Nail biting can leave you with more than just unsightly fingernails – it can have long-term consequences on your health, scientists say.
Researchers at the Texas A&M University Health Science Centre offer five reasons why one should try to kick the habit.
Fingernails have lots of dirt and germs. Chewing fingernails means those germs get into mouth and body, where they significantly raise risk of illness.
The symptoms of an infection called paronychia include a red, swollen area around the nail. If the infection is bacterial, one may develop pus-filled blisters.
Nail biting has also been termed bad for smile. “The habit can cause your teeth to shift out of place or cause them to chip or break. Moreover, germs on your fingers could infect or irritate your gums, and cause bad breathe,” say scientists.
“Biting nails boosts the risk of hangnails or ingrown nails. Hangnails are open sores that can easily become infected. An ingrown nail occurs when a nail grows under your skin.
Toxins are present in nail polish or gel polish. If you paint your nails, you also put yourself at risk of poisoning from the chemicals in the polish if you chew your nails.”
“Pay extra attention to your nails when you wash your hands,” researchers suggested in a university news release.
If you constantly bite at your nails, chances are you’ll bite off a bit more than you expected,” researchers warned.
Separately, a research has suggested that delicious foods cannot be blamed for weight gain.
A team of researchers led by Dr Michael Tordoff, a physiological psychologist at Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Pennsylvania, set out to test this belief in more detail. “Most people think that good-tasting food causes obesity,” he explained.
Tordoff was unconvinced, and he therefore designed a range of experiments to see whether the theory held any water. His findings were recently published in the journal Physiology and Behaviour.
“It has been established that if you feed a mouse cookies, chips, and cream, they will become obese. But is it the flavour of the foods that cause overeating? Or, could it be the nutrient density that promotes the gorging? After all, animals have evolved to seek out fatty and sugary foods as a matter of survival,” the study revealed.
“Previous studies that have drawn conclusions about good taste (in this context, meaning flavour and texture) and its effect on weight gain have been flawed. For instance, many did not take into account the impact of variety on feeding behaviour; having a spread of different foods to choose from can cause one to over-indulge. A buffet is a prime example of this,” said Tordoff.
According to the authors of the recent research, only three studies to date have looked specifically at the influence of flavour on weight gain. None of these studies were conclusive, however. The reasons for this include sample size and, once again, the effects of variety.
The first phase of Tordoff’s study involved establishing whether mice would prefer food with added oily or sweet ingredients that were non-nutritive. The mice were served two pots of chow – one standard, and one with either a sucralose sweetener or mineral oil (both of which are calorie free).
As expected, the mice preferred the mineral oil chow and sucralose chow. They virtually ignored the plainer fare. In fact, the mice thought so little of the standard chow that, according to the study authors, they “often defecated in the cup containing the plain diet.”
The second phase of the trial involved splitting the mice into three groups, with each being fed a different diet for 6 weeks: plain chow, chow with mineral oil, or chow with sucralose.
At the end of the 6-week period, the mice were measured. There were no significant differences in weight or fat content in any of the three experimental groups. In other words, even the more tasty foods did not encourage overeating.
“Even though we gave mice delicious diets over a prolonged period, they did not gain excess weight. People say that ‘if a food is good-tasting it must be bad for you’, but our findings suggest this is not the case. It should be possible to create foods that are both healthy and good tasting.