Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: today we're going to be embarking on part one of
Speaker 1: an exploration of nails. Not nails like you hit with
Speaker 1: the hammer, though I guess you could hit him with
Speaker 1: the hammer, though that would be really bad. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the kind of nails on the human body. And
Speaker 1: I was thinking just the other day about how nails
Speaker 1: are sort of the mascot for idleness, for human idleness,
Speaker 1: because when humans are idle, what part of the body
Speaker 1: is going to get the most attention? I think it's
Speaker 1: almost always going to be the nail. Right, You're either
Speaker 1: some people bite their nails. If you're not biting your nails,
Speaker 1: you're often like looking at your nails and kind of
Speaker 1: observing like oh, they're too long, or like, oh, there's
Speaker 1: some kind of weird thing here. Perhaps this is idiosyncratics
Speaker 1: psychology of mind, but but I think this is pretty common, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean even if you're not even looking at them,
Speaker 1: sometimes you just sort of feel them, like you're just
Speaker 1: sort of feeling the edges of your nails and you know,
Speaker 1: seem making sure everything's lined up there. For my own part,
Speaker 1: I tend to find that I noticed him the most
Speaker 1: when I am more in the more in the past. Really,
Speaker 1: But if I was driving into work, I'd be stuck
Speaker 1: in a light or something, and then I would notice
Speaker 1: my nails and I would be and that's when I
Speaker 1: would notice that I need to trim my nails. And
Speaker 1: I would of course be in a position where I
Speaker 1: really shouldn't be trimming my nails. Um. And then you know,
Speaker 1: the rest of the time, I'm not really noticing them.
Speaker 1: That's why the Good Lord made teeth. Well, yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: get into that. Uh, that's not particularly my style, but
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people do it. My cat
Speaker 1: is a big, big fan. I'm also not a nail biter,
Speaker 1: but I there are people very close to me who are,
Speaker 1: and I have observed the behavior for many years up
Speaker 1: close and with a lot of thoughts about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so much like our two episodes on Tomatoes last week.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be a pair of episodes that that
Speaker 1: that are going to get into some real weirdness. It's
Speaker 1: and and so I urge you to stick with us,
Speaker 1: even if you think, oh, fingernails, I have those. I
Speaker 1: don't want to hear two episodes about it. But really,
Speaker 1: I think I think you do. And I think a
Speaker 1: great place to start would be just to just touch
Speaker 1: on sort of the the obvious, weird aspects of our fingernails.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this today because they're they're obviously living.
Speaker 1: They are, you know, they're part of our body, and
Speaker 1: yet they're not living in a way right there, like
Speaker 1: these things these like little uh you know, almost like
Speaker 1: like stones that come out of our our fingers, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean we think of ourselves as non clawed animals.
Speaker 1: I think this is a pretty common intuitive grouping of
Speaker 1: animals that people make, is like the kind with teeth
Speaker 1: and claws and the kind without, And a lot of
Speaker 1: them have teeth and claws because you got to it's
Speaker 1: a hard world out there. But humans, you know, we've
Speaker 1: got tools, and we've got social relationships and we've got
Speaker 1: language and all that, so we don't really need claws,
Speaker 1: but we kind of do, because we kind of do
Speaker 1: have claws, and nails are not super formidable in a
Speaker 1: claw sense, but they're kind of claw like. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about how they're define Our nails are definitely functional,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into a lot of those functions as
Speaker 1: we progress here. They do play a very real role
Speaker 1: in our lives and yet on the same time, at
Speaker 1: the same time, they're very ornamental, so that their condition
Speaker 1: and their upkeep inevitably communicate something about ourselves to the world.
Speaker 1: You know, um, we we can't help but think about
Speaker 1: our own nails at times when we're encountering other people,
Speaker 1: and like it or not, you're gonna notice other people's nails.
Speaker 1: Are they Are they all done up? Are they bright
Speaker 1: and colorful? Are they? Are they really making a statement?
