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).
While most people assume nail biting has to do with nerves or anxiety, one study is linking this bad habit to a surprising personality trait. 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.
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.
Another name for nail biting is chronic onychophagia. It is considered the most common stress-relieving habit. Other habits related to this condition include: thumb-sucking.
There can also be physical manifestations of the anxiety caused by ADHD such as headache, nausea, nail-biting or cuticle-picking.
Additionally, if you swallow the nails, they can do damage to the epithelial lining of your esophagus and stomach. They will not digest, so if they're sharp, they will make their way through your entire body potentially scratching up your digestive tract.
A: Doctors classify chronic nail biting as a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder since the person has difficulty stopping. People often want to stop and make multiple attempts to quit without success. People with onychophagia cannot stop the behavior on their own, so it's not effective to tell a loved one to stop.
The research suggests that those who bite their nails are more likely to be perfectionists. The lead author of the study, Kieron O'Connor, further explained that as perfectionists are known to express dissatisfaction and frustration, if they are not able to reach their goals.
Nail-biting (onychophagia) is a common stress-relieving habit. You may bite your nails in times of stress or excitement, or in times of boredom or inactivity. It can also be a learned behavior from family members.
To some degree, we all exhibit stimming behaviors. Nail biting, twirling your hair, drumming your fingers on the table, or cracking your knuckles are all forms of stimming. For a child with autism, stimming might involve motor tics like rocking back and forth, licking lips, flapping hands, or repetitive blinking.
But they do know that it's a habit for a lot of us: about 20 to 30 percent of the population are nail biters, including up to 45 percent of teenagers.
Nailbiting, or onychophagia, is defined as the habit of biting one's nails and is a common oral habit in children and young adults. Nailbiting is embarrassing, unattractive, socially undesirable, and can predispose to the development of paronychia.
Sometimes, nail biting can be a sign of emotional or mental stress. 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.
In some cases, nail biting can be caused by an underlying mental health condition. For example, chronic nail biting may be a sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD causes you to use repetitive, compulsive behaviors to ease the anxiety caused by obsessive, intrusive thoughts.
While common nail-biting is a socially recognized “nervous habit”, compulsive nail-biting can be injurious and interfere with everyday functioning. While these BFRBs may look similar to behaviors one might see with Tourette's, they are not tic behaviors.
Nail biting can also transfer pinworms or bacteria buried under the surface of the nail to your mouth. When bitten-off nails are swallowed, stomach problems can develop.
When you bite your nails, those bacteria end up in your mouth and gut, where they can cause gastro-intestinal infections that lead to diarrhea and abdominal pain.
In fact, you may have heard how it takes 21 days to break a habit. This figure was popularized by a 1960s book called “The New Psycho Cybernetics” by Maxwell Maltz.
Once you've managed to stop biting your nails, one of the questions often asked is whether bitten nails can grow back to normal. The bad news is that although fairly uncommon, nail biting can lead to permanently damaged nails.
Regularly biting your nails can cause your teeth to shift out of place, which can require correctional braces or a retainer. Nail biting could also cause your teeth to break or could damage your tooth enamel. The germs could also potentially infect, or cause irritation, to your gums.
Nail biters are more often male than female after age 10 (10% fewer bite their nails than boys), and individuals with a higher rate of intelligence tend to bite their nails more than those of less intelligence.
The research, published in the catchily-named Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, found that nail-biters are more prone to boredom, and experience higher levels of frustration and impatience when they don't achieve their goals, compared to those with flawless cuticles.
To date, several treatments have been developed in order to treat onychophagia. However nail biting remains an unsolved problem in medicine and dentistry [2].