We all know that nail-biting is a bad habit. I myself have struggled with it for years and still can relapse from time to time. But if you've developed an accidental oral fixation, one that's as automatic as scratching your neck or running your hand through your hair, then it can be really hard to consciously stop yourself from doing it.

So if you need an incentive to avoid biting your nails, then maybe you should make yourself aware of the serious risk (under certain circumstances) which nail-biting can potentially pose to your health.

If you need proof of the danger then just take at the following Facebook post, which has gone viral on social media this week, which shows a man's badly swollen fingertips.

The pictures of the gruesome infection were shared with a warning on Facebook by a woman named Karen Peat. Karen, who hails from Coatbridge in Scotland, captioned the pictures: "A message to nail biters out there STOP!!! Someone I know who prefers to remain nameless who bites their nails ended up having to get rushed to Glasgow Royal Infirmary today for emergency surgery. [sic]"

She continued: "This person had been to two chemists and spoken to two separate pharmacists over the past few days who had advised to use magnesium sulphate and keep it covered it still got worse. [sic]"

She added: "When we finally went to the A&E this morning was told if left much longer it could have been fatal as the infection was traveling up the arm hence the emergency surgery! So please please stop biting your nails!! [sic]"

Listen to this expert's advice on how you can avoid sepsis and infections:

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So there you have it. Nailbiters: beware! Your bad habit could send you straight to hospital if you're not careful.

Warning: this article contains images that some readers may find distressing 

A teenager has been hospitalized this week, and nearly had a finger amputated after her frequent nail-biting habit led to her contracting an infection.

In a TikTok video that has now gone viral, 18-year-old university student Lauren Nichol has shared how she first noticed that she had a "green spot on my cuticle" on January 8.

In the video in question, she explains: "I thought it was a bruise or something, but it turns out it was paronychia or a cuticle infection. On January 10th it was a lot more swollen and more red and the green part had expanded, so the antibiotics weren’t working."

She continued: "On January 12th it got pretty bad, it was really painful at this point and my antibiotics obviously still weren’t working. So I decided to pop it after watching YouTube videos on January 13th."

She added: "But then I go back to the doctor and it turns out I have to have surgery … I dead*ss almost had to get my finger amputated because I bite my nails [sic]."

In a later interview with Buzzfeed News, she stated: "[The doctor] 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."

"Since this has happened to me, I have stopped biting my nails because I never want to have to go through that again. I made the TikTok to educate people to not bite their nails because it can have serious consequences," she added. 

This story comes just a few weeks after a woman named Karen Peat shared a similar warning on Facebook. Peat, who hails from Coatbridge in Scotland, wrote: "A message to nail biters out there STOP!!! Someone I know who prefers to remain nameless who bites their nails ended up having to get rushed to Glasgow Royal Infirmary today for emergency surgery. [sic]"

Listen to this expert advice on how to avoid infections yourself:

[[jwplayerwidget||https://content.jwplatform.com/videos/OTLlQrIG-Q0L14jDU.mp4||OTLlQrIG]]

She continued: "This person had been to two chemists and spoken to two separate pharmacists over the past few days who had advised to use magnesium sulphate and keep it covered it still got worse. [sic]"

"When we finally went to the A&E this morning was told if left much longer it could have been fatal as the infection was traveling up the arm hence the emergency surgery! So please please stop biting your nails!! [sic]"

If you ever needed a reminder to stop biting your nails, this might be it.

A young woman has issued a stark reminder to those who may be guilty of the habit, after she was faced with the prospect of losing her entire finger.

You may remember having a nibble on your nails as a kid and not thinking that it has much of an effect on their appearance, or your long-term health.

But as the years have gone on, you've probably become more aware of cuticle care and how biting your nails can tranfer bacteria from the fingers to the mouth, cause infections, or even damage teeth.

For Gabby Swierzewski though, she has been biting nails well into her adulthood, though nothing more severe than a sore finger or hangnail was caused.

But in February this year, things started to take a turn for the worse.