Speaker 1: Are they? Are they kind of grimy? Are they you know,
Speaker 1: they're they spotted with paint? Did they show where? And tear? Like?
Speaker 1: These are these are some of the things that are
Speaker 1: nails communicate and and it's it's it's like if you're
Speaker 1: having a bad hair day or your hair is weird
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, you know, you can put on a
Speaker 1: cap and that's in many circumstances, and you know you
Speaker 1: can kind of get by. But a bad nail day
Speaker 1: or bad bad nail days or months or what have you,
Speaker 1: that's often kind of difficult to ignore, but on both sides, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can wear gloves everywhere, but that's gonna
Speaker 1: communicate something else entirely. You're gonna look like you're ready
Speaker 1: to do some strangling a Bond villain or something, right,
Speaker 1: or you know, there actually is another type of nail
Speaker 1: that you didn't get to that has always stood out
Speaker 1: in my mind ever since I saw this movie when
Speaker 1: I was a little kid, Which are the cyborg nails
Speaker 1: in Paul Verehoven's Total Recall. Do you remember the lady
Speaker 1: who has nails that she's like touching with the stylist
Speaker 1: from her computer, And wouldn't they invent that? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: for for the time being, we're just left with with paints, right, um.
Speaker 1: And we'll get into the use of paints and other
Speaker 1: ornamental techniques on our nails as well in these episodes,
Speaker 1: because ultimately, yeah, these these nails that we have, um,
Speaker 1: are kind of at this intersection of so many different
Speaker 1: aspects of the human condition. And if you look close enough,
Speaker 1: especially if you go far back into prehistory or or
Speaker 1: look around the world at different cultural treatments of nails, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's far more strangeness and magic and religious significance than
Speaker 1: than people might expect, especially if you're just an American
Speaker 1: who just kind of clips them into the trash can.
Speaker 1: But maybe we should start with a quick look at
Speaker 1: the anatomy of a nail. And now we're not going
Speaker 1: to go super deep on this, but the simple version
Speaker 1: is that you've got the hard part of the nail.
Speaker 1: This plays to fingernails and to nails. The hard part
Speaker 1: of the nail is known as the nail plate, and
Speaker 1: the nail plate is made out of these compressed layers
Speaker 1: of former epidermal skin cells that have been caratonized. Caratonized
Speaker 1: as kind of it's your body doing two skin cells
Speaker 1: what Medusa does to people who invade her garden of rocks. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's filling the cells with keratin, which
Speaker 1: is this tough, fibrous protective protein that makes up not
Speaker 1: only the nails but also the hair and uh, and
Speaker 1: keratin is found in living skin cells as well. And
Speaker 1: then the keratinized cells in the nail plate make it
Speaker 1: not only tough, but relatively flexible and translucent. And the
Speaker 1: translucent quality of the nails is I think it's one
Speaker 1: of the most interesting things about them. If you look close,
Speaker 1: you can kind of see through it to the flesh underneath,
Speaker 1: and then to the capillary blood flow under that. If
Speaker 1: you look at it long enough, it might start to
Speaker 1: get a little creepy. Yeah, because because there's the sense
Speaker 1: that the nail is strong. We know the nail is
Speaker 1: is strong, and yet the flesh that we see through
Speaker 1: that nail window looks very you know, soft and delicate
Speaker 1: and and and we all often know from experience that
Speaker 1: it is very sensitive under there. Absolutely, it's sort of
Speaker 1: like a window through your skin, but like a frosted
Speaker 1: glass window, you know, not exactly a transparent, but translucent.
