Category: Health

This email has been sitting in my inbox for ages and I thought it was very kind of this reader to share his story. Sorry Steve for taking so long on this.

A brief update on my nails is that they are waxing and waning like the tide but not from my biting, only the clippers. My intentions to grow them back towards the knuckle seem to not be working or taking a real long time but we shall see. I will admit, I have given up on my right pointer finger and bite the hell out of that one to make sure I do not abuse the other ones. My right thumbnail is incredibly sharp and picking my nose with my pinkies sometimes gives me a bloody nose.

From Steve…

I have attached 4 photos of my own hands/nails taken a few days ago. Comparing them to your photos it seems we have differently shaped hands and nails so the shape of the bitten part is also very different. For the first time I noticed that the nails on my right hand seem shorter than my left. I puzzled a while but then realised that as I am left handed my right hand is more often free to have its nails bitten — weird that I never spotted this before.

My mother also said that I was biting my nails from a very early age and that she tried all sorts of methods to make me stop. I remember as a 6 or 7 year old being sent to bed with gloves tied on at the wrist, and later dad binding my fingernails with sticky tape each night. The only time I have seen my nails as they could/should be was when I broke my elbow when I was 16 in a fall playing tennis. The arm was in an angled plaster cast for 6 weeks and I could just not reach my nails to bite them. As soon as the cast was off those perfectly formed full-length nails were ripped off!

For me having no nails is normal. My family and friends have stopped even mentioning my habit and no longer try to get me to stop. There is something uniquely pleasant about having smooth ends to my fingers and something especially rewarding about having my teeth defeat an obstinate rough edge of nail. Odd to admit but I enjoy biting my nails — it’s a kind of daily challenge to keep them short and make them shorter.

Looking back at what I have written I realise that’s the first time I have thought more deeply about my habit. I’d be interested to hear what you think about yours and whether, indeed, you have defeated it.

It seems that my previous post about nail biting is the shining star on this blog. I understand there are some ghastly stories that would make any normal internet user shy away in dismay, but I had no idea it would be the nail biting entry that was the most popular. Well I intended to make the nail biting entries regular, however I concluded there just really wasn’t too much good stuff I could add other than pictures of my hands. But I have received some great comments and some pictures related to the first one which I think need to be addressed, as well as the progress with my own nails.

So to catch you up with my nails from the last entry. In a blazing glory of programming debauchery one night working on a pet project, I destroyed every one of my lovely long nails. Have you ever been away from your home for months at a time and you come back and have that hamburger or burrito you have been craving? Well that’s pretty much how it felt biting the nails. Damn it was good. So I failed but then I ran into a rather tantalising girl who shamed me for my nails. My aunt always told me that it would be a girl to make me stop biting my nails. She might be right. So I stopped again around the beginning of March.

One commenter mentions how you need to be proud of your nails or at least not care about what other people think. I agree with that to a point but to us biters, it doesn’t seem so bad. But imagine yourself walking down the beach and you saw this girl scratching her calf to a nub. It would gross you out. It’s a matter of perspective.

“Luke, as a severe nail-biter who tried everything to stop, I finally learned to accept the habit as part of who I am. I went to a shrink in my 20s who said I fall into a statistical subgroup of men worldwide — about 10% — who are chronic nail biters and not to worry if I can’t stop. When I stopped worrying I felt better about myself. I know it is not a pretty or sanitary habit, but I am not ashamed to bite my nails any time, even in public. I’m also a family and career man. Hope you are successful in your efforts. If not, learn to accept and enjoy the habit. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s not.”

This girl also instructed me on a new method that I have been employing to help the nails grow. One of my complaints before was the fact that my long nails would break easily and get to the point I just had to bite them to straighten things out. Well this is because the nail bed is so short for me. So the plan is to grow the nail bed out by keeping the nails clipped short all the time, and only leaving a small amount of white nail in front of the skin. My theory is eventually the bed will grow to the end of the nail like most people have. The only problem with this is that you tend to be taking care of your nails a lot to keep them at this length. But all in all, I am happy with the results and my pinky nail is looking superb, I must say.

So when the urge gets strong, I bust out my nail tool set shown here. This has all you need to get the nails going as well as a way to distract yourself from more biting. Let me give you a rundown of how I use this.

