How To Stop Biting Nails Male

The only food I honey unconditionally is buffalo chicken wings. Merely eating buffalo chicken leaves me in a country of pain and discomfort, thanks to my lifelong habit of biting my nails. Every seize with teeth of buffalo chicken is a chance for the lava-hot sauce to enter my nail beds, causing them to erupt with scorching hot pain.

I've been biting my nails for as long as I tin can call up. My mom scrap her nails, my dad scrap his nails, and my brothers bit their nails. I look back fondly on the nights when we'd all be on the burrow together watching TV, absentmindedly chewing on our nails in unison. Information technology was a beautiful sight to behold.

My fingernails have always been there and I've always enjoyed bitter them, and so at that place'south never been a reason not to do it. In fact, I can't think of a time in my life when sticking my fingers in my mouth wasn't a viable solution for boredom or fretfulness. I'm not the merely person who doesn't see anything wrong with bitter my nails, either. In fact, my "bad" addiction was recently dedicated by a contempo written report, which concluded nail-bitter tin can actually do good children by exposing them to allergens early on in life.

That said, nail-bitter can be a sign of a more troubling beliefs. Indra Cidambi, M.D., the medical managing director at the Heart for Network Therapy in New Bailiwick of jersey and a pioneer of addiction medicine, told me that blast-biting has been classified as a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but it can basically be attributed to two factors: biological and environmental (and so if yous associate smash-biting with stress and feet, you'll likely commencement doing it when yous get stressed and anxious). "Information technology'south an habit," she says: for the long-time nail biter, information technology becomes a form of stimulation that you somewhen require.

That's partly why I recently decided that it was high time for me to kick the habit. I felt icky later on sticking my fingers in my mouth after a long ride home on the train; plus, my girlfriend was getting tired of finding $.25 of fingernails all over the apartment.

Lured past the promise of a better life with longer fingernails, I found five unlike methods of quitting and tried each of them for one week. Ultimately, there was merely ane that (kind of) worked — just the process leading up to it was total desperation.

Marijuana Wellness Study:

24-hour interval 1: Quitting Common cold Turkey

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I kicked off my experiment with the simplest simply arguably well-nigh difficult method: quitting cold turkey. Earlier I even got out of bed in the forenoon, I institute it tough to boot the habit. In fact, weaning myself off cigarettes iii years ago proved to be easier than telling myself to not put my fingers in my mouth.

The problem wasn't that I wanted to bite my nails. It was that my muscle memory took over without me realizing information technology, to the point that I constitute myself mindlessly chewing on my nails throughout the day. Past the cease of the twenty-four hours, I realized that quitting cold turkey was just non going to work. (I also realized that I probably shouldn't try any hard drugs, like, ever.)

Solar day ii: Chewing Gum

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The folks at Wikihow, bless their souls, listed a few helpful ways to kick the habit of blast-biting. One of the more obvious methods involved just keeping one's oral fissure busy by chewing gum, so I decided to requite it a shot. With a travel pack of peppermint Trident in my pocket, I spent the whole day answering every single urge to bite my nails with a fresh slice of mucilage. While the constant chewing did in fact keep me from focusing on my nails, I did realize that I was ultimately substituting one bad habit for some other. In the stop, it was my gag reflex that got the best of me (there is, apparently, such a affair as overdosing on glue). Later I finished my concluding slice, I ended up going right dorsum to my nails, similar a moth fatigued to a hip moth party.

24-hour interval 3: Trim Your Nails

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I'll be frank: I knew from experience that this method wouldn't piece of work (real nail-biters aren't deterred past less material to chew on), and to quote Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park, "Boy, practise I hate being right all the fourth dimension!" Switching from my teeth to nail clippers did nothing simply exacerbate the sorry state of my nails. Not only was I still biting my nails, but tying my shoes or peeling stickers off things became excruciatingly painful. It was clear by the stop of the day that in that location was more than to my nail-bitter than routine.

Day 4: Apply Bandaids

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This strategy is all over the internet, just I don't recommend it. I spent 10 minutes with the bandages on the tips of my fingers earlier violent them off and using the residuum of the day trying to go all the excessive adhesive off my fingernails. However, the adhesive doubles every bit a cracking deterrent equally information technology tastes like plastic vomit.

Day v: Brush on Gross-Tasting Polish

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Nail-biting is common enough that there are specific products on the marketplace that claim to assist you boot the habit. One of these products is Bite No More, an anti-nail-biting polish you're supposed to put on your nails. It'south pretty like shooting fish in a barrel to describe the taste of Bite No More than: It tastes like a battery exploded in your rima oris, and it lingers for a few minutes even afterwards y'all accept your fingers out of your mouth. The mere smell of the chemicals in the product (including isopropyl booze, butyl acetate, and nitrocellulose) made me dry heave at my desk-bound.

For a while, Bite No More worked. But afterward a total week of using the acrid solution, I found that while I certainly didn't enjoy the taste of Bite No More, information technology no longer disgusted me. I had substantially go accustomed to it (I blame my dearest of whiskey and black coffee — clearly, I'thousand predisposed to condign used to objectively bad tastes.)

Ultimately, I had to ask myself: why did I enjoy biting my nails so much in the start identify? I realized that I felt strangely good virtually myself after a boom-bitter session. I would await at my freshly "clean-cut" nails and get a rush of endorphins, kind of like when you finally practice your taxes or totally articulate your inbox. Perhaps, this was what information technology was all about for me — not merely the feeling of the biting itself, but the reward, as well. At the cease of the day, I had to ask myself if I was willing to surrender this skillful feeling for healthier nails—and honestly, I wasn't.

At the cease of the day, I wasn't able to kick the nail-biting addiction, just for those whose oral fixation isn't every bit strong as mine, I advise going with a nail-bitter deterrent like Bite No More. Even though I eventually got used to the acid taste, overall it seems to be the most effective method.

In the stop, information technology's up to you: if you feel like biting your nails is getting in the way of living a happy life, then quit information technology. But if your biggest gripe is that it renders yous unable to consume hot chicken wings (which, unless you lot're making them at home, yous probably shouldn't be eating anyway), then you lot probably have more of import things to worry about.

Jeremy Glass Jeremy Drinking glass is a Brooklyn-based freelance author dabbling in copywriting, branded content, artistic strategy, ad, and so much more.