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Those with dermatophagia typically chew the skin surrounding their fingernails and joints. They also chew on the bottom of their feet/toes, inside of their mouth, cheeks, and/or lips, causing blisters in and outside of the mouth.
Nail biting, also known as onychophagy or onychophagia, is an oral compulsive habit of biting one's fingernails. It is sometimes described as a parafunctional activity , the common use of the mouth for an activity other than speaking, eating, or drinking.
The most common way to pick is to use the fingers although a significant minority of people use tools such as tweezers or needles. Skin picking often occurs as a result of some other triggering cause. Some common triggers are feeling or examining irregularities on the skin, and feeling anxiety or other negative feelings.
The problem doesn't stop at nails, either. Habitual nail-biters often chomp on the skin around their fingers, too, leaving open cuts and abrasions that could easily pick up even more bacteria...
How do you stop biting your nails? An approach called habit replacement could help nail biters quit. It could also help with skin picking and trichotillomania.
Onychotillomania is a compulsive behavior in which a person picks constantly at the nails or tries to tear them off. It is not the same as onychophagia, where the nails are bitten or chewed, or dermatillomania, where skin is bitten or scratched.
Paronychia is an inflammation of the skin around the nail, which can occur suddenly (acute), when it is usually due to the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, or gradually (chronic) when it is commonly caused by Candida albicans.
A nail is a protective plate characteristically found at the tip of the digits (fingers and toes) of all primates, corresponding to the claws in other tetrapod animals. Fingernails and toenails are made of a tough rigid protein called alpha-keratin, a polymer also found in the claws, hooves and horns of vertebrates.
This type of scarring is considered one of the physical indicators of a mental illness, and Russell's sign is primarily found in patients with an eating disorder such as bulimia nervosa or anorexia nervosa. It is almost always associated with eating disorders and is the most characteristic skin condition indicative of purging.
Commonly, it manifests in humans as nail biting and hair pulling. In rarer circumstances, it manifests as serious self mutilative behavior such as biting off one's fingers. Autophagia affects both humans and non humans. Human autophagia typically occurs in parts of the body that are sensitive to pain, such as fingers.
