How to Stop Biting Your Nails
Biting your nails can cause more trouble than you think. Not only does it look bad, but you can risk transmitting bacteria and viruses from your hand to your mouth. Biting your nails also means stripping your fingers of their protection against infection from the outside world.
Conscious Effort
Nail-biting is called a bad habit for a reason: It’s something that comes naturally to you. Biting your nails is often time a nervous habit, something that you do when you are feeling even a bit anxious. It’s also usually done when you’re bored or you have nothing to do.
Remember, any of these steps should be done with a commitment and a resolve to completely stop biting your nails.
Visualize
This may seem like a funny step, but visualizing how you want your nails to look in the future will help you strengthen your resolve. Take close-up pictures of what your nails look like now (pre-treatment) and get pictures of good fingernails in the internet or in magazines.
You can even document your progress by taking pictures of your nails every other day to see its progressions from being bitten to smooth and perfect.
One at a Time
If you’re having a hard time going cold turkey on biting your nails, you can simply start with one nail at a time and do not bite one nail for one or two weeks. Once you’ve weaned yourself off that nail, you will then make it two nails that you won’t bite, until eventually, you won’t bite all of your nails.
Taste
One common way to stop nail-biting is by making your nails taste bad. There are a variety of ways, but the most common is to cover your nails with a clear nail polish. It will help harden your nail and it tastes very bitter.
There are also specific nail creams that target nail-biters, such as brands Control It! and Jessica’s Nibble No More. Simply apply the cream on your fingernails, and the taste will turn you off.
Grandmothers also like to apply capsaicin (the slimy pith that are the hottest part of chili and peppers) onto the fingernails of nail-biting children so that the hot taste will turn them off their habit.
Distraction
Distraction is also a good method to prevent nail-biting. Take up a hobby such as knitting or cross-stitching to keep your hands busy. Busy hands means they won’t do anything connected to nail-biting.
Keeping your mouth busy is an alternative. You can chew gum during idle moments to lessen the urge to bite your nails. Chewing gum or carrot sticks to keep your mouth too busy from biting nails.
Nail Health
Keep your nails healthy to make sure they regrow faster. Eating food rich in Vitamin A, C and E that helps fix the skin and make your nails grow thick and strong. Magnesium and calcium are also excellent ways to make your nails healthy (Tips on how to care for nails).
Visit your manicurist regularly so your nails can be well-maintained. Seeing groomed nails will help fight the urge into biting into them again. If you’re a woman, you can also opt putting fake fingernails as a barrier against your nail-biting ways.
Having well-groomed and blunt nails will help you from biting your nail to the quick as well.
Once you’ve kicked the nail-biting habit, you can reward yourself with a home manicure.