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Dermatophagia (from Ancient Greek δέρμα — lit. skin and φαγεία lit. eating) or dermatodaxia (from δήξις, lit. biting) is a compulsion disorder of gnawing or biting one's own skin, most commonly at the fingers.
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.
Also known as "true" leukonychia, this is the most common form of leukonychia, in which small white spots appear on the nails. Picking and biting of the nails are a prominent cause in young children and nail biters. Besides parakeratosis, air that is trapped between the cells may also cause this appearance. [5]
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 or ...
Autophagia refers to the practice of biting/consuming one's body. It is a sub category of self-injurious behavior (SIB). 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.
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.
Beginning in the second year of life, a particularly striking feature of LNS is self-mutilating behaviors, characterized by lip and finger biting. Neurological symptoms include facial grimacing, involuntary writhing, and repetitive movements of the arms and legs similar to those seen in Huntington's disease .
Body-focused repetitive behavior. Dermatillomania (picking of the skin) of the knuckles (via mouth), illustrating disfiguration of the distal and proximal joints of the middle and little fingers.
Common repetitive movements of SMD include head banging, arm waving, hand shaking, rocking and rhythmic movements, self-biting, self-hitting, and skin-picking; other stereotypies are thumb-sucking, dermatophagia, nail biting, trichotillomania, bruxism and abnormal running or skipping.
Acute paronychia is an infection of the folds of tissue surrounding the nail of a finger or, less commonly, a toe, lasting less than six weeks. [4] The infection generally starts in the paronychium at the side of the nail, with local redness, swelling, and pain.