's not dried immediately so I do have to usually sit there for about like 20-25 minutes in front of a fan and wait for them to dry but I am no longer exposing my fan my fans my hands and fingers to UV light I've already noticed that like I don't know how much of this is is reversible probably not a whole lot but once I stopped doing it I noticed that this area of my of my fingers was starting to get a little bit lighter and more like this so yeah that made a really big difference and I just wanted to share that with you guys because I think it's like a really important thing that we should probably talk about and I think a lot of us are kind of just like willingly ignorant about it you know kind of just like pretending that oh this UV light like it's only a little bit but if you think about I don't know if you were like me and you had gel nails for like a long period of time that [ __ ] adds up okay uh and it's also just kind of like one of those things where it's like very unnecessary to be rapidly aging your fingers you know but most of all the chances of skin cancer it's it's just so stupid it's so [ __ ] stupid now I like spend so much time just looking at my hands like looking for any sign so I wanted to share that just like a quickie just to let you know what's the deal I'll link some of my favorite nail polishes down below the ones that I typically I'm always what's the one that I know the name of it already tran out of it I was so mad so that's why I did them at home because tran out of my favorite color but I'll link them they're all from Essie I'll link them down below I would suggest that like if you're interested in this just ask your nail person if uh you can do that just say you know what instead of the gel nails I want to do just regular polish on top of my acrylics and it looks just as beautiful especially if you do like a nice nude shade probably if I did like red or like an opaque color it would be a little bit more obvious I guess if they're if it gets like dinged up or whatever but I love I love this natural color so that's literally all this video is it's a PSA I just wanted to point that out tell you to check out your fingers and try to take care of them wear sunscreen wear sunscreen on your hands I'm not the best at doing it but every time I go out I wear sunscreen on my hands yeah weird I don't know how to end this video um you don't have to do this but I thought it was important I don't know I don't really hear other people talking about i