Do you bite your nails?

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Biting nails are a bad habit.Our nails are an ideal location for bacteria to thrive, that includes potentially pathogenic bacteria like Salmonella and E. coli which would love to call underside of your nail tips home. If you bite your nails, those bacteria easily transfer into your mouth and rest of your body, where they may lead to infections.Our fingernails may actually be twice as dirty as our fingers,2 considering they are difficult to keep clean, making this prime point of transfer for infectious organisms. Although I am not aware of any research on this, it is often suggested that people who bite their nails have the stronger immune systems, and there fore get sick less often, than those who do not do this. And one potential explanation for this is that nail biting may help the introduce pathogens from our environment to our immune system, helping it to learn and build the defenses, similar to what the occurs when people eat their boogers.