Nerves, anxiety, a habit that we can not avoid ... but, why do we do it? Why do many of us eat our nails ? Sometimes they border the edges of the fingers, almost always showing the hands of a person with nervous habits that suffers from what doctors call, simply: "Onychophagia" . Sometimes, if we take this little mania too far it can lead to health problems such as small infections and even pain. So if it's your case, you'll be interested to know what the experts tell us ...
The nervous habit of biting the nails
There are many types of nervous tics . Some people, instead of eating their nails, pluck the hairs from their eyebrows, or nibble at the tips of their hair if they have it long. It is a really curious world worthy of study. But the most common is to eat your nails. A real mess in case you're a woman and admire the perfect French manicures.
Good, but why do we do it? Why neuroticism, because we are hungry? Sigmund Freud , for his part, blamed the mothers ... something very common within his discipline. According to him, it would be about overprotected people who have not overcome the oral phase in their psychosexual development. Identified? Surely not. But let's leave aside Freudian theories to get into something more logical that surely we already intuited: the nerves.
Onychophagy is based on a person who is naturally nervous, or who is going through a specific period of anxiety or stress. In moments of rest you need an activity that calms you down. Someone twists their hair with their fingers, who pinches or taps their fingers on a table. And of course, there are those who chew their nails. And it is that, whether we want it or not, the hands are those inseparable friends that we always have in sight, they are the part of our body that is closer to our sight and to us. They are a means of communication and sometimes a mechanism with which to vent nerves in a mechanical, routine way. We eat them out of nervousness and then we finish nibbling to match those tips that are loose. It is a principle that never seems to end.
According to statistical data, almost 45% of adolescents eat fingernails. Although many of them will end up losing the habit they often grow up. And almost 60% of the population will do so at some point in their lives when they go through some moment of stress. And we will do it almost unconsciously. It is true that some people practice this nibbling as an effect of some other disease, an obsessive-compulsive disorder that will need long-term treatment.
That is to say, the biting of the nails falls within normal limits. But as a habit, it is not the most healthy, it is not only an aesthetic problem, if we are in the category "nibbling-compulsive", we should look for the usual remedies, such as using a varnish or applying chili or other spicy that produces a reaction hard to forget ...