Washing Hands And Nail Biting

With COVID-19, hand washing becomes even more important to mouth, nail and overall health. This is certainly true for us nail biters every time we put our nails in our mouth to bite them.

Germs can survive on our hands for several hours so hand washing is critical for chronic nail biters especially in a COVID-19 world. Hand washing reduces both diarrhea-related sicknesses and respiratory infections like the common cold which is especially important for nail biters. Frequent hand washing with soap and water for at least 20 seconds also helps to reduce the spread of COVID-19 after you’ve unwittingly been exposed to a surface that has been infected with it. Use of hand sanitizers with at least 60% alcohol is also advised but should be used only when soap and clean water to wash hands with are unavailable.

Hands And Feces

One study from 2000 showed that around 1/3 of Americans don’t regularly wash their hands after going to the toilet. Other studies have shown that the human hands are a significant transferrer of fecal and oral microbes within families (mother, father, child). In other words a lack of proper and consistent hand washing transfers our own fecal matter to our mouth, forehead, and other body parts and other people too. This increases the chances we will get sick and possibly sicken others around us.

Serious diseases like E. Coli, salmonella and the flu among others may be transferred to other people through poor hygiene without even knowing about it. For nail biters, the thought of putting our fingers in our mouth with these diseases and germs on our fingers and underneath what is left of our bitten nails should be enough to make us all quit cold turkey.

Many years ago I recall hearing about a study that had been done to research unwrapped candies and mints that were left in a bowl at the entrance of a restaurant for people to take with their hands as they left the restaurant. Unsurprisingly, human feces was among the most commonly found bacteria on the candy due to lack of proper – or any – hand washing by at least some of the people picking up the candy with bare hands.

Hand Sanitizer

While hand washing is your best bet to keep your hands clean, carrying a bottle of hand sanitizer with you is also a good idea in this new COVID-19 world we’re living in. This is certainly true for us nail biters. While quitting nail biting is of course our ideal situation, ensuring our nails and hands are clean if you are in fact biting and picking them is a must.

In the recent past, CDC recommended a hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol content and these days it isn’t difficult to find ones with 70% or greater during this era of COVID. Updated US Pharmacopeia (USP) and World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines suggest a final concentration of 80% ethanol or 75% isopropyl alcohol for alcohol-based hand sanitizers.

Do be careful to read the label correctly because many products such as the one shown in the pic above mention killing 99.99% of germs with an asterisk on the front of the label with some small print also that needs to be read but the front label doesn’t actually highlight the alcohol level which is the key part.

Hand sanitizer manufacturers have a long track record of overstating their claims of germ-killing and often don’t actually kill the key germs that you are trying to protect against. Not only should you not trust everything you read on sanitizer labels, you shouldn’t rely on these products to clean your hands. Properly wash your hands by scrubbing hands and nails with soap and water for at least 20 seconds and use hand sanitizer when you don’t have access to soap and water.

Conclusion

Hand washing is especially important for nail biters given the number of times we potentially put our dirty fingers in our mouth unwittingly and subconsciously. While we should of course try to completely stop nail biting, short of that, ensuring that we have clean fingers and fingernails is critical especially in this new COVID-19 world.

While hand sanitizer is good to carry with you at all times, it shouldn’t and doesn’t replace proper hand washing with water and soap. Only buy hand sanitizers with at least 60% alcohol content otherwise you’re wasting your money and possibly getting a false sense of security. Read the labels of any sanitizer you purchase as these products have a track record of overstating and lying about the percentage of germs that they kill and highlighting large germ-killing numbers like 99.9% while minimizing their low alcohol content.