A woman whose 85cm fingernails snapped off in a car crash has spoken for the first time about feeling like she lost her identity.

However, 68-year-old Lee Redmond from Utah, admitted it had become much easier to get around since she was robbed of her record-breaking assets.

Redmond had been growing her nails for 30 years at the time of the crash in February and they had reached a combined length of 8.65m.

More pictures of Redmond's nails

"Losing my fingernails has been the most dramatic thing that's happened in my life," she said.

"The thing that bothered me with losing the fingernails was that it becomes your identity and I felt like I'd lost part of that."

Ms Redmond currently has 11.5cm of nails and said she has no intention of growing them back to their full former glory.

"People ask if I'm going to grow them again and I say 'no, it was a once time thing'," she said.

"It took me 30 years to grow them and to get them to that length and they became the world record, and I probably won't live for 30 more years."

Ms Redmond spoke about her fingernail trauma to coincide with the launch of the 2010 edition of Guinness World Records.

She appears in the book alongside the male holder of the longest fingernail title, fellow American Melvin Boothe.