I used to bite my nails constantly. In classes, I sat at my desk as the teacher spoke and gnawed my fingernails down until they started bleeding, and no matter how many times I told myself to stop, I kept going despite the pain.
Nail biting is a disgusting habit: you chew on you fingers which touch so many things during the day and you're disrupting the dirt and germ residue caught underneath your nails. Then, you either need to spit out the piece of nail, or swallow it.
I was determined to break my habit. I still do it once in awhile, but by embracing these tips, I was able to cut down on my nail biting from all day to barely at all!
1. Always keep mints or gum handy.
Whenever I get the urge to bite, I pop in a few
Tic Tacs to keep my mouth occupied.
2. Reduce your stress level!
If I'm home anxious about homework and my fingers are twitching at my mouth, I call up friends and chat about something else until my mind's relaxed enough to tackle whatever work I need to get done. Do something that will take your mind off what is stressing you out by doing anything that makes you happy or at least can distract you for a little while.
3. Get a manicure.
My mom suggested I do this, and at first I thought she was crazy. Why would I pay for my nails to look nice if I was just going to destroy them? I went, though, and it actually did help. I made the conscious effort not to bite them because I had to spend money and didn't want it to go to waste. An alternative: carry around an
emery board when you feel like biting and file away until you feel better.
4. Paint your nails.
This works 80% of the time for me. Some days I don't even care and go to town, but then I end up with a mouth full of nail polish flakes; no one is attractive with multicolored specks on their teeth. The darker the color the better. I bite a lot less often when my nails are black than when I paint them clear and forget it's there. A great resource us nail biters have is a product call
Barielle No Bite Pro Growth nail polish. It tastes HORRIBLE. If you put your fingers in your mouth at all, even before biting you'll experience a bitter burn, and you will have no urge to continue. At $15 a jar, it's not a bad price to pay for breaking a bad habit.
Do you bite your nails? Do you have any other tips that you've heard or helped you to quit?
Ms. Avocado
healthkicker.com
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Comments (13)
good one. i don't bite my nails. but my friends do.
i was biting them as i was reading this. pathetic :(
i still bite my nails even with nail polish on.
i don't really bite...i chew on them. it's like i always need to have something in my mouth.
i also have a bad habit of smacking
so if i have gum in my mouth..i'd smack like crazy
tic tacs or mints? i break them in my mouth.
my fingers are ugly :(
I haven't tried the others, but painting my nails definitely works.
I stop biting my nails when they're too hard to bite
I just paint em
haha good to know
My mom started painting my fingernails when I was little so that I would stop biting them :o)
It worked!
One day I just decided I wasn't going to bite my nails anymore because short nails made my fingers look extra stubby. I stopped immediately.
I recently had to cut my nails super short for some instruments that I'm playing and I've taken up chewing my nails again. So, I went and got a manicure--problem solved!
Argh, I have done ALL of this, and still chew my nails and cuticles so much that my nails are deformed and bloody. UGH.
Ugh, it's so hard for me to stop. I can't! Hhaha I try to paint my nails but after a few weeks, I get tired and bite them. Maybe a manicure will work, but I'll have to grow out my nails.
I bite my nails but I have been trying to stop because it looks gross
I used to bite so bad. I go through phases..but when I realize how horrible they get, I try my best to stop. The way I do this is to put fake nails on. Nail polish doesn't work, I end up digesting it no matter what! lol
After a week of fake nails, my real nails grow nicely :) Hopefully they stay this way for a while. Usually when I'm really really stressed, I start biting and nobody can stop me.
see, i have a nail biting habit, but it's not that bad that they start bleeding, and I agree that painting your nails helps, but i've also found that sometimes it might not. I used to love having my nails have color on them so i wouldn't bite them, but i would result to peeling off the nail polish instead of biting them [or it would chip off on it's own and i always want it perfect] so I'd re-paint them over and over again. eventually my actual nails became nasty and had this yellow tint to it, they went back to normal when I left the nail polish alone and went back to biting them. so all in all, keep the nail polish to a minimum people.
I bite my nails like there's no tomorrow!
It's really gross, though. Throughtout the day, your fingertips touch so many things, and all of those have millions of little germys on them. And, unless you're using a nail brush and scrubbing before everytime you touch your mouth, you're ingesting dirt, dead skiin [it lodges under your nails when you scratch], and who-knows what else! Not to mention you can get worms from biting your nails. Eggs lodge underneath them and when you bite your nails, you become a lovely incubator for the next batch of crawlies.
These warnings don't help me a whole lot, personally, but they're definitely something to think about next time you want to start chomping.