Nail fungus, also known as onychomycosis, is a common condition affecting many people. It’s caused by a fungal infection that thrives in warm, moist environments. People who frequently swim or sweat heavily are more susceptible as these activities create ideal conditions for fungal growth.
What Does Nail Fungus Look Like?
Nail fungus often first appears as a white or yellow spot under the tip of a fingernail or toenail. The fungus infiltrates the nail, causing it to discolor, thicken, and potentially become painful. In severe cases, it can even interfere with daily activities.
Why Should I Treat Nail Fungus?
If left untreated, nail fungus can lead to:
- Nail cracking and splitting
- Thickened nails
- Discoloration
- Pain
- In severe cases, complete nail loss
The good news is that nail fungus is treatable, often at home with natural remedies like tea tree oil.
Why Tea Tree Oil?
Tea tree oil, derived from the leaves of the Australian tea tree (Melaleuca alternifolia), has antifungal and antiseptic properties that make it effective against nail fungus. It also has anti-inflammatory properties to soothe redness and irritation.
While more research is needed, some studies suggest that tea tree oil may be a safe and effective alternative to conventional antifungal treatments. For example, a 1994 study found that tea tree oil was as effective as clotrimazole in treating toenail fungus.
Preparing Your Nails for Tea Tree Oil
Before applying tea tree oil, it’s important to prepare your nails:
- Trim your nails: Cut your nails short, being careful not to cut the surrounding skin.
- File the surface: Use a nail file to thin the surface of the infected nail(s). This helps the tea tree oil penetrate the nail.
- Clean your nails: Wash your hands or feet with soap and water to remove any debris.
How to Apply Tea Tree Oil
- Dilute the oil: Tea tree oil is potent and can irritate the skin, so dilute it with a carrier oil like coconut oil or olive oil. A good ratio is 1 drop of tea tree oil to 1 drop of carrier oil.
- Apply the oil: Use a cotton ball to apply the diluted tea tree oil to the affected nail(s).
- Massage the oil: Gently massage the oil into the nail and surrounding skin.
- Let it dry: Allow the oil to air dry.
- Repeat: Apply the oil twice a day.
Important Notes:
- Consistency is key: It may take several weeks or months to see improvement.
- See a doctor: If your condition doesn’t improve or worsens, consult a podiatrist or dermatologist. They can properly diagnose your condition and recommend the best treatment options.
How to Prevent Toenail Fungus
Preventing nail fungus is easier than treating it. Here are some tips:
- Keep your feet clean and dry: Dry your feet thoroughly after showering or swimming.
- Wear breathable footwear: Choose shoes made of materials that allow your feet to breathe.
- Wear socks that wick away moisture: Avoid cotton socks, which can trap moisture.
- Protect your feet in public places: Wear shower shoes or sandals in public showers, locker rooms, and pool areas.
- Trim your nails regularly: Keep your nails short and clean.
- Don’t share nail clippers or other personal care items.
Potential Side Effects of Tea Tree Oil
While generally safe, tea tree oil can cause skin irritation or allergic reactions in some people. Always do a patch test before applying it to a large area. If you experience any irritation, discontinue use.
Disclaimer: This blog post is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Always consult a healthcare professional before starting any new treatment.
I have had a fungal growth on both my big toes for a number of years. It tended to push the nail upward which results in pressure from shoes an making the nail change shape which in-turn dug into the 2 sides of the toes. I tried always to cut them as short as possible, and bathe with antiseptics, but not much happened. By chance my daughter noticed the infection, and said that tea tree oil would fix it. I bought a small bottle of the tea tree oil from my local food store for $7 and began regularly applying with a cotton bud morning and night, over the nail, deep as I could into the top of the nail and around the toe itself. I did no other than normal care of my feet, the oil makes the nail a darkish green which easily showers off. After two weeks the unsightly nail after a shower was very loose, and seemed ready to come off. After carefully pulling with much apprehension it did come off. I continued using the oil for a few days then every other day, still neat from the bottle. After a further two weeks, the new nail is growing and I have no pain from ingrown. It worked OK for me. I would recommend it.
So it did not help. The fungus killed your nail and eat it. Then it came off.
Wouter, it did what it was supposed to do. The fungus was in the toenail and under it, and the tea tree oil killed the fungus. With the fungus dead, the infected nail fell off, and there is a new, clean, uninfected nail growing in it’s place.
