So this is the case of the denture tablet verses lemon juice. When I posted last Sunday about having somewhat stained nails due to my constant nail varnish abuse I was stuck by the two ideas people were giving. That of plain old lemon freshly squeezed juice and denture tablet. Two simple things both of which are cheap and easy to get hold of. I couldn't escape a little experiment to see which was the most effective at restoring my finger nails to their former glory.
My finger nails before hand - the left hand was typical of the staining on both right and left which you can see starts midway into the whites of my nails, not sure if the picture demonstrates it but my nails were very dry.
So what you need is pretty simple most of which you might have around your house or you can get hold of really cheaply at your local supermarket or market. The fresh lemon can be replace with enough tablespoons of bottled lemon juice whereas the denture tablets are Tesco's own brand.
I used one hand for each of the products, the left for the freshly squeezed lemon juice and the right for the denture tablets. Squeezing the lemon juice into one bowl and filling it up with tepid water [reading up on the Internet some websites recommend water, some don't, some say hot, some say cold], the denture tablet was left to fully dissolve in tepid water. I filled the bowls up so there was enough to cover all my nails before placing each hand [although separately to be able to take some photographs] into the mixtures for ten minutes each. After using either of the products make sure you wash your hands thoroughly after and use plenty of hand cream afterwards.
The results;
With regards to the lemon juice, there was little improvement. One word of warning I wouldn't recommend using this is you have some cuts [however small on your fingers] because they get a little sore! There was some improvement with the colouring, however it was only slight with considerable yellowing still on the upper part of my nails. This is especially so in comparison to the results via the denture tablets. Although they aren't super white and there is a presence of some markings left, there was a greater whitening compared to the lemon juice.
You shouldn't expect miracles with either product but if your fancying something that's easy and cheap then I wouldn't recommend giving it a go, especially the denture tablets, I could see them being very effective if perhaps leaving your fingers in the bowl for an extra five or so minutes.