by Maggi Thomas

Created on: June 23, 2009

There are many people who take a strict line against nail-biting: teachers, parents and healthcare workers. These are out-numbered though, by those who take the more forgiving position that nail-biting, while good to avoid, is one of those bad habits that really don't hurt anyone.

Nail-biting or onychophagia, is a weakness that many people, children and adults, would admit to. About one in two people, under the age of eighteen, in the population indulge in this activity. In addition, boys are more prone to this activity than the girls. Adults, for the most part seem to outgrow this habit on their own by the time they reach the age of thirty. It might be tempting to dismiss this habit has a minor annoyance, but that would be a mistake.

Think of the kind of functions that your nails serve. The primary function of the nails is the protection of the tips of the fingers. There are also important practical functions: nails help us take care of an itchy body part, and they help pick up objects such as coins that are small and close to a surface. Biting and ruining the fingernails deprives us of these convenient extensions to the fingers that help us .

Biting the fingernails brings damage to the skin on the fingertips. Pulling bits of nail off with the teeth results in tiny areas of torn skin around the fingernails. These areas of trauma, as tiny as they are, present a health hazard. Micro-organisms are able to enter the body through these injured areas. People who engage compulsively in nail-biting, can often go so far in their unhappy habit that it causes a little bleeding once in a while. The hands are organs that venture out to touch, and handle everything that we experience in life. To keep them permanently injured would be a health hazard of the first order, always exposing them to infection of some sort.

Children play, touch and explore everything around them and collect dirt under their fingernails. For children, to take their dirty fingernails to their mouths would be dangerous, as this action would carry the dirt collected under their fingernails, right into their bodies. The same goes for adults who seek comfort in nibbling on their fingernails: by this action, they carry into their bodies dirt that has collected under their fingernails.

Treatments exist that help people stop compulsively nibbling on their fingernails. One commonsense way involves the use of a special nail lacquer, like CONTROL-IT, with an uninviting taste. The nail nibbler would always have to be willing to put up with the bitterness of the lacquer to continue nibbling. There are treatments that use hypnosis to offer a subliminal suggestion to the nail-biter, to desist. Hypnosis is far from being a universally recognized treatment for disease; it does deserve one chance though. Many people to claim to have been cured by hypnotic suggestion. There are also therapy sessions offered to help address the nail-biting habit that are able to deal with the problem in a matter of weeks.

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