Speaker 1: But so where does the nail plate come from. Well,
Speaker 1: it comes from the nail matrix, which is found at
Speaker 1: the base of the nail, and this is sort of
Speaker 1: the cellular factory. It turns out new nail plate through
Speaker 1: cell division over time, and as new cells form at
Speaker 1: the base of the nail, it pushes the old nail
Speaker 1: out from the root, which is why nails grow. Now,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to note that there are nails are actually
Speaker 1: composed of three layers of that fibrous composite keratin, and
Speaker 1: and this is of course a fibrous protein like we
Speaker 1: said it's found in hair and feathers and hoofs, claws
Speaker 1: and horns. Uh. But I was looking a little deeper
Speaker 1: into just the with the structural integrity of the nail,
Speaker 1: and I read an article from back in two thousand
Speaker 1: four that was published an Experimental Biology by fairn at
Speaker 1: All in which the researchers quote examine the structure and
Speaker 1: fracture properties of human fingernails to determine how they resist
Speaker 1: bending forces while preventing fractors running longitudinally in the nail bed.
Speaker 1: So we we've all cracked a nail before. I imagine
Speaker 1: it's not a fingernail than a toe nail. That's a
Speaker 1: quick thing for me. Yeah, um, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: but you know it's it's a wonderful thing that we
Speaker 1: tend to see far more latitudinal cracks uh than the opposite.
Speaker 1: In other words, cracks tend to be more or less
Speaker 1: parallel to the edge of the nail as opposed to
Speaker 1: straight up the middle, which would obviously be far more traumatic.
Speaker 1: Not to say it doesn't occur, but um, but generally
Speaker 1: you're gonna have one that's going across the nail. So
Speaker 1: that means that our nails are an isotropic, meaning the
Speaker 1: material has a different value when measured in different directions.
Speaker 1: And this is much like wood, you know, which is
Speaker 1: stronger along the grain, or like meat, you know, the
Speaker 1: direction in which you slice a piece of meat makes
Speaker 1: a difference in how tender it is. Uh. The same
Speaker 1: thing would probably be true of your nails, right, Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what they ended up doing in this experiment,
Speaker 1: like tested like cutting on nails, uh, not living the nails.
Speaker 1: I believe they were. They were trimmings that they used
Speaker 1: in the experiment. But basically there are long, narrow cells
Speaker 1: in the thick intermediate layer, while tile like cells in
Speaker 1: the thinner dorsal and ventral layers increase bending strength and
Speaker 1: prevents cracking from forming. Well, that's very nice, and really
Speaker 1: all this lines up with just the way that we
Speaker 1: tend to use our nails, uh, scraping, prying, tweezing. If
Speaker 1: you've ever tried to use your fingernails as a screwdriver,
Speaker 1: you've hit up on some of the design limitations, but
Speaker 1: also some of the flexibility of the nail. You'll find
Speaker 1: that uh, yeah, if you're just pressing on something, if
Speaker 1: you're trying to like dig something out of your own skin,
Speaker 1: And you probably shouldn't do that, but if you are,
Speaker 1: you'll find that you have a fair amount of you know,
Speaker 1: um of pressure you can exert on that nail. Right,
Speaker 1: But if you start trying to go side to side
Speaker 1: with a with the head of a screw, you're gonna find, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's not really rigid enough to turn the screw. But fortunately,
Speaker 1: at the same time, um, it's not so brittle that
Speaker 1: I just ripped my nail to pieces when I'm trying
Speaker 1: and failing to do that. Oh. I've never thought to
Speaker 1: put it into words like that, but you're absolutely right,
Speaker 1: Like twisting pressure on the nail does not feel as
Speaker 1: as comfortable and easy as regular like tweezing or pressing
Speaker 1: pressure is. Yeah, I mean not to say you can't
Speaker 1: turn a nail. I mean turn a screw a little
Speaker 1: bit with your nail. But I think you'll find that
Speaker 1: if when it gets to the nitty gritty of trying
Speaker 1: to actually put some force into the rotation of the screw,