Hi I am a busy mom and have had a fingernail fungal infection for over 19 years. I was embarrassed as it first showed up on my ring finger and moved to other fingers over time. I tried everything prescriptions, soaks, you name it. I read about tea tree oil and decided to give it a try. Let me tell you and your readers in a matter of days my nails started to improve. The broken layers underneath my nails lessened and looked like the healthy nails I had before I had children. I put drops on my nails at night before bed for maximum soaking effect and it also helped me with sleeping at night because my nose would get stuffy due to allergies. The smell is very pleasant to me and kept my sinuses open so I could rest well. Thank you for the information and I hope others who read this give it a try! I wish I had taken before and after pictures but I had given up on my nails ever being pretty again and tried it as a last resort. I intend on telling everyone I know about this easy and inexpensive cure I am so glad I finally found something that works after years of disappointing attempts! Try it!!!! I will continue to use it at night even after the nails grow all the way out because it also soothes my cuticles and keep my nails moisturized. Thank you for the info!!!
Thank you so much for your review. It’s so nice to have a natural solution to a very embarrassing problem. Thanks again.
I have been treating my toe nails with pure, undiluted tea tree oil for a couple of months. It is working. But my big toe nail is starting to turn pink again, and I believe that it will fully recover. I take the dropper from the bottle, and simply drizzle the oil all over my nails, nail margins, cuticle and areas around my nail. I have had no adverse affects from this strong treatment and no obvious negative results from using the oil, undiluted. I will continue to use this method, and believe that it is helping alleviate the infections and damaged nails I have.
A year ago spring I began “earthing” (some call it “grounding”) i.e. walking 2 miles barefoot on grass & prairie (I never walks barefoot in public or on concrete) for the extra benefits earthing is supposes to bring. Well, I began noticing last summer that both pinky toenails began turning yellow with white, thickening into chunks so fat I had to chisel them down with toenail clippers because they were too thick to get between clippers. Then they began crumbling apart but always grew back to white or yellow, repeat. My others toenails began doing the same. The worst was big toenail. All except my “middle finger toes” turned white & thickened. Big toenail turned orange/yellow. I started applying tea tree oil undiluted to toenails, at least twice/day but sometimes up to a few if I was home. Pinky toenails & the one big toe were stubborn but all except Big toe has no more infected nail. I began using a file & rasping the Big nail down before applying tea tree. My big nails are the slowest growing nails on my feet. After 2 weeks of daily debridement, my nail began coming apart. I have a thin layer of nail skin over the bed. It’s down raw, but pink again so it’s coming back. I recommend filing/rasping/debridement of infected nail (s), before applying tea tree. It will work so much faster. Another note, months before I tried tea tree oil, I tried using Lysol spray daily since it’s supposed to kill athletes foot among all the stuff it’s supposed to kill. Lysol spray doesn’t work on toenails but it does work on fungus between toes. Nails, use tea tree oil.
I’ve began using tea tree oil but I just started. Like you, the thickness of my nails, especially big toes, was unmanageable due to the infection. In fact, I had to basically clip my nails with scissors after soaking them due to the thickness. I also thinned these nails down with a knife after soaking because filing them down was going to take forever. Parts of the nails will start to fall apart when you do this but that is to be expected.
For anyone contemplating using vinegar as a solution, I have found that it just doesn’t work on nail fungus. I have used it on my feet for over a year and things just never improved. Vinegar does get rid of athlete’s foot quickly. If you just have an issue with that, pour some undiluted vinegar on and around your toes and spread it under your feet everyday. Just put on your socks and you are good to go. Athlete’s foot will start to disappear within a week.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work as well on nail fungus as I’d hoped. Now I’m moving to undiluted tea tree oil everyday. Every week I’ll probably soak them in vinegar to continue the debridement process.
I have used tea tree oil at the start of a vaginal yeast infection. It stopped it dead. I used a syringe and injected the liquid undiluted into my vagina. This is a great product to have around. I would try it for thinning hair, jock itch, ear infections, skin diseases. I am a Homeopathic Practitioner so I am constantly experimenting with different solutions, oils, herbals. It helps heal hemorrhoids fast and will dry out herpes lesions fast. Best of Luck!
You mentioned to try it for thinning hair. Do you know if anyone has done this with success?
