Why do we bite our nails?

Biting your nails is called onychophagia. Behavioral disorder of low to high intensity depending on the case, it consists in nibbling the tips of his nails, sometimes until blood.

Stress and anxiety are the engines of this compulsive gesture often acquired in childhood. Children bring their hands to their mouths, suck their thumbs. The hand therefore becomes a sort of behavioral derivative. Projecting your anxieties onto your hands in adolescence and adulthood is therefore quite common.

Especially since the nails have this particularity that they are a dead material which must be shed in one way or another. When there is no cloudiness, a nail clipper, scissors or file is sufficient. But the teeth are particularly sharp for this, it is tempting to use them to, at the same time, calm his anxieties.

Biting your nails: the consequences?

Of course, biting your nails has an aesthetic consequence in the first place that is immediately noticeable, moreover, biting your nails can become very painful as you nibble from the surface. It often happens that it goes as far as the injury and bleeding.

Biting your nails therefore also weakens the skin, leaving the door open to bacteria. This can lead to superinfection and the formation of whitlow. The skin swells, reddens and becomes very painful. Most often, it is a Staphylococcus aureus infection. The whitlow must be treated by a doctor who then automatically prescribes an antibiotic to avoid complications.

Nail biting can also, in the long run, prevent regrowth or cause disorderly regrowth.

Finally, biting your nails can have a direct consequence on the teeth: first mechanical, going so far as to shift the teeth, with a jaw that no longer closes well. It can also cause germs to pass through the mouth.

Biting your nails is therefore not only a bad habit but also a health risk in the longer or shorter term. Two methods are possible to stop, they can of course complement each other.

Bitten nails, the derivative to stop

Whether it’s a habit or a behavioral disorder, biting your nails is like a safety valve. In order to no longer resort to your nails to relax or fill your boredom, it can be effective to find another much more harmless derivative such as:

• Always have a stress ball close to you, on your desk or in your pocket, to catch in every situation where you are about to put your nails in your mouth.
• Or else a hand spinner, the very fashionable toy that consists of spinning it in your hands.

In many cases, especially when nail biting is first and foremost a habit, you will drop these derivatives without actually coming back to your nails.

Stop for good

However, derivatives cannot be used everywhere, all the time. Thus, in women, no longer biting their nails can have the click of a simple manicure. Having beautiful, well-manicured nails doesn’t make you want to destroy what has been done. On very bitten nails, you can start with a transparent varnish.

Likewise, the more you take care of your nails and hands – nourishing them with creams or vegetable oils, filing them, varnishing them – the less you will want to bite them. It is a real virtuous circle.

There are of course also, and for a long time, bitter, even very bitter varnishes, which prevent fingernail nibbling. This is currently the only immediate solution to stop nail biting.