Going to an imaging center for an X-ray, MRI, or sonogram can give you important, often lifesaving information about what’s happening inside your body. But those tests are expensive, sometimes difficult to schedule, and they don’t always give a complete view of your health.
However, there is another way medical practitioners can gain valuable insight about your well-being, without doing blood tests or using high-tech equipment: They simply observe some of your basic body parts.
Here’s how skin, hands, feet, and nails can tell an important story.
Skin
Made up of water, protein, fats, and minerals, skin is the body’s largest organ, and it can tell a lot more about you than whether you spent too much time in the sun.
In fact, skin can share info about a person’s underlying health with astounding detail: A yellowish tinge suggests liver problems. If you have yellow, reddish, or brown patches that become hard to the touch, your doctor may want to test for diabetes. And a distinctive “butterfly rash” on the cheeks and across the bridge of the nose can be a sign of lupus.
Hands
There are many conditions that can change how your hands look and feel. If a medical provider asks you to grab their hand, they may be checking your grip strength; a weak grip (along with a slow walking gait) can be a sign of several different health conditions, including a failing heart.
Red bumps or blisters on the hands can signal a nickel allergy. If your hands tingle or feel numb, it may be a symptom of carpal tunnel syndrome, or a warning sign of stroke.
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Fingers that are cold and turn white, blue, or red can suggest Raynaud’s disease, a disorder in which the small blood vessels that supply blood to the skin become narrow.
Feet
Chronically cold feet are often a sign of poor circulation (the feet are, after all, the furthest part of the body from the heart). They can also signal anemia or poor thyroid health.
Swollen feet can indicate lymphatic or heart disease, and burning or tingling in the feet often suggests nerve damage from diabetes.
Raynaud’s can also cause toes to turn red, blue, or white.
Nails
More than just a way to scratch your back or try out the latest mani-pedi style, fingernails and toenails can be a surprising window into your overall health. Round or linear depressions in the nails, called nail pitting, may be a sign of psoriasis.
Spoon nails, in which the normally convex nails become concave like small dishes, are a sign of iron deficiency anemia. Ridges or white lines on the nails can also be connected to thyroid disease, alopecia, dehydration, vitamin deficiencies, and other conditions.
There’s even more info that can be gleaned from paying close attention to your breath, hair, teeth, lips, and the whites of the eyes. In fact, some of the best doctors I’ve known can make extraordinarily accurate diagnoses by observing these body parts. Despite high-tech testing advances, it’s hard to beat an experienced, observant physician who also relies on the same tools used by Hippocrates: a keen eye and a discerning touch.
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