Think it could help with bacterial vaginosis?
I have had nail fungus in my big toes for years. I have just started using green tea tree oil and one of my nails has lifted so I cut it off. My nails and visible nail beds are drying out, turning white. Has anyone else had this happen before their nails started showing improvement?
Yes Liz, I am still working on getting rid of my fungus in both my big toenails. It is quite slow going as my nails seem to take a very long time to grow. Mine show white patches instead of yellow when I have been rubbing in the oil (or white-yellow at least). It is a slow process, but I can say that the use of tea tree is working as well, if not better than more expensive treatments that have not cured it before. The podiatrist gave me some good advice which was to rub in the treatment slowly and very firmly after filing. I find that filing off to remove the thickened dead nail is necessary once a week. If I forget to do it or forget to add oil, then I lose ground on the treatment battle. I must be more consistent. I also notice that the athletes foot incidence is much less if I also rub a little neat oil between toes a few times per week. I have a dry skin foot condition on the pads and heels, which I am told the fungus is taking advantage of, so I also use a urea based foot lotion that seems to help a lot and feels very comfortable.
I used this 2x daily on my big toes and cut away anything that I could. This gets the treatment into the nail bed. The raised portions of wavy nail have made it easy for the oil to get down in there. I filed or cut at every treatment to get fresh ways for it to flow under the nails. It worked! What I started trimming back ended at good nail bed and I kept up treatment until it grew all the way out with normal nail. Now I keep the toenails very short and once a week or so, I hit the healthy nails with a q-tip of the oil. Never any more problems and because the cutting was gradual, It didn’t look all that weird.
I’ve had a fungus on my right thumb for a few years and it spread over the last couple months. I have been using tea tree oil for two weeks, am and pm, and no change at all. I’m pretty unimpressed.
The most important thing in getting rid of toenail fungus is….patience. It is a very slow process. The second most important is….persistence. This fungus is relentless, and if you don’t keep up with applying the oil, you will lose ground. I had to learn this the hard way. I would see a slight improvement after months of treatment, get complacent and miss a dose here and there, and the next thing I knew, the fungus was winning again! That was over a YEAR ago! I’m happy to say I learned my lesson, got into applying it regularly (extra applications when I think of it), and only have a slight amount of fungus left on one toe to deal with. The longer you wait to treat it, the more it can spread – and it’s really nasty when it starts deforming your fingernails!
Hi Jill. Do you eat a lot of sugar or processed foods? This can contribute to fungus and yeast infections as well.
I have had nail fungus on all of my toes for more than 15 years. I’ve had it since I was a teenager and I’m now in my early forties. I just started using tea tree oil and a generic vapor rub along with an apple cider vinegar & water mix for 15 minutes a day. It’s only been a couple of days but it appears to be working. I’ve read about natural remedies on different sites that talked about tea tree oil as well as apple cider vinegar for its acidic properties. Also I read on the side of the bottle that the vapor rub has an inactive ingredient of Thymol which is supposed to help get rid of nail fungus. I’ll come back in a couple of months and comment on my progress. I’m hopeful. The information you folks have provided has been extremely helpful. Thanks.
Hi, I noticed 3 months after getting a pedicure that I had a white flaky patch on both big toes and the corners of the big toe nail were looking yellow. I cut off as much of the nail as I could and thinned done the nail with a filing and buffing block. I applied the tea tree oil morning and night. My nail now looks healthy and normal again. Just waiting for my toe nail to grow out a little as it is still very short. Worked great for me! I have before and after photos. Very dramatic. I wish we could upload them on this thread.
I tried tea tree oil for the first time tonight. 12/01/17.
I’ll check back in a few weeks to report any progress.
Extremely helpful.
I began noticing a small brown spot on my big toenail. I thought it was a blood blister and would just grow out. But after a month or or so, the spot got larger but didn’t move closer to the end of my toe. I began filing away at it, and I even “drilled” a couple of little holes in the spot with a sewing needle. After each filing, I applied pure tea tree oil and rubbed it in. After about 3 months of this twice daily treatment, I began to notice some normal nail growth again. It took about 6 months of vigilant applications to be completely rid of the fungus.
