Why You Should Stop Biting Your Nails Immediately

You can seriously damage your teeth and gums.

According to the Journal of Periodontology chewing away at your nails can cause chips, fractures, offset jaws and tooth loss. There have also been reported cases of fragments of fingernail becoming embedded out of sight inside gums, leaving patients open to a whole host of infection and discomfort.

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It can make you sick. 

Biting your nails can raise the risk of catching a cold or other illness because you're putting your unwashed hands in your mouth. 

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Your nails may not grow back.

Nails are a privilege not a right, apparently...Excessive biting can shorten the nail to a point of no return. You do have to really work away at the nail bed for this to happen but it's not really worth the risk...is it?

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The germs can cause oral STDs.

Of all the ways to get an STD, acquiring it without actually having sex is depressing. Not that you’d want one at all. This is pretty extreme and not experienced by everyone but it has been documented.

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Nail varnish contains poisonous formaldehyde.

Although a Yale study reported varnished nails as reducing the amount of germs lurking under your fingertips, it is extremely bad for you to ingest the formaldehyde within the paint. In 2011 the National Toxicology Program upgraded formaldehyde to a ‘known human carcinogen’. The chemical is also used as an embalming agent to preserve dead organic tissue - not really the kind of thing you want in your mouth...

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You may cause infections in your fingers.

Draining infections from around the nail bed is a painful experience and often acute paronychia results from, you guessed it, nail biting. The NHS advises that failure to treat the issue in its infancy can lead to chronic suffering, and repeated build ups of pus and inflamation to fingers.

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