Speaker 1: you're going to realize that you should probably stop what
Speaker 1: you're doing and get an actual screwdriver. Now, there's a
Speaker 1: very interesting contradiction a sort of psychological contradiction that comes
Speaker 1: with the nails, which is that they're the parts of
Speaker 1: our body that should be the toughest, you know, the
Speaker 1: ones we would put out front as as defensive parts,
Speaker 1: the teeth, the nails. There there are defense mechanism. But
Speaker 1: one thing you've noticed if you if you ever tried
Speaker 1: to trim a dog's toe nails, is that they generally
Speaker 1: do not like this at all. They do not want
Speaker 1: their toe nails to be messed with, even though it's
Speaker 1: the hardest part of their body. You can mess around
Speaker 1: with the soft parts of their body. They're usually fine
Speaker 1: with it, but you start going in for the nails
Speaker 1: and they get all squirmy and say, I want to
Speaker 1: clatter around on the floor forever. Uh, And you will
Speaker 1: not get a chance to do this. And there's actually
Speaker 1: a similar kind of contradiction I think that goes on
Speaker 1: in human psychology because think about all of the horrifying
Speaker 1: images that people You know, they occur in movies, of course, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: sometimes they're practiced in reality, and they all probably just
Speaker 1: occur to us naturally. When you imagine something bad happening
Speaker 1: to your nails or your teeth, it's like a particular
Speaker 1: kind of vulnerability obsession. Yeah, and and I should add,
Speaker 1: if you don't want to hear about any of this,
Speaker 1: you know, feel free to skip, like maybe you know,
Speaker 1: ten fifteen, twenty seconds. But we're not gonna dwell on
Speaker 1: this long or in great detail. But but yeah, it
Speaker 1: should be noted that fingernail based torture goes back quite
Speaker 1: a ways given the delicacy. And certainly there are a
Speaker 1: lot of nerves in our fingers and the nail actually
Speaker 1: makes our finger more sensitive, which is something that that
Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought about before, but this was pointed
Speaker 1: out by Evan Writer, assistant professor in the Ronald O.
Speaker 1: Pearlman Department of Dermatology, n y U langon health, quoted
Speaker 1: in a Mental Floss article by Jordan Rosenfeld from two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen. Yeah, the way I've read it put is
Speaker 1: that the by providing a counter pressure to your fingertip,
Speaker 1: it gives you special sensitivity in the skin cells in
Speaker 1: your fingertip that wouldn't be there otherwise. Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: something to keep in mind the next time you have
Speaker 1: some sort of issue with your nails where you find
Speaker 1: yourself asking that question, why do I have these What
Speaker 1: is what good are these nails doing me when they're
Speaker 1: causing me so much discomfort right now? UM I know,
Speaker 1: for for my own part, I in the past had
Speaker 1: ingrown toenails on both of my my big toes and
Speaker 1: uh and had to have the thing where the the
Speaker 1: the pediatrists goes in and like removes a section of
Speaker 1: the toenail and kills the nail bed underneath it, um
Speaker 1: to to prevent that kind of thing from happening. And
Speaker 1: I kind of get the impression that this is not
Speaker 1: all that uncommon because I have other friends who we
Speaker 1: we've compared toes and we're like, oh, yeah, you had
Speaker 1: the same thing done. Well, I'm sorry you had to
Speaker 1: endure that, Robert. But I also do find it quite
Speaker 1: amusing that you have you have toe parties with your friends. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I have to say that the procedure is
Speaker 1: far preferable to an ingrown toenail. Uh. So if if
Speaker 1: you uh, you know, if you're having issues like that,
Speaker 1: and you should definitely try and get some some help
Speaker 1: with it. That is not yourself toying around and trying
Speaker 1: to perform some sort of amateur surgery on yourself in
Speaker 1: the bathroom, because that's only going to result in more pain. Um.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, I have to admit that I did
