Biting the nails: a bad habit with a positive effect
There are many bad habits that should be removed from children over time: put your finger in your nose, kick, suck your finger or To bite nails. However, the latter could stop being a reason for the children in the house because a study of the universities of Otago in New Zealand and the faculty of McMaster University in Canada have shown that this act has some positive effects on children .
According to this work, To bite nails how to suck your finger improves the prevention of some diseases since these acts face the children to some microorganisms. This fact causes children to generate antibodies that will help them cope with some conditions when they grow up.
The lost friend hypothesis
There is a theory in pediatrics called the hypothesis of the lost friend that was proposed by David Strachan. This assumption explains that as the years have passed, children have reduced their exposure to certain microbes, which ends up preventing their body from producing certain antibodies that, in the end, will prevent them from certain diseases.
Now, this study of the universities of Otago and McMaster University, based on this hypothesis, considers whether the fact that children do not face the microorganisms that live in the nails also has negative effects on the generation of defenses. To do this, they reviewed about 1,000 newborns since they arrived in the world until they turned 32 years old. During all this time, the parents of these children had to answer questions about their children's habits.
Biting the nails: less chance of developing allergies
One of the effects studied in this study was to check whether biting the nails was related in any way to atopic sensitization, that is, developing an allergy to common allergens such as dust mites, cat hair and even pollen.
Of the nearly 1,000 children participating in this study, 31% practiced the habit of biting their nails or sucking their thumbs. All of them showed at 13 years of age that they had a lower risk of suffering from these allergies, except for pollen specific in the spring, than those children who did not have any of these habits.
This result was more enlightening when it was found that these children when they became adults also showed a lower risk of suffering from these allergies. Moreover, it was also shown that those participants who had practiced both habits, that is, had bitten their nails and had sucked their finger, had a greater number of antibodies than the rest. Of course, as we mentioned before, it was not shown that these practices prevented in any way develop asthma or spring allergy.
Bad habits with positive effects on health
This work reaffirms the hypothesis of the lost friend formulated by David Strachan. In recent times, processes such as pasteurization, greater sanitation of water and cleanliness in food has reduced the number of microorganisms that our body faces. This could explain why in the most advanced societies year after year the cases of allergies grow.
Although it is true that socially these habits, biting the fingernails or sucking the finger, have negative connotations, it may be that deep down they have positive effects on the health of the children in light of the data thrown by this research.
Damián Montero
