Nail biting is a bad habit that many of us are all too familiar with. But no one really talks about any of the harmful consequences of doing it besides stubby nails and getting screamed at by your mom.
Lauren Nichols, an 18-year-old college student from Texas, recently gave up nail biting after a terrifying experience where she almost had to get her fingertip amputated. Here's the TikTok she made about her close call:
In case you didn't watch the TikTok, she woke up one morning with red swelling around a green spot on her cuticle. She went to the doctor and found out she had paronychia, aka a cuticle infection.
The doctor prescribed her antibiotics, but they didn't work and the infection got A LOT worse.
Nichols eventually had to have a type of surgery called a therapeutic washout to remove the infection. Her doctor told her that she needed to stop biting her nails. "He told me that he has to amputate the tips of people's fingers because the infection gets too bad, and that I'm lucky I came when I did," she told BuzzFeed.
"Since this has happened to me, I have stopped biting my nails because I never want to have to go through that again," she said. "I made the TikTok to educate people to not bite their nails because it can have serious consequences."
Nichols bought a fidget cube to curb her habit and said she knows some people who stopped biting their nails after they started painting them or wearing acrylics.