Speaker 1: not have the stomach to really dive into this topic
Speaker 1: of of nail torture in depth. I know there's a book,
Speaker 1: famous book by George Riley Scott, The History of Torture
Speaker 1: throughout the Ages, and I skimmed that a little bit
Speaker 1: and quickly realized that my eyes were a little bigger
Speaker 1: than my stomach on that one. Um. But basically you
Speaker 1: have a lot of accounts of de nailing in there,
Speaker 1: either by just pulling the nails out or by first
Speaker 1: using the insertion of a red hot nail beneath the
Speaker 1: fingernail is a precursor to de nailing. George Riley Scott,
Speaker 1: by the way, also wrote a history of prostitution in
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century that I understand was one of
Speaker 1: one of, if not the first histories of prostitution that
Speaker 1: was not like, it was not coming from a super
Speaker 1: judgmental standpoint, like a moralizing standpoint. Uh. Well, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: So we're done with the nail torture that others inflict
Speaker 1: on us, I think at this point. But let's come
Speaker 1: back to that other form of sort of nail punishment
Speaker 1: that we sometimes do it to ourselves nail biting. Oh yeah, So,
Speaker 1: as I said before, I am not a habitual nail biter,
Speaker 1: but I have observed a bunch of it up close
Speaker 1: over the years, and so I don't know, I've I've
Speaker 1: sort of like mused on it for a long time.
Speaker 1: So habitual nail biting is known clinically as on ecophagia,
Speaker 1: and and studies have found somewhere between maybe twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty percent of people in total do it, though it
Speaker 1: varies a lot by age. UM. So the twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty percent figure comes from a study published in twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen and the Journal of Dermatological Treatment by Pierre Halte
Speaker 1: at All. But according to some sources, nail biding peaks
Speaker 1: in early years, especially in teenage years, with some estimates
Speaker 1: as high as forty five percent of teenagers doing it regularly,
Speaker 1: which sounds very high. But then again, I guess I
Speaker 1: don't know what teenagers do. I do have to come
Speaker 1: back to um the name of the habitual nail biding though,
Speaker 1: because the uh, the actual meaning of that is is
Speaker 1: the eating of of fingernails, right, I mean it, which
Speaker 1: is not actually what's going on right, at least not
Speaker 1: in most cases. I don't know, maybe who knows what
Speaker 1: some people swallow, but yeah, phagia, that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: used in the terms for the eating of all kinds
Speaker 1: of things. Into phagia is the eating of insects and
Speaker 1: so forth, copper phage. We don't need to get into
Speaker 1: hog eating of hogs, of great sandwiches. But even if
Speaker 1: you're not swallowing the nails own, acophagia can have a
Speaker 1: lot of negative consequences. For one thing, that your nails
Speaker 1: are very dirty. They are sort of a hot spot
Speaker 1: for bacteria on your body, and uh, and so I
Speaker 1: was reading several articles about this. One thing I was
Speaker 1: reading was an article in The Verge by Alessandra Potenza,
Speaker 1: and the author here pointed out that nail biding can
Speaker 1: also have dental consequences. So she pointed to some dental
Speaker 1: health blogs that I was looking at. Several of these
Speaker 1: had dentists citing an estimate from the Academy of General
Speaker 1: Dentistry that quote, nail biding can result in up to
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars in additional dental bills over one lifetime
Speaker 1: because there are a number of reasons. But apparently it's
Speaker 1: not good for your teeth to be chewing too much
Speaker 1: in any case, and it's especially not good to be
Speaker 1: always putting chewing pressure down with your front teeth. I mean,
Speaker 1: you think about it, that's not normally how you chew. Normally,
Speaker 1: you chew kind of like with the pressing of your
Speaker 1: back teeth, But when you're biting with your nails, you're
Speaker 1: kind of aligning your jaw in a strange way to
Speaker 1: bring your front teeth together and turn them into clippers.