An irritation became a serious medical issue

Gabby, 21, admitted that she almost lost a finger after developing a serious condition linked to chronic nail biting, known medically as Onychophagia.

According to DermNet, this is a common stress-related or nervous habit which can involve "biting off the nail plate, and sometimes the soft tissues of the nail bed and the cuticle as well."

The TGI Fridays restaurant manager had a small torn piece of skin near her nail, which would eventually become a painful infection that needed medical attention.

Speaking to People, Gabby recalled that something felt different, explaining: “This began on Feb. 6, it initially began as a hangnail, and it was extremely painful,

“Hang nails are a common occurrence for me, so of course, I thought it would go away, as I have been biting my nails since I was eight.”

But just a day later, her finger had become "extremely swollen," and after a run of antibiotics proved unsuccessful, she would be rushed to the ER.

Gabby kept working through shifts despite suffering from excruciating pain, resulting in her finger becoming a a deep shade of purple while throbbing.

The habit could result in your finger being amputated, if it gets infected. Credit: Getty Stock Images

Doctors considered amputating her finger

After being taken in to the ER, doctors cut into her finger and drained a number of cyst-like abscesses, though the swelling still remained, so she was referred to a specialist.

Gabby recalled that the specialist described it as “the worst case she’s ever seen” in someone her age.

So on February 19, she went through an urgent irrigation and debridement procedure, which involved a two-centimeter incision in her finger to rid of the infection.

Doctors would send tissue samples to a lab and ordered blood tests to figure out if the infection had spread to the bone, with the possibility of losing her nail or finger, very much on the table.

Luckily, by the start of March, doctors told Gabby that she wouldn't be needing another surgery or amputation of any kind, though she said they admitted that "it was pretty impressive how big my finger was.”

Despite many unsuccessful attempts to stop the habit in the past, Gabby is set on kicking it for good now, admitting: “It is a very important awareness topic and it seems like not many people knew that nail biting could cause such a big issue, including myself."

Advice from experts

Doctors told Explaining Medicals that once the skin around the nail breaks, it makes an opening for bacteria to enter the tissue.

As the human mouth contains hundreds of microorganisms, they can be transferred into small wounds around the nail and cause various types of bacterial infection.

Symptoms with these types of infections can include redness, swelling and tenderness around the nail, with more serious situations involving the bacteria spreading deeper into the finger.

This is when incidion and drainage of the area may be required, while the possibility of antibiotics become an option.

While this may not happen to everyone who bites their nails, the risk is noteworthy due to the bacterial present in the Oral Cavity.

Doctors recommend that you keep nails trimmed and clean to combat the likelihood of infection, while actively avoiding any biting or tearing of surrounding skin, while disinfecting any small cuts near the nail.

It's important that you seek medical attention if any signs of infection appear, which can include pus, swelling, or pain which is getting progressively worse.

Featured image credit: Thomas Northcut / Getty

Everybody has a bad habit that they just can't resist. Some people bite their nails, some people chew their hair, and some people crack their knuckles. Service technician Antoine Boylston was one of those people: a habitual knuckle-cracker, who through a quirk of fate and bad luck, narrowly avoided dying because of this very habit.

The trouble began back in April 2016, when Antoine Boylston absent-mindedly cracked his knuckles while working, which opened a cut on his hand. No big deal right? Antoine thought so too, until he felt violently sick and nauseated later that same evening. Before long he felt an intense pain in his pinky finger, which made him think that he might have broken it. Antoine went to hospital, where doctors insisted on performing a skin biopsy. It was there that they learned that cracking his knuckles and opening up the cut on his little finger had led to Antoine contracting a deadly flesh-eating virus known as "necrotising fasciitis."

In a recent interview, Antoine stated: "I thought a flesh-eating bug was something people got in the movies – not from cracking their knuckles too much. I’d do it a lot, and not think anything of it – but I was going to live to regret it ... The whole time I thought I just had a broken finger that was causing me to feel sick to my stomach. It wasn’t until I woke from surgery, and was told I had necrotising fasciitis, that I understood the severity of it all. The infection had spread through my hand from the cut, almost to my elbow.

