Julep Reveal Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum

Hey everyone, I know this blog post is really late, I'm sorry!  Just a forewarning -- this post is about trying to cure damaged toenails.  There are no "gross and gorey" pictures though.

I wanted to blog about the Julep Reveal Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum I got in the mail and posted about yesterday.

As I mentioned, I am having problems with my big toenails growing.  I think it was about 5 years ago now, I was wearing a pair of heels at work (I work in an office) that I loved because I could wear them with skinny jeans; running shoes look funny with skinny jeans in my opinion.

Anyways, after wearing them for a while I was finding that my one big toe (my left one) was really sore at the bottom of my nail, along the cuticle.  I switched to wearing running shoes for a while and then went back to my heels, not worried about my toe because it wasn't hurting anymore.  After a few more months of wearing the shoes, both toenails were sore in the same spot, worse than the first time so I stopped wearing the shoes altogether.

As my toenails began to grow out I noticed cracks in the nails, like they were broken.  They continued growing out and then I began getting excruciating pain in the outside corners of my toes, where the ends of my nails were (I liked to keep my toenails cut fairly short).  After finally taking a trip to my family doctor (I hate doctors) I found out that I had likely jammed my toenails by wearing the heels I loved and now was developing an ingrown toenail because the nail had cracked.  YIKES!  For those of you who have either done this or have had an ingrown toenail before, I'm sure you know and can feel my pain.

The doctor prescribed some antibiotics to clear up the infection caused by the ingrown toenails, and told me to roll up small pieces of cotton balls and wedge them in the side of my toenails between the skin and the nail (to separate the nail from the skin) as well as a little under the corners of the nail so it wouldn't try to dig through my skin, but grow up over it.

So after this I thought "ok, perfect, I can do this..."  Yeah.. it kept coming back.  As my toenails grew out it kept growing out broken.  At this point I'm ready to cut off my toes so I don't have to deal with them anymore.

So then, 3 years ago, on the Victoria Day long weekend Tyler and I went hiking with his sister and her family.  Little did Tyler and I know that this "hike" would involve crossing waist- to chest- (I'm 5'3) deep water in a fast-flowing river to get to a waterfall they wanted to find.  Oh and torrential downpours and a thunderstorm - it was a great day!  So long story short, spending 6.5 hours in shoes that were drenched caused MAJOR problems with my toes... with them being in water/moisture that long must have caused "insta-infection" in my toe because when I got home and into bed, it was all I could do to not cry out in pain.  I heard my sister going to bed and called for her to come and help me.  I had managed to get extra pillows and get my foot elevated but my toe was throbbing something fierce (like a migraine in my toe).  She came in and looked at it and it was almost twice its normal size, I thought it was going to explode.  She wanted to stick it with a needle to let the infection out and I told her that if I knew it wasn't going to hurt like a you-know-what I would let her do it.  We resorted to an ice cold cloth to wrap my toe in.  The cold disappeared from the cloth almost instantly, that's how hot my toe was with trying to fight the infection.  She took the cloth and ran it under water again and put it back on m toe and it felt better.  I slept like that all night.  And because my family doctor at the time knew what he was doing, when I first went to see him he gave me refills on my prescription so I went and got that filled again and started taking the antibotics again.

Since then I have had the unbearable pain of an extremely swollen toe once more and I have been to a chiropodiatrist about my toes to try to get them fixed up.  I am STILL working on it and waiting for them to grow out properly.  My cousin, who is an esthetician, says that if you damage your toenail right at the root, it takes at least a year to grow out completely... :S

SO!  With all that background information, you can understand why I would be interested to try out the Julep Reveal Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum to try to help get my toenails growing faster and healthier.  Here is the "claim" for the product from Julep:  "Specially formulated to address nails that are weak, thin or prone to ridges.  The first-ever nail serum to use groundbreaking protein-peptide technology to transform the health and strength of nails.  Peptides stimulate keratin genes and cell proliferation to boost strength and speed of nail growth.  Visible results in two to three weeks."

They also have this before and after picture on their website when you click on the Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum for more information.

Source

I really hope that my toenails have similar results!  I would be very happy if I got the same results as shown in the before and after picture provided by Julep :D

So here is my "test subject" -- my big toes!  This is day 1, before I started using the serum.  I started using it on Tuesday night, that's when I got it in the mail.  I will update this blog post with these same toes after 1 week, after 2 weeks and after 3 weeks so that we can all see if the serum really lives up to its claims!

You will notice, if you look, both nails have what I think is a nail growing in underneath the top/damaged nail.  I can't tell for sure this is the case yet.  Also, on my left toenail you will see a crack in it about half way up -- this is the break in my nail that keeps occurring :(  And nail polish gets stuck in it (as you can see)!

Also on my left toe, the top right corner, this is where the corner of my nail has yet to grow out past the skin at the end of my toe.  I'm hoping with this serum, this nail will (quickly) grow out past the end of my toe, similar to that of my right toenail.

I still think that the top layer of both nails need to come off to let the nail underneath grow properly, if that's what it is.

It's not that I want to prove Julep wrong, I want to prove it does work :D  I am really hoping and praying it does -- I just want my toenails to grow back normally!

Have you used Julep Reveal Nail Growth Revitalizing Serum?  Did it work like they say it does?  Let me know what you think of it :)