If left untreated, developing toenail fungus can spread and lead to serious complications. In this article, we will discuss how to know if toenail fungus is dying, the stages of toenail fungus healing, toenail fungus treatment and how to heal toenail fungus.
How do I know if my Toenail Fungus is Dying? – Color Changes
So how to tell if toenail fungus us dying? Perhaps one of the biggest signs of toenail fungus healing is a change in the color of your toenails, the discolored nails and nail thickness start to disappear.
It doesn’t matter what toenail fungus treatment you use for your toenail fungus here. The color changes will be the same. So, if you used a pharmaceutical product, or try to use tea tree oil for your toe fungal infection, this one of the stages of toenail fungus healing will be the same, although the process may be slightly slower, depending on the treatment that you use.
When you have fungal toenail infections, it is obvious as the nail will be yellow, black, or brown.
When the fungal infection treatment gets to work, a few telltale signs is that the color will start to lighten up a bit. There may still be a bit of gray color on the toenail, but the yellow, black, and brown will start to clear up. It will be slow, but the color change will eventually be noticeable.
As you progress through the stages of treating toenail fungus, you will notice that many of the once big patches of toenail fungus will get smaller. Rather than your whole nail being covered in the toenail fungus, only small patches will. This is when you know that the treatment is working.
How to know if toenail fungus is dying? Does toenail fungus heal fast? Fungal infections and athlete’s foot can be difficult to treat and can take several months to heal.
Luckily there’s some toenail fungus treatment that can help speed up that recovery process.
Signs of Healthy New Growth Toenails
However, there are a few signs in the infected nail that can indicate that the toenail fungus is dying and healthy nail growth is coming:
- Reduction in discoloration: If the toenail is becoming less discolored and more transparent, it may be a sign that the nail fungus is dying.
- Smaller affected area: As the fungus dies, the affected area on the toenail may become smaller.
- No more foul odor: One of the most common symptoms of toenail fungus is a foul odor. As the fungus dies, the odor should disappear.
- Smoother toenail surface: The infected toenail may become smoother as the fungus dies.
Stages of toenail fungus healing
Even with the best nail fungus treatment, toenail fungus isn’t going to disappear overnight. It is a lengthy process, with some waiting weeks, sometimes months, for their nails to progress through the toenail fungus healing stages.
Therefore, you must learn how to know if the infected nails are recovering. This way, you can determine whether you are progressing properly through the stages of toenail fungus healing, or whether you may need to use a different treatment.
Toenail fungus healing can take several months, but the stages of toenail fungus healing can be broken down into several stages:
- Prevention: To prevent toenail fungus, avoiding warm and moist environments (swimming pools), avoiding tight fitting shoes, wear shower shoes and keeping feet clean and dry can prevent the fungus from spreading, athlete’s foot, will keep your nails fungus free, and keep your feet healthy.
- Treatment: There are several treatments available, including over-the-counter antifungal creams, oral medications, tea tree oil, topical medications and prescription medication. It’s important to follow the treatment plan as directed by a healthcare professional.
- Improvement: After several weeks or months of treatment, the toenail may begin to look better and new healthy nail growth can be seen. However, it’s important to continue treatment until the fungus is completely gone.
- Complete Healing: Once the toenail fungus is gone, the toenail should return to its normal color and texture.
How to heal toenail fungus:
There are several ways to heal toenail fungus:
- Antifungal medication: There are several prescription antifungal medications available (some of them with tea tree oil) that can help to kill the fungus. These medications may be taken orally or applied topically (topical medications).
- Over-the-counter remedies: There are several over-the-counter remedies available, including antifungal creams, ointments, and nail polishes.
- Home remedies: There are several home remedies that may help to heal toenail fungus, including tea tree oil, vinegar, and garlic.
- Laser treatment: Laser treatment is a newer treatment option that uses a laser to kill the fungus.
Why Curing Foot Fungus Takes a While
So how to Heal Toenail Fungus? If you have check out our Swissklip Fungus Treatment, then you will know that some treatments are somehow effective at curing OTC nail fungus treatment (read this Hydrogen Peroxide for Toenail fungus article). However, they are not a magic solution. Yes, we all want to know how to heal toenail fungus, but you can’t just apply foot fungus cream and get through all the stages of toenail fungus healing while you sleep.
Curing toenail fungus is a waiting game. Applying cream isn’t going to remove fungal infections from your toenail. It will kill it and stop it from spreading, but the fungus will remain. This means that you need to wait for the toenail to grow out before you can claim to be properly cured.
But how to tell if toenail fungus is healing? Only when you have cut off the infected toenail will you know that you have successfully gone through the stages of toenail fungus healing.
Of course, toenails grow slowly. A minor fungal infection near the top of the nail could be gone in weeks. However, if the infection has impacted the nail bed, or managed to work its way into the cells, then the process can take much longer. It may take several months and, in rare cases, it could take a good couple of years.
You probably don’t want to be waiting that long, though. If a treatment isn’t working, then you must use a new treatment as soon as possible. You don’t want to wait months. This is why we want to teach you how to know if toenail fungus is dying.
Healthy Nail Is Growing In
This is perhaps the best method for how to tell if nail fungus is going away.
When you have nail fungal infections, the fungus will spread throughout the nail and possibly to other toenails. As each bit of nail grows in, the fungus will have a new place to call its home. This means that, even though your nails will be constantly growing, they will always be covered in a fungal infection.
The goal of dealing with fungal nail infections is to kill off the fungus. This will stop it from spreading. If you notice that the infection is not spreading to the newly grown toenail, then you know that you are progressing properly through the stages of toenail fungus healing.
Eventually, and this may take several months or a year, you will easily be able to spot where fungal infections end and the fresh nail begins. Once you cut off the infected nail (wait until this has grown out), then you are effectively cured.
Reduction in Thickness of Nails
One of the major symptoms of a fungal infection is a thickening of the toenail. The toenail may feel harder, and you may notice that it appears to be raised off the nail bed. For many, this may be the first sign of a toenail infection. So, it stands to reason that a reduction in the thickness of nails could mean that you are progressing properly through the stages of toenail fungus healing.
When it comes to how to tell if toenail fungus is healing, this tends to be the last thing that we look for. While the toenail will start to thin out when that fungal infection is killed off, it isn’t immediately obvious. For it to be obvious, you would need to wait for the rest of the nail to grow in. At that point, you likely would have noticed one of the other two stages. A thinning out of the nails is more of a ‘confirmation’.
How To Tell If Toenail Fungus is Dying – In Summary
There are three stages of toenail fungus healing. It could take months, even years, for a person to progress through each of them. How long it takes will depend on the extent of the toenail infection.
You will know that your toenail infection is healing when you see a reversal of the symptoms of a fungal infection. For example, you will notice a color change, and you will notice a healthy nail is starting to grow. Over time, you will even notice a reduction in the thickness of the toenail.
You must keep tabs on the healing process. This way, you can determine whether your selected treatment is working, or whether it may be worth looking into another option.