He added: "Doctors warned I may lose my hand – but if I had waited much longer I could’ve lost the entire arm or died. I had only heard of flesh-eating viruses from movies. I didn’t think that was a thing people could actually get, let alone that what I thought was a broken finger from cracking my knuckles too much was actually a disease, spreading up my arm ... It looked like something from a zombie movie, hanging from my hand and was kind of starting to smell weird."

Doctor's were forced to perform a skin graft on Antoine's arm, as well as amputate his useless pinky finger, something which has severely affected his grip in that hand: "I try to never use my hand as an excuse for poor performance, but it does bother me sometimes," Antoine stated. "Typing, swinging a hammer, and holding small items is a pain. I can’t form a fist. Pocket change is now my worst enemy. I forget and try to hold it in my right hand and it slides out every time. But, I’m alive – and I will never crack my knuckles again – I can’t."

However, things are looking up for him now, and after his physical therapy ended, Antoine has begun competeing in ‘strongmen’ tournaments and weightlifting tournaments. It just shows that, despite his wounds, he won't let his bad experiences keep him down.

A month ago, 48-year-old Greg Manteufel was perfectly healthy. He painted houses for a living and loved cruising around West Bend, Wisconsin on his Harley Davidson motorcycle. Then one day he developed a fever and started vomiting. Assuming it was the stomach flu, he decided to sleep on it, and let the sickness pass.

It didn't. This was no mild stomach flu. When Greg woke up, he was delirious, and his temperature had skyrocketed. Whatever this infection was, his body was responding violently. Dawn, Greg's wife, drove him to the emergency room, and noticed bruises staining his body. "It hit him with a vengeance," she told Fox 6. "Just bruising all over him. Looked like somebody beat him up with a baseball bat."

At the hospital, blood tests revealed the cause of the infection: capnocytophaga, a bacteria found in dog and cat saliva. The bacteria is present in most dog and cat saliva, but only harms humans in rare cases. Greg owns eight dogs, and any one of them could be the culprit. "We can't wrap our heads around it," said Dawn, "that all of the sudden, he's 48 years old and been around dogs all of his life... and this happens."

"This type of bacteria comes from the saliva of dogs," said Dr. Silvia Munoz-Price, an infectious disease specialist with Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin. "This infection in his blood triggered a very severe response on his body."

Greg was suffering from sepsis: blood poisoning from bacteria. That's what caused the blood spots - or bruises - to appear. Doctors gave him antibiotics, but they were not effective. Greg's blood pressure plummeted, and blood clots blocked circulation to his extremities. "Sometimes [blood pressure] decreases so much that the arms and legs just die," said Dr. Munoz-Price.

In order to save Greg's life, doctors had no choice but to amputate his limbs. Just one week after checking in to the hospital, they removed Greg's legs from the knee down. Then they amputated his hands. "It took a week and they were taking his legs," reflected Dawn. "That's all he kept saying to the doctors -- 'take what you need but keep me alive.' And they did it. Surprisingly enough, they did do it."

According to the doctors, Greg's situation is a fluke. "More than 99 percent of the people that have dogs will never have this issue. It's just chance," said Dr. Munoz-Price. We've all seen people let dogs and cats lick them - who would have thought it could lead to a nightmare like this? But every once it a while it happens. Last April, a man in England suffered from the same infection, losing both legs and five fingers after playing with his dog. (And getting infected by his Cocker Spaniel's saliva.)

It took an unusual set of circumstances, and a lot of bad luck to contract this infection. But despite being dealt such a cruel hand by fate, Greg is said to be in good spirits. He and his wife are aware that their lives have changed forever. "There’s no choice," Dawn told The Washington Post. "We have no choice but to be positive and make the best of it."

The Manteufel family has created a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for Greg's prosthetic limbs. They also want to raise money for plastic surgery to repair his nose, since the lack of blood flow caused it to turn black. Greg will probably not paint houses or ride his beloved Harley Davidson again. However, prosthetic limbs and cosmetic surgery will help him to lead a more normal life. We hope that he can do so soon.