1. Use the moisturiser and rub it into your nails well over the back of the nail and let sit.
2. Take the little blunt-edged poker thing and start pushing against the back of the nails where it turns into skin. With soft hands you can actually see the movement very clearly.
3. Lotion again.
4. Take that same prodder thing and try to scrape up anything on the nail that is not part of the nail surface like some thin clear strip or white strip. These will start to peel up if you are doing it right.
5. Now take the thing that has a two-pronged spoon at the end which is very sharp. This can be used to cut off any loose skin that you have pulled back — it’s obvious the skin that will come off. Learn the hard way. Also remove any of that clear/white stuff.
6. Use the nail clippers to cut to a good length. I find this hard when I’ve got to cut the nails on my right hand, but it just takes practice. Be sure not to cut too short and if you have sharp parts don’t worry, the next step helps that.
7. Use the file and don’t get carried away. You normally only need a little bit to get the nail smooth.
8. Apply the nail strengthening stuff on in two layers. This stuff is cool but once you have some sharp nails, it is kind of fun to pick at the little rubbery layer it leaves on your nails. Good incentive to get to this point.

The other comment I thought was rather interesting but it goes against my general attitude toward life right now. There should be nothing you just cannot do even for physiological or psychological reasons. For that, I must endeavour to conquer this beast, if anything, to prove I can beat the statistics.

I recently took down my right pointer finger. Terrible writing session on the computer. I have determined it is on the computer that I get away with complete nail destruction. The rest of the time I just take tiny skin nibbles but never ruin the integrity of the burgeoning nail. Not sure what I do about that since I am on the computer a lot. Maybe I need to start chewing gum or something.

Photos on the next post…

Since as long as I can remember, I have been biting my nails. My mom said I was biting my nails as a baby. Before I was even talking. Although apparently I didn’t talk until I was 3 years old and that is long enough to cause some worry in the parental units around. People thought I was going to be a mute. And then one day I just blurted out a whole sentence — none of this “mama” bullshit. But I digress…

I have always had success not biting my nails when I was travelling. Not sure if it was due to the dirty conditions I was living in or the fact that I had other things to keep me occupied. I never really could figure out when I bite my nails. From what I can gather it is a matter of imperfections. I feel the slightest thing sticking out and then I need to smooth the nail down. Which then causes another imperfection. And eventually I get to this point where I have somehow destroyed my nail bed and I have these large pieces of regular skin in front of my nail before the end of my finger. I use these as grippy points to be able to pick up things. Dimes have always been my worst enemy as far as picking them up, and I will often just leave a dime on the ground or need to slide it all the way over to a crack.

Here is a picture of them as they have always been prior to this cold turkey effort.

The history of my attempts has gone something like this… First attempt was to buy the “No Bite” stuff, which I eventually began to grow fond of and would go through bottles daily, asking my dad to keep buying more. The next was to buy this stuff which was to stop horses from chewing on the wooden posts in their corrals. This was extremely effective and worked into my college days. However, this tactic came to an end when my neighbour and good friend played the best practical joke of all time on me. He and I were both playing sports at school — he swam and I played soccer. He would have early morning practice and then come back and want to sleep. I would just be waking up when he was sleeping, so I would sneak into his room and spray this stuff into his mouth while he was sleeping. I would get such a rise out of watching him first lick his lips, and then start to wriggle and squirm, and then eventually leap up spitting and gagging. I always wondered what that did to his dreams at that point. So Geoff, being the smart guy that he is, dumped out the entire bottle one day and filled it with water. When I would subsequently spray this stuff into his mouth, he would act out his reaction enough to make me feel satisfied, and then go back to sleep. Meanwhile I was biting my nails more and more and thought I had built up a tolerance even to the horse repellent. Since then there have been small bursts of weeks of no biting but never anything to write about.

A week after that last picture, they look like this.

And now almost a month later they look like this. Look at that pinky!

So the problems I am and will run into are these. I can’t help but get large amounts of dirt underneath the nails. I am just a dirty boy. So I then use my other nails to pick the dirt out from underneath them. Which in turn weakens the nails. So I just wash my hands more. Another problem is that they grow really long but are not that thick, so they can break easily, creating these imperfections that taunt me so much. Not sure how to solve this one, other than to cut them and then file them to be short again but allowing the underneath part to slowly grow until the end. The next is just maintenance. The skin around the outsides needs to be taken care of all the time it seems. What a fucking hassle! I also find myself flicking the nails, probably weakening them as well.

