Onychomycosis is the medical term for fungal infection of nails, either fingernails or toenails, and treating onychomycosis is a puzzle that people have been struggling with for centuries. The problem is that once a fungus is well established, growing in the matrix of the nail, it's hard to get rid of and it tends to recur. Even in our twenty-first century world of medical miracles, nail fungus is a stubborn problem for both the physicians and patient.

The first step toward curing onychomycosis is to confirm the diagnosis. There are a number of different infections and medical conditions that cause deformity and discoloration in nails, and many can look disturbingly like onychomycosis. Therefore,  consultation with a medical professional who can differentiate different type of infections and diagnose the fungal nail infection correctly is important. The treatment of onychomycosis, is of course, different from the treatment of other types of infections.

Once the diagnosis is confirmed, the physician will probably prescribe various types of anti-fungal medications including Lamicil, Sporanox, and Diflucan, as well as a topical nail lacquer called Penlac. These drugs are undoubtedly safer and more effective than prescription antifungals have been in the past. However, many people don't choose this option because of cost, concerns about side effects, and the lack of a guarantee of a cure of the onychomycosis.  There simply is no treatment currently known that is guaranteed to work.

Among the over-the-counter products that promise an onychomycosis cure, the best choices currently seem to be topical preparations made from essential oils. The idea is that plants, which must defend themselves against fungal attack in nature, produce compounds with antifungal properties that are useful in treating onychomycosis in people. Some essential plant oils, notably tee tree oil, have undergone extensive testing in scientific laboratories and the evidence suggests that these antifungal compounds do indeed exist.  Encouragingly, essential oils also appear to have antibacterial and antiviral properties, while being relatively harmless when applied topically to human infections.

Anyone undergoing onychomycosis cure should remain under the supervision of a medical professional and use antifungal preparations only as directed.