(classical music)
- Hey there, and welcome to Brain Stuff.
I'm Josh Clark, and
this is the Brain Stuff
where I explain to you how
long fingernails can grow.
So your fingernails
have five parts to them.
There's the nail plate, which is what
you think of when you think fingernail.
It's the visible part on top.
There's the nail folds, the skin
on the sides of that nail plate.
There's the cuticle, which is a protective
layer of tissue that covers new cells
as they grow.
There's also the nail bed, which is
the tissue beneath the nail plate,
and it's chocked full of blood vessels
and stem cells which help
produce those new cells.
Then of course, there's that little
cool kind of crescent-shaped part.
That's called the lunula.
It's the visible part of the nail bed.
So if you put all that together,
my friend, you have your fingernails,
and your fingernails are made of
some pretty tough stuff.
It's called Keratin.
It's the same stuff that
your hair is made out of.
which is pretty tough, and
it's growing constantly.
In the average person, a fingernail
grows about three millimeters a month,
which is about 1/10 of an inch.
Yeah, an inch, 1/10.
Okay though, so enough stalling.
Let's get to the heart of the matter,
the reason we're all here, just how
long will your fingernails grow if
you stop cutting them all together?
Well, to answer that, we turn to our good
friends at the Guinness
Book of World Records.
We here at How Stuff
Works are professional
researchers, and even we couldn't
get to the bottom of definitively
who has the world's longest fingernails.
Apparently Guinness is a little
wonky on that kind of stuff.
But, they did help us figure out
just how long a human fingernail can grow.
For example, one of the many world
record holders for world's
longest fingernails
is a woman named Christine
"The Duchess" Walton.
She stopped growing her nails in 1990
at the age of 23.
Well, as of 2011, the cumulative
measurement of all the fingernails
on Christine Walton's left hand
comes to more than 11 feet.
11 feet in length.
The thing is, Christine Walton, although
a record holder, apparently doesn't
have the world's longest fingernails.
If you're of a certain age like I am,
you remember checking out the Guinness
Book of World Records every week
at your school library, and seeing
a picture of a man named Shridhar Chillal.
Shridhar Chillal apparently still has
the world's longest nails.
Back in 1952 at the ripe
old age of 16 years,
Shridhar Chillal said to himself,
"You know what?
"I'm not going to cut the nails on my
"left hand anymore and see what happens."
Well, they grew and grew and grew,
that's what happened, and as of 2014,
Shridhar Chillal's fingernails
all of them added
together on his left hand
come to more than 30 feet in length.
His thumb nail alone on his left hand
comes to more than 6.5 feet in length.
So there's kind of your answer.
A human fingernail can grow at least
to 6 1/2 feet, but Shridhar Chillal's
great achievements have come at
a cost to him personally.
His family doesn't really agree
with his lifestyle, so they don't
help him with daily tasks like
dressing himself, which could be
kind of a pain when you're
doing it one-handed.
Shridhar Chillal has also really messed up
his left arm by growing his nails
out all these years.
He's caused nerve damage that's
actually made him deaf in his left ear,
his left hand's disfigured, and his wrist
is in constant pain, but he's achieved
his personal goal of becoming a
photographer, professional one,
but apparently just a right-handed
professional photographer.
How do you keep your fingernails?
How long have you ever
grown them out before?
What do you use them for?
What do you do with your fingernails?
Let us know in the comment section below,
and while you're down there, go ahead
and subscribe to Brain Stuff, because
if you like this video, believe me,
there are far better ones than this.
And for even more awesomeness,
you can go to howstuffworks.com.