I will admit that I do not really have the urge to bite them anymore, so maybe I have crossed the hump. But if I were to bite them, oh man, what a feast that would be.

If you are wondering if I bite my toenails, the answer is I used to when I was little. But now I cannot reach them anymore, so I don’t have that problem.

Apparently here in America, it is the unarguable truth that you must wash your hands every time you use the restroom. Well to all those that live by that truth, here is my response.

I believe that an individual should wash their hands after using the restroom on an “as needed” basis as opposed to the blanket policy mentioned above. According to this Wikipedia page, you should be washing your hands pretty much all day and would require a sink installed onto your belt.

Is the bathroom just a dirty place that will dump germs on you the moment you walk in? The bathroom is not dirty. The bathroom I use most regularly (work) is cleaned at least a dozen times a day. Thank you, Janitor guy! Would you wash your hands if you walked into a bathroom and then found all the stalls occupied so you turned around and left?

Are the areas of my body underneath my underwear always dirty? Probably more so than the rest of my body due to warmer temperatures and movement. But I shower 1.7 times a day on average to stay clean and always scrub vigorously around my midsection. I believe hair removal is a major factor in reducing any smells and I take care to be trimmed up. The skin of my penis is no different than the skin on my arm or calf. Do you wash your hands after scratching your inner thigh? I don’t want to favour the skin on my hands — imagine what the skin on my neck would do if it found out I was giving preferential treatment to my hands.

Having said that, I won’t argue the fact that sometimes your hands just need to be washed and that’s that. Fair enough, no explanation needed. During these times, please wash your hands. But why assume these nasty situations are happening all the time?

Here are some interesting myths presented on the same Wikipedia page I mentioned earlier.

Killing germs on your hands decreases your immunity
This is a myth. The skin on your body is covered with microorganisms. Our environment is contaminated with good and bad microorganisms. You cannot kill all of the microorganisms on your hands. Your large intestine contains large numbers of microorganisms. All of these sources of germs stimulate your immune response. CDC guidelines for health care workers call for alcohol rubs to be used 60 or more times a day between patients and after touching contaminated surfaces. Killing germs on your hands will not decrease your immunity but it will help prevent disease.

Washing your hands with soap and water kills germs
This is misinformation. Plain soaps have minimal if any antimicrobial activity. In several clinical studies, hand washing with plain soap failed to remove bad microorganisms (pathogens) from the hands of hospital personnel. Hand washing with plain soap can result in an increase in bacterial counts on the skin. Occasionally, contaminated plain soaps have colonised hands with Gram-negative bacteria.

From the rest of that site it is clear that you need to be using some serious alcohol-driven hand sanitisers to truly accomplish what you intend to do while washing your hands. So what is your main intention for washing your hands every time? Because if it is to disinfect, obviously it’s not helping. Also consider how long you wash your hands for. Someone told me that the proper way is to sing Happy Birthday to yourself every time you wash your hands, and the time it takes to sing the song is the prescribed time. Most people don’t do this.

Every now and then you might see someone washing their hands really well. And in my head, I know they just had an “event” using the restroom and they want to get rid of the traces. If this is you, then you have already subscribed to my theory being discussed here.

Now I am sure what I am saying is going to ruffle some feathers, but let’s go through some of the advantages that this theory will bring.

• Time saved. If you are to properly wash your hands for 80 seconds at an average of 4–5 times a day, that is almost 7 minutes of my day, 2 hours of my month, one day of my year, a few months of my life.
• Water consumption. The average sink uses 1.5 gallons per minute. Consider that with the numbers above — 10 gallons a day, 180 gallons a month, etc.
• Money gained. Easy to calculate using the numbers above in relation to what you make at work.

So having read all this, you might still be on the side of “better safe than sorry.” I can respect your decision as long as you can respect mine. I can assure you my hands are cleaned when they need to be cleaned. I think the end-all solution is to use super-strong alcohol-based soap and force everybody to wash for 20 seconds. Either that or everyone should wear the thing Duchovny wears on his hand in Zoolander.