The simple technique that’s scientifically proven to stop you biting your nails

Find yourself compulsively picking your skin or biting your nails? A new study may have found the remedy.

According to the TLC Foundation, body-focused repetitive behaviours (BFRB) are any ‘repetitive self-grooming behaviour that involves biting, pulling, picking, or scraping one’s own hair, skin, lips, cheeks, or nails that can lead to physical damage to the body and have been met with multiple attempts to stop or decrease the behaviour.’

While not everybody who bites their nails or squeezes their spots has a compulsion to do so, those who do struggle to stop – and their so-called bad habit can have a lasting impact. 

But researchers in Germany have found that ‘habit replacement’ could be the key to breaking free from damaging behaviours, like pulling out hair and eyelashes or biting the inside of your cheek. 

In a study published in JAMA Dermatology, researchers recruited 268 people with self-reported BFRB via social media, the majority of whom were women with a mean age of 36. 

Some 68% reported repetitive skin picking, 36% reported repetitive nail biting and 28% reported pulling their hair.

The group was split into a control group and an experimental group. While the former was told they were on a waiting list for treatment, the latter was told to choose a ‘habit replacement’ from a video. 

These included softly circling the index and middle finger around the top of the thumb without touching the nails, crossing the arms and stroking the hair on the forearms or putting the fingertips of both hands together and then softly circling the fingertips against each other.

For six weeks, participants were told to do one of these actions whenever they felt the urge to pick their skin or nails etc. 

The experiment proved effective, with 53% of participants who took up the behaviour said they saw an improvement compared to 20% of those who did not use the trick. 

Though it’s not clear how effective the method is in the long-term, it’s clear that, in the short-term, habit replacements may be able to help you quit biting your nails, which could at the very least buy you some time to work out some more future-proof methods – so why not give it a try?

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