My mom always told me to keep my fingers out of my mouth ever since I was a little girl, but I always found comfort in sucking my thumb. Then I moved on to biting my nails as a nervous habit after I was done with my thumb. My mom would yell at me or dip each of my 10 fingers in mustard hoping that I would kick the habit of biting my nails.
Most people bite their nails because they are nervous, anxious, or just bored. “Studies show 60% of children and 45% of teenagers bite their nails. Nail biting becomes less common after age 18, but it can continue into adulthood.”
I came across an article that said biting your nails can really affect your health. Rochelle Torgerson, M.D., Ph.D., a dermatologist at the Mayo Clinic stated that, “biting your nails can raise the risk of catching a cold or other illness because you’re putting your unwashed hands in your mouth. It can also raise the risk of paronychia, or infection of the skin surrounding the nail.” Think about it, all the germs you touched throughout the day are most likely all gathered on your fingers and inside your nails and then you go and put them in your mouth. Since your mouth is warm and moist, it is an excellent breeding ground for bacteria to grow and flourish and make you sick! We tend to stick our fingers in our mouth without thinking of those consequences especially because we cannot see the collection of germs piling up on our fingers.
Another issue with biting your nails is if you have a wart on your finger, by biting it you potentially can be spreading the virus to different parts of your hand. Torgerson says that is possible “because warts are caused by one of the many kinds of human papillomavirus (HPV), a virus that spreads as an infection.” Gross, right?
So what can you do to stop biting your nails? Here are a few tricks that you can use to stop biting your nails.
- Try and distract your mouth.
- chew on gum, suck on cough drops or lollipops
- Paint Your Nails or get a manicure
- Put something on your nails and be sure to get it under your nails
- dip your nails in something you do not like such as mustard or mayonnaise or hot pepper flakes
In conclusion, biting your nails can in fact cause you to become sick, and will promote certain infections to spread throughout your body such as warts. Also, this bad habit is not something that looks aesthetically pleasing to others around you which can lead to embarrassment and self-confidence issues. It is definitely a better idea to chew on gum or candy instead of a part of your fingernail for both your health and your popularity.
I bit my nail too, and I always try to quit doing it. I am still in progress, but I think there is no harm to bit nails. It just look bad and they might think you are not focus. Biting nail also cause you to eat all the bacteria , that is the main reason I want to quit biting nail. Good post, hope more people can see it can try to quit this habit.
I have never been one to bite my nails, and I always was curious as to why this became a habit for others. It makes sense that this is perhaps a nervous habit, for me I shake my leg up and down when sitting down and nervous. That being said, I’m glad my habit doesn’t involve biting my nails. I never realized the consequences of this habit, all of the germs under the nails is very dangerous. Especially being at college, there are so many germs around here, and everybody is starting to get sick. After reading this, I will tell all of my friends who bite their nails to reconsider the habit! It might be hard for them to stop, but it seems necessary.