by Ethel Smith

Created on: June 02, 2007   Last Updated: June 24, 2008

As someone who, despite the ever increasing years, still bites their nails I find that nail biting is such an odd habit, when you come to think about it. I had recently just about broken this trait of mine and my nails were starting to look good. However, with a change of job and my nails suffering and becoming increasingly soft and broken, I have unfortunately started to bite them again. Strange when you think that over twenty years ago I managed to break forever a serious smoking addiction. Still, enough background,and onto the job in hand, so to speak.

Common sense tells you that biting your nails cannot be good for you. Apart from the fact that you ruin your nails, making it a longer and more difficult process for them to grow well again, there are other health implications.

Children, in particular, will not usually have clean hands. Also much as adults think that their hands are clean, most of us do not wash our hands thoroughly or correctly. Around and under our nails there are many germs and bacteria which can be hidden from view. Similarly we touch everyday objects on a regular basis, such as phones at work, which often harbour a multitude of potentially dangerous infections and bugs. If our hands go to our mouths, especially in order to bite our nails, we can spread so many infections. As your nails and fingers are often in your mouth longer, when biting, the dangers are obvious really.

Although most biters would spit out nails there are some bits of nails which can escape and end up swallowed. I dread to think what these may do to a person's digestive tract and insides.

As your nails are such a hard surface teeth can be damaged, over long term nail biting. The health of your gums may also suffer due to the germs which you introduce into your mouth.

The condition of your finger ends will usually be bad and the skin dry and cracked. If you bite you nails quite low the fingertips may bleed also. This can cross contaminate you and be extremely painful.

Overall if you continue, like me, to bite your nails over years this habit will:-

Become an even harder habit to break.
Ruin the quality and appearance of your nails.
Spread infections.
Look bad as you are actually doing it.
May cause painful whitlows.
May cause tummy and dental problems.

For those of you who really can't stop biting your nails make sure that you scrub those hands as well as a doctor would do when about to perform surgery. For me, however, having put all that into words, I realise that I must try even harder to break this nasty habit once and for all.

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