There are many people with a nail-biting habit. The reason varies for each person. It could be due to stress, or just a meaningless habit developed over childhood. Either way it’s not a good habit.
Biting on the nails too much causes “deep nail cutting”. The exposure of the skin beneath the nail can result in pain. Furthermore, the exposure of skin can result in bacterial infections. Worst cases, the bacteria can cause the nail to rot and fall off.
If deep-cut nails continue for too long due to excessive biting, the standard length of the nail becomes shorter than a healthy nail. Other people with healthy nails will see you nails to think they are painful, when you yourself don’t feel much pain at all.
Forgetting to bite your nails
I have friends with nails that are located 5mm away from the fingertips. Under normal circumstances this should cause bleeding due to deep cutting. However, due to continuous biting the skin has hardened and nullified the condition. This however, is only due to luck that no bacterial infections occurred in the earlier stages.
To prevent deep-cut nails one has to forget about their nail-biting habits. However, it isn’t easy to fix this habit. Therefore, it is recommended to bear in mind that the hand is “dirty”. My friend ended their habit by doing this. Infact the hand is the dirtiest part of the body, since it touches multiple objects.
It’s commonly known that during a cold or influenza, the initial bacteria had spread into the body by the hand coming in contact with the nose or mouth.
Using adhesive plaster
Next, is to have an adhesive plaster on the nail. This acts as physical barrier to biting the nail. It’s unusual to want to the bite the nail even though you have to remove the plaster.
However, having a plaster across all finger draws attention. Furthermore, people from the old days applied chili to the nails to act as repellent to our animal “instinct”.
Not so far from the Pavlov’s dog, like dribbling when seeing a sour plum, if one remembers that biting the nail causes a chili taste, it makes the brain learn not to bite the nails.
Using fake nails
Other preventatives include fake nails. The fake nails act as a barrier to biting the nails. This doesn’t draw attention to the nails either. Even if it doesn’t end the habit, perhaps looking at your lengthened nails will motivate you to end the nail-biting habit permanently.
