• Question: how does your body grow finger and toe nails?? how does yur body create the bones?? whats the best thing to do if i have a broekn nail? wait or pull it off which is painful?

    Asked by busstopbaby to Ben, Clare, Ezzy, Mario, Sam on 16 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Ben Smart

      Ben Smart answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      When you eat things, your body takes all the chemicals in your food and uses some of them to build new parts of you, such as nails and bones! It can only turn some of the things you eat into nails and bones though, which is why people say you should have a balanced diet. Your body needs a chemical called Calcium to make bones, and Calcium is found in milk and cheese, so you have to drink milk or eat cheese to get Calcium into you body so that your body can make more bone.
      As for what the best thing to do with a broken nail is… I’m really not sure! Personally I’d leave it, but if it’s really badly damaged and sore then you should go see your doctor and see what he says.

    • Photo: Elizabeth Pearson

      Elizabeth Pearson answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      In the beginning all the cells of the body are the same: stem cells. Your DNA then tells cells how to grow into a specific cell. How it knows which cell to be is very complicated and depends on what the surrounding cells are and chemicals and various things. Sometimes it goes wrong and a toe starts growing on a persons knee or something, but that’s very unusual.

      For broken nails it depends. Try to cut it off as much as you can or it will catch and break more.

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