Best way to prevent a possible ingrown toenail?

The right half of my big toenail is starting to curve in and cut the skin. Right now I just stuffed some cotton in the corner of the toe (under the nail) so hopefully it will stop growing into the skin.





Any other ideas?Best way to prevent a possible ingrown toenail?
Gross. Not your toe, I'm just recollecting about my ingrown toe I had some years ago. It sounds exactly the same. Sometimes, they just happen. I changed my doctor, though, because of how he helped (or didn't).





Basically, I would suggest surgery to excise about 1/4 of the toenail. Cutting a V in the toenail helps a little and stuffing cotton into the crevice, but that doesn't cure the fact that your toenail is curved. As freaky as having 3/4 of a toenail sounds, if it was previously curled into the skin anyways, you wouldn't notice. Read on if you want to hear specifics.





On my right foot, my right big toe, the right side was also digging in. Plus, I played sports so it seemed, everytime I ran or jumped, it put pressure and caused it to cut more. After a while, it got infected, swollen, red, sore, and eventually, started producing copious amounts of pus.





The first time I went to the doctor, he suggested as the previous answerer did of cutting a V into the nail. However, all that did was catch on my socks whilst playing sports and actually caused the nail to rip more. Besides, it was already infected, so it was a little too late.





The next time, about 3 months later, he manually cut about 1/4 of my toenail off on the right side, stuffed it with cotton. It had been and still was infected this whole time.





Finally, the fourth time around (I went back again and he simply cut it and cottoned it up), he sent me to a foot doctor. The podiatrist recommended removing 1/4 to 1/2 of my toe nail. She explained that the cotton helps mildly, but as curved as my toenail had gotten, there wasn't anyway to change how it grew.





The procedure went as follows. Local anesthesia, lots of pressure as she cut the 1/4 of the toenail out to the cuticle (might I suggest not looking down), and then she spread something (I believe it was silver nitrate, but that was 12 or 13 years ago) that ';killed'; the part of the cuticle that was growing into the skin causing the ingrown toenail. Since it was infected, it drained quite a bit, but even while it was healing, I wasn't limping nor in pain.





Even now, you can't tell they removed 1/4 of the nail and I haven't had any problems since.Best way to prevent a possible ingrown toenail?
A friend of mine used to cut a 'V' in the middle of his toenail. His theory was that the nail would grow toward the middle and close up the V before it went the other way