How to stop biting your nails

What is onychophagia?

Onychophagia, the habit and even the obsession of eating one's nails nails, is considered a behavior that refers to a psychic distress. Following which a person is no longer able to control desire of biting one's nails and the skin around them, until one's fingertips are ruined and bleed. Hence a obsessive-compulsive behaviorOnychophagia is mainly triggered by stress, it appears in childhood and adolescence, but can sometimes persist into adulthood.

Why do we bite our nails?

Several studies attempt to answer this simple question: Why do we bite our nails? A certain pleasure from the stimulation of the mouth is possible. But the causes of onychophagia are different.

• Mental tension and also depressive state
• Traumas, such as minors who find themselves having to deal with the sudden separation of their parents or a serious bereavement in the family
• Self-harm, that is, a show of aggression against one's own body to vent some sense of guilt
• Anxiety, stress and insecurity
• Unconscious desire for to be on the defensive
• Anger and also boredom

Cause

According to a 2015 study conducted in Canada and published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, those who bite their nails do it out of a need unsatisfied perfectionismBy biting one's nails, one tries to relieve one's dissatisfaction and the discomfort that comes from a sense of perpetual dissatisfactionThese are people who have the ambition of very high performance, and therefore suffer from the stress. from performance and never manage to to relax. According to data from Hypsico (Institute of Psychology and Behavioral and Cognitive Psychotherapy) of Florence, Oyster biting affects 30 percent of children between seven and ten years old and as many as 45 percent of adolescents between 12 and 18 years old.If left untreated, it persists into adulthood. Therefore, early intervention is important to avoid damage not only to the fingers but also to the teeth. The most affected age group is between 12 and 18 years old., although many adults are also addicted to this unhealthy practice. The main causes of compulsive self-harming onychophagia are:anxiety and stress.. It has in fact been proven that biting your nails releases nervous tension and consequently you feel temporary relief. Even the boredom , anger They can push a person to pick at their nails and cuticles. When they begin to suffer from it as children, perhaps because they want to imitate an adult, onychophagia can become a full-blown habit, hard to die, and tends to persist for years.

Danni

The damage caused by biting your nails is considerable. The nail grows distorted due to the continuous trauma it suffers; the teeth can be chipped Nail biting can cause gastric damage, as nails are difficult to digest. Biting nails can, over time, prove very harmful, not only to our fingers. Medicine has, in fact, demonstrated that nails are a vehicle for transmission of infections and therefore gnawing them continuously can cause serious damage to the enamel of the teeth teeth, generating caries. Furthermore, many germs and bacteria can nest under the nails, such as those of salmonella and escherichia coli, which, if ingested, proliferate in the body and cause infections. Nail biters are more exposed to oral diseases, such as canker sores and warts (the latter, frequent in children, easily pass from the fingers to the mouth). Onychophagia causes pain and redness of the nail bed and determines the paronychia, that is, the infection of the tissue located along the edge of the nail. It's possible to stop biting your nails., all you need is a little good will and a few precautions.

Remedies

To stop biting your nails, with patience and over time, some very simple steps can suffice. These include:

• First, identify what the trigger of your nail biting and try to remedy it. If willpower isn't enough, turn to behavioral therapy, which seeks to replace nail biting with an alternative. In addition to behavioral therapy, there is stimulus control therapy, which identifies and consequently controls the impulse that leads to nail biting.
• Drug therapy involves the use of bitter substances to be applied on the nail bed (for example benzoate), but the effect varies from person to person. Often, the positive response comes after the prescription of drugs. antidepressants which affect the underlying cause of the problem (stress, anxiety, etc.). Sometimes even the Vitamin B It can have a positive outcome, because it reduces the desire to bite nails and affects aggression.
• There are also many natural remedies which help to gradually combat this problem. One of these is, for example, the use ofolive oil. Dip your fingertips into a bowl with someolive oil, twice a day for twenty minutes. This remedy softens cuticles and heals damaged nails. If you want to avoid putting them in your mouth, add onion juice, garlic, or chili pepper to your oil.
• Put your hands in the spicy sauce, with Tabasco or with Chili pepperThe taste will linger on your nails even after rinsing. Avoid touching your eyes, as you may burn them, and don't use this remedy on children.
• Chew a chewing gum or a mint to keep your mouth busy and avoid the temptation to bite your nails.
• Dip your hands in thewhite vinegar: This disinfects your nails and gives them an unpleasant smell and taste.
• Chop some leaves of aloe vera in a bowl and immerse your hands in it, so that the juice wets your nails.aloe It has a bitter taste and makes you stop putting your fingers in your mouth.
• Massage some tea tree oil, pure or diluted with olive oil, on nails and cuticles, once a day: its bitter taste and pungent smell will have their effect.
• If none of these remedies work for you, opt for a occlusive dressing, which involves bandaging the nails or wearing gloves. This also allows any wounds to heal completely.
• A valid alternative for women could be the nail reconstruction, which induces, for some time, not to torment them, since they appear well-groomed and beautiful to look at.
• In any case, keep the short nails It's always better because you have nothing to bite into and the damage is naturally reduced.
• Do an activity that keeps you busy and doesn't make you think about your nails, such as manipulating a squash ball.

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