I was fungus free for about 2 years, but I just noticed an odd bump in the nail bed on my big toe on the opposite foot. It is not discolored or anything, but the odd bump is growing up from under my toenail cuticle and makes me think it’s fungus. I’ve begun another filing and tea tree oil treatment. I’m treating both big toes to be safe.
I also use tea tree oil on some minor burns, like from the glue gun or if I’ve accidentally touched a hot pot. I don’t apply until after the skin has completely cooled. It takes the sting of the burn away over night, sometimes instantly. **Be advised to take caution with applying to burns. But I’ve found it helps with sunburn too, just test a small area first and don’t use on children.
The key to getting rid of toenail fungus with tea tree oil is patience, vigilance and using a good quality oil. Try it and good luck.
I have a question. Can you apply Tea Tree oil over nail polish on the nail?
Will it be effective at all? Just curious.
Thanks.
I read nail polish acts as a sealant so it’s best not to wear it. There are anti-fungal nail polishes though. Look on Amazon. I’ve only been using the tea tree oil for about a week and a half. It got infected after a bad pedicure, but the tea tree oil really dries out my nails. They turn white all around the cuticle and all around the entire toe really. I wasn’t filing it down but I will start doing that too. Hopefully I can get rid of it soon. No more pedicures for me!
You should not wear nail polish. I have had toenail fungus in both of my big toenails for 9 years. I tried Vick’s vaporub, brags apple cider vinegar, bleach (I don’t recommend anyone do that). I now use Lamasil cream (I used to use the spray). I have fungus in both of my big toe nails. Wrapping those toes in Bandaids made a huge difference. It’s also very important to cut your nails down to the pink line, and wrap your toes in bandaids, especially if you wear socks and/or shoes all the time.
It is good to use lemon essential oil along with tea tree. Mix with coconut oil or cream (equal amounts) and massage nails twice a day. Works quite fast. I saw a difference in my big toe nails in a couple of days. It does discolour the nails but just wear socks or preferably sandals. Preferably, let the air get to your feet as much as you can.
Most say dilute but no one definitively says what to mix with & the ratio. Coconut oil was mentioned as an oil to add to- my tea tree oil bottle mentions “mix with a carrier oil such as fractionated coconut, jojoba or almond”. Please be specific. I want it as strong as possible without burning my toes off!
I’ve never dilute anything. I use vinegar full strength 5% and now I’m using tea tree oil full strength. I never noticed any problem doing this and my nails are awful, one was bleeding from being thinned.
I just began the tea tree oil treatments. I have serious fungus under both big toenails and white spots at the top of all the others. I applied the Tea tree oil after diluting it with olive oil for parts: 4 parts olive oil to 1part tea tree oil. Now reading through this thread it seems I shouldn’t have diluted it. Please clarify this. Should it be used for strength or diluted as instructed on the bottle?
Hi,
I have a nail that will not grow back, kind of feels flat. Big toe. I am a blind person and a sighted carer of mine has brought tea tree oil, so we are going to try it. However, I noticed the article mentions filing. However, what is there to file if the nail is very short? I am a bit confused. Any tips would be appreciated.
The trick is patience, persistence and multi-methods. 1) Keep feet clean, 2) Keep feet dry as possible – go barefoot as much as possible, 3) During shower use toothbrush to brush out dead stuff, 4) After shower – blow dry your toenails/feet, 5) Daily vinegary soaks with tea tree oil and epsom salts, 6) Fix your diet – quiet eating diet on crap, cut out sugar/sugar/sugar, eat yogurt, take probiotics, 7) Cut nails short as possible but properly (straight across), 9) File tops of nails (nails can be thick and treatments will not go thru), 10) Sunlight (fungus hates sunlight). What I have found in personal experience, when I got the the beach for a week, wear no shoes, sunlight .. my foot health is ALWAYS better.
Be careful being at the beach. This is where I got my toenail fungus. Beach sand is a perfect environment for this fungus and other pathogens. So after the beach use antiseptic for the feet, or some other stuff.
Thank you all! I really empathize with you! Both my parents had fungus in the big toenails and never cured it. I have been using the Ciclopoli, Amorolfin and filing for years after losing an infected big toenail when banged foot in swimming pool 20 years ago! Doesn’t seem to cure but maybe makes it manageable. Will now try the tea tree oil and lemon juice cure, maybe with some baking soda so it will stay on the nail better, with band-aid. Good luck everyone!