Do you find yourself absentmindedly chewing on or biting your fingernails — and when you try to quit the habit, it just doesn’t take?
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Rest assured that you’re not alone. Although to many people, nail biting is an occasional thing, for 20% to 30% (or more) of Americans, nail biting is a behavior they can’t stop on their own.
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In fact, care providers classify chronic nail biting as a type ofobsessive-compulsive disorder or a body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB). There’s even a name for chronic nail biting: Onychophagia.
Bur people with onychophagia can’t stop the behavior on their own. In other words, it doesn’t help to tell someone to stop — and reprimanding them only makes them feel worse because it reinforces their feelings of being flawed.
Therapy can help release the shame and negative emotions that often accompany nail biting. It can also help increase awareness of your triggers and urges. In some cases, habit-reversal training or hypnotherapy are effective.
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Self-care — like regular meals, more movement and ample sleep — helps you feel calmer, more confident and resilient, giving you the strength to recover. Nail biting satisfies a strong urge, so to quiet your mind and easethetensioncreated by the urge, we recommend meditation, journaling and yoga.
Talking to a support buddy when you feel the urge to bite your nails can help you get through the stressful moment. The TLC Foundation for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors offers a directory of support groups and educational events.
People with chronic nail biting may need medications or behavioral therapy to address a related condition. We do know that people with the following conditions often have onychophagia as well:
More About Nail Biting Onychophagia
Let’s face it, nail polish doesn’t taste good. But there is actually a variety of nail polishes made specifically to deter you from biting your nails. This polish tastes particularly bitter or foul
Chronic nail biting often has a self-soothing quality — in fact, itprovidesa sense of calm — so peoplemayuse it as a coping mechanism.
Sometimes, a hangnail or nail imperfection spurs you to groom a nail excessively, in order to improve the look of your nail. Unfortunately, this often makes the nail look worse.
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You should seek medical treatment if nail biting is causing physical damage to your nail, cuticle or surrounding skin, or if there are signs of an infection (including redness, pain or swelling).
If nail biting is causing you psychological distress, such as shame, anxiety, depression or low self-esteem, a mental provider can help. It’s important to discuss your concerns with a professional if the behavior is affecting your social life, too, or affects your professional life or job performance.
For most people, nail biting is an occasional thing. But when nail biting becomes constant, it’s time to get help. Here’s what you need to know.Nail biting, also known as onychophagy or onychophagia, is an oral compulsive habit of biting one's fingernails. It is sometimes described as a parafunctional activity, the common use of the mouth for an activity other than speaking, eating, or drinking.
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Nail biting is very common, especially amongst childr. 25–30 perct of childr bite nails. More pathological forms of nails biting are considered an impulse control disorder in the DSM-IV-R and are classified under obsessive-compulsive and related disorders in the DSM-5. The ICD-10 classifies the practice as "other specified behavioral and emotional disorders with onset usually occurring in childhood and adolescce".
Nail biting usually leads to harmful effects to the fingers, like infections. These consequces are directly derived from the physical damage of biting or from the hands becoming an infection vector. Moreover, it can also have a social impact, for example social withdrawal and avoiding handshakes.
Oft, the adjact skin is bitt off, too, which is called perionychophagia, a special case of dermatophagia. Biting nails can lead to brok skin on the cuticle. Wh cuticles are improperly removed, they are susceptible to microbial and viral infections such as paronychia. Saliva may th redd and infect the skin.
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Nail-biting can be a source of guilt and shame feelings in the nail biter, a reduced quality of life, and increased stigmatization in the inner family circles or at a more societal level.
Other body-focused repetitive behaviors include excoriation disorder (skin picking), dermatophagia (skin biting), and trichotillomania (the urge to pull out hair), and all of them td to coexist with nail biting.
As an oral parafunctional activity, it is also associated with bruxism (tooth clching and grinding), and other habits such as p chewing and cheek biting.
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The most common treatmt, which is cheap and widely available, is to apply a clear, bitter-tasting nail polish to the nails. Normally datonium bzoate is used, the most bitter chemical compound known. The bitter flavor discourages the nail-biting habit.
Behavioral therapy is beficial wh simpler measures are not effective. Habit Reversal Training (HRT), which seeks to unlearn the habit of nail biting and possibly replace it with a more constructive habit, has shown its effectivess versus placebo in childr and adults.
A study in childr showed that results with HRT were superior to either no treatmt at all or the manipulation of objects as an alternative behavior, which is another possible approach to treatmt.
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In addition to HRT, stimulus control therapy is used to both idtify and th eliminate the stimulus that frequtly triggers biting urges.
More rectly, technology companies have begun producing wearable devices and smart watch applications that track the position of users' hands but no research has be published so far.
Another treatmt for chronic nail biters is the usage of a dtal deterrt device that prevts the front teeth from damaging the nails and the surrounding cuticles. After about two months, the device leads to a full oppression of the nail biting urge.
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A small double-blind randomized clinical trial in childr and adolescts indicated that N-acetylcysteine, a glutathione and glutamate modulator, could, in the short term only, be more effective than placebo in decreasing the nail-biting behavior.
Indepdtly of the method used, partal education is useful in the case of young nail biters to maximize the efficacy of the treatmt programs, as some behaviors by the parts or other family members may be helping to perpetuate the problem.
For example, punishmts have be shown to be not better than placebo, and in some cases may ev increase the nail biting frequcy.
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The proportion of subjects that have ever had the habit (lifetime prevalce) may be much higher than the proportion of currt nail-biters (time-point prevalce).
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