Don’t.
Of course, that bit of advice is not sufficient – even when you are mortally ashamed that you do bite your nails.
You are in good company: About one third of young children and nearly half of all teenagers bite their nails, and some take it into their adult lives. Doctors have a scientific-sounding name for it – onychophagia (which just means: nail eating) and lump it together with other psychiatric disorders like hair pulling (trichotillomania) and certain eating disorders as an obsessive-compulsive disorder. But I don’t want you to run around with a psychiatry label – I just want to apply a little common sense.
Nail biting is more common in the winter: the skin is dryer, hangnails are more frequent – and before you know you are falling back into the old habit and bite your nails. Once you start, it is hard to stop – it is as if your fingers are screaming to be eaten.
If getting a fancy nail job done, doesn’t help – or if you have similar occupations like I have: doctor, gardener, cello player, neither of which should be done with lacquered fangs – perhaps these few tricks works for you:
• Carry an emery board with you all the time, and as soon as you have a hard spot around your nails, file it away – because those are the precursors of hangnails.
• At least twice a day, rub your hands with coconut oil. Don’t use any petrolatum-based lotion; they make it worse. If you fingertips are nice and soft, there is no reason to start biting. Carry a little container with coconut oil with you (food quality – same as you use for frying).
• Find out what makes you bite – boredom triggers it in me. So, I avoid boredom.
• Ask your friends to remind you not to bite.
• Admire your beautiful unbitten nails. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
What’s the Difference Between a Cold and the Flu?
February 11, 2011
This is the question I am asked most often around this time of a year. How can one discern between the one and the other. Not that the treatment is very different – they are both viral and respond to similar measures. Only the flu lasts longer, and can lead to more complications. Sometimes, it it hard to tell which is which - but here are some guidelines.
A cold and the flu - both make you feel lousy. The flu makes you feel even lousier, but that is hard to figure out when you are in bed with something, your nose is stuffed, you can’t breathe right, your head hurts, and you are miserable.
Whereas a cold often starts slowly, with a little scratching in the throat over several days or bouts of sneezing, a flu often starts with a bang: One moment you feel fine – and an hour later you realize you are coming down with something really bad. Sometimes it even starts with queasiness in your belly, and you wonder what you are hatching. But very soon, all your limbs hurt, your muscles hurt, your skin hurts, your scalp hurts, your head hurts, and you develop a fever (most of the time): That’s the flu.
Complications of a cold include sinusitis (especially if you reach for over-the-counter cold medicine that tends to dry out the nasal mucosa and clog the system, instead of letting the phlegm flow out), and earaches.
A flu does often not present as an enormously running nose; a flu might have some stuffiness that doesn’t go away. Fever is rare in a cold, and prominent in the flu: When the fever mounts, you feel chills and want to be covered with a dozen duvets; when the fever falls, you are soaked in sweat and have to change pajamas and sheets.
A flu differs in that you are usually much more incapacitated. Sinus headaches in a cold can be bad, but flu headache feel like a minor meningitis – and it is just that: the virus is affecting your meninges (the outer lining of your brain): It hurts to move your eyes, it hurts to move your head, and light that shines into your eyes bothers you (photophobia). And a flu leaves you weak and seemingly unable to recover. A flu may make it impossible to get out of bed for a week or two, sometimes even three – you feel like you will never recover.
In a flu, all your strength seems to be sapped out of you, and you feel unable to do exercise. While you are still bedridden, it is not a good idea to push through because this is the time your heart can be affected too – and you need rest, not tough determination to get it over with. And let me say this out loud: This is not a time for cold showers or other heroic measures. Just lie back in your cushions and rest. A cold never leads to this kind of utter exhaustion.
I say rest because you might not be able to sleep – that has to do with the irritation of meninges, too. On the other hand, some people do nothing but sleep. Both is fine, and part of the picture.
What is not part of the picture: If you get delirious, if you get bronchitis and/or pneumonia, if your fever lasts longer than three, four days, maximally a week - then it is time to consult a physician. Because nearly nobody dies of a cold, but many people – especially the elderly and diseased – die of flu and its consequences every year.
The most common cause for cough is phlegm that comes down from the sinus and tickles your throat. The best way to deal with it is to rinse your nose with saltwater (which I have described somewhere here – look it up in the index). The cough of bronchitis comes from deep within the lungs, sounds like trumpeting, and your chest might hurt severely – that is a sign you should see your doctor. Read More
Small Talk Shortcomings
February 10, 2011
A weird little study showed that if you do small talk you stand in your own way, foregoing happiness.
Small talk is the opposite of meaningful talk. Meaningful talk is when you talk about what is real and difficult, instead of glossing it all over. If you were brought up under the maxim that “it is not their business” and keep a stiff upper lip always, chances are that you are unhappy. Because we need to talk about what is dear to our hearts.
Interestingly, the moment you talk about your problems, you will find out that other people have their share of tribulations, too. Most people are not as happy as they pretend – Thoreau talked about the “quiet desperation” in peoples’ lives.
I grew up in a rather dysfunctional family. My mother used to cover up for my father’s shortcomings. Seeing my mother pick up my drunken father one day from the steps in front of our apartment building taught me how utterly fruitless her constant fibbing was: There he was lying dead-drunk for everybody to see. From then on, I always talked about what was real and bothering me – probably getting on many nerves.
Whenever I had a problem – no room to live, no job, boyfriend trouble, another divorce, whatever – I would grab the nearest bystander and talk it through. By and by, I got some good advice (some inane also, of course) and learned to sort out my life. I loved the people who answered in truth, even when the answer was not flattering to me. My friend Christina in Germany would start most of her sentences with: “ Really, Alexa, that’s absolute nonsense!” She still is my friend. One has to love the people who point out one's faults!
Not only made me talk feel more connected with people, it often led to finding the rent-apartment or job I needed – because other people started working on my problems once they knew them. It was a form of early networking (just don’t think that twittering is the same as really talking to real people about real issues!).
This study of 79 participants found that people who talked about substantial issues that were on their minds, were happier and had more social contacts. Our happiness, turns out, is closely related to our social interactions. No man is an island. “Substantive conversations create a feeling of belonging that leads to happiness,” the study concludes. Read More
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