Nail biting almost always begins in childhood. It's a behavior often associated with stress or anxiety, but it's likely more complicated than that. For instance, one theory is that it helps some people regulate their emotions — or it feels like it does anyways.
Biting your nails (also called onychophagia) is common — up to 30% of the population does it.
If the fingernails of these early humans did break or chip, they likely solved the problem as we do today – giving them a nibble and maybe tugging off the occasional irritating hangnail. Again, we see the same behavior in other species that lick at, soften, and bite their nails when they grow too long.
Like many of our worst habits, nail biting is an evolutionary adaptation kicked into overdrive. Even before we had access to aisles worth of beauty products, humans practiced self-grooming, which includes getting rid of the occasional hangnails.
Nail biting explained
Anxiety: Nail biting can be a sign of anxiety or stress. The repetitive behavior seems to help some people cope with challenging emotions. Boredom: Behaviors such as nail biting and hair twirling are more common when you're bored, hungry, or need to keep your hands busy.
In fact, healthcare providers classify chronic nail biting as a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder or a body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB). There's even a name for chronic nail biting: Onychophagia. Although providers don't fully understand the cause of chronic nail biting, there are ways to halt the habit.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, categorizes chronic nail biting as other specified obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), classified in the same group as compulsive lip biting, nose picking, and hair pulling (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
Only once farming was invented did life become less hard and so nails needed cutting. Besides wear from use, prehistoric people undoubtedly chewed their toenails.
Nervousness: Due to stress and anxiety. In this instance, nail biting is temporarily appealing due to the calming effect it has on the nervous system. Emotions: Our emotional make-up is integral to why we turn to nail biting.
Freud: Nail biting is caused by arrested psychological development at what Freud called the oral stage of psychosexusal development. It is, in Freud's model, the result of an oral fixation.
ADHD can cause excessive nail-biting, hair-pulling, and skin-picking.
Constantly bringing your nails into your mouth can bring E. coli, salmonella and the germs that cause the common cold as well as a plethora of others that may cause you to get sick. “Pathogens which transfer from your nails to the mouth during nail biting can lead to illness,” says Dr.
Before the invention of the modern nail clipper, people would use small knives to trim or pare their nails. Descriptions of nail trimming in literature date as far back as the 8th century BC.
If You Bite Your Nails, You're Probably a Perfectionist
According to a study published in the March 2015 issue of Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, nail biters are more likely to be perfectionists.
Biting Nails
This habit indicates nerves or insecurity. Whether this means they are nervous about talking to you or just in general, this can be a telling body language cue. It can show that you might be making them nervous (which can be a good or bad thing).
Famous superstars Tom Cruise, Eva Mendes, Elijah Wood, Britney Spears, Phil Collins and Andy Roddick are all celebrity nail chewers, among others.
While nail-biting can occur without symptoms of another psychiatric condition, it can be associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder, separation anxiety, enuresis, tic disorder, and other mental health issues.
Nail biting, or Onychophagia, is typically a sign of a BFRB or Body-Focused Repetitive Behavior. BFRB's are classified as a closely related condition to OCD, but are most often present without intrusive thoughts.
Excessive nail biting is a surprisingly widespread human activity. It goes back millennia: the ancient Greek philosopher Cleanthes, for instance, was said to be addicted to biting his nails.
During the 1800's, cut nails have tapered rectangular shafts and rectangular heads. In the 1900's, the round wire nail with straight sides and a round head are the standard. Nails are one of many clues to the age and authenticity of antique furniture and building construction as well.
The barber's equipment included shears, razors, small-blade knives, tweezers and a curved scoop for cleaning dirt under the nails. It's not clear which implement did the actual cutting, but the small knife seems to be the easiest to wield safely.
It tends to show up in people who are nervous, anxious or feeling down. It's a way to cope with these feelings. You may also find yourself doing it when you're bored, hungry or feeling insecure. Most nail biting is automatic -- you do it without thinking.
It's difficult to trace a specific behavior like nail biting to one gene rather than looking at the genetic causes of a more general tendency, like anxiety. The closest thing there is to a nail-biting gene, he said, is a “candidate gene” doctors think may code for Tourette syndrome and other impulse disorders.