Speaker 1: But beyond that, there's also just the the exchange of
Speaker 1: bacteria from one place to the other and it and
Speaker 1: it actually does go both ways. So you're getting bacteria
Speaker 1: from under your fingernails and your fingertips into your mouth,
Speaker 1: but you're also getting bacteria from your mouth under your fingernails,
Speaker 1: which can cause infections there. And apparently it can be
Speaker 1: bad both ways. Yeah, so there's really no upside to
Speaker 1: doing it. Um, obviously just stopping is easier said than done.
Speaker 1: But but but yeah, from from a purely health standpoint, um,
Speaker 1: it's best to stay away from it. But that leads
Speaker 1: to the interesting question of why we bite our nails
Speaker 1: in the first place, and why some people, especially in
Speaker 1: engage in oh nicophagia like the the habitual repetitive biting
Speaker 1: of the nails. I was reading an interesting article about
Speaker 1: this in Fox by the science writer Joseph Stromberg, and
Speaker 1: so he cites that there were several early theories on
Speaker 1: nail biting, of course, before we had modern psychology. One
Speaker 1: of course was Freud, and Freud grouped nail biting as
Speaker 1: one of the obsessions that fell under the oral receptive personality.
Speaker 1: And in Freudian theory, the idea was that if a
Speaker 1: if a child nursed too much during infancy, they would
Speaker 1: grow up to have this oral fixation, the oral receptive fixation,
Speaker 1: which caused them to always like chew on their nails
Speaker 1: and like put objects in their mouth. You know, the
Speaker 1: kind of people who are always like putting a stick
Speaker 1: in their mouth or something. But again, you know, this
Speaker 1: is Freudian is um. There's no real evidence for this,
Speaker 1: and as far as I could tell, there's never been
Speaker 1: any evidence that's turned up that there's any connection whatsoever
Speaker 1: between nursing in early childhood and and so called oral fixations.
Speaker 1: Did seems to be another one of those things that
Speaker 1: you know, Freud kind of said it, but there's no
Speaker 1: reason to believe it's true unless you're one of those
Speaker 1: people that has one of those bumper stickers that says
Speaker 1: Freud said it, I believe it. That settled it. Now.
Speaker 1: More recently, nail biting has been listed in the d
Speaker 1: s M as a form of o c D of
Speaker 1: obsessive compulsive disorder, but not all experts agreed that this
Speaker 1: is the best categorization for it, as not all forms
Speaker 1: of nail biting or universally considered really obsessive um. And
Speaker 1: so another theory has emerged that nail biting is sort
Speaker 1: of a form of emotion regulation. Just one example of
Speaker 1: this is a study from published in the Journal of
Speaker 1: Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry by Sarah Roberts at All
Speaker 1: called the Impact of Emotions on Body focused Repetitive Behaviors
Speaker 1: Evidence from a non treatment seeking sample. And this is
Speaker 1: a whole class of behaviors that body focused repetitive behaviors
Speaker 1: that can involve nail biting, hair pulling, you know, various
Speaker 1: things that were sort of often grooming related, skin picking,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And so in this study they
Speaker 1: tested people in several different kinds of scenarios that we're
Speaker 1: trying to elicit certain emotional reactions. One was a frustration situation,
Speaker 1: in which subjects would be given a difficult job to
Speaker 1: do that that could not possibly be done in the
Speaker 1: time they were given to do it. Um. Another one
Speaker 1: was a boredom scenario where people were left in a
Speaker 1: room with nothing to do. Another one was an anxiety
Speaker 1: scenario where they were asked to watch an extremely terrifying
Speaker 1: movie scene. I think it was a plane crash scene
Speaker 1: from the movie Alive. I've never seen it. Is that
Speaker 1: the one where the soccer players give resort to cannibalism? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the one based on true occurrences, But but certainly
Speaker 1: is notable for having just a very terrifying and at
Speaker 1: least at the time, very convincing airplane crash scene. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how it holds up today, but I imagine
Speaker 1: it holds up pretty well. And then finally, there was
Speaker 1: a relaxation condition where they're watching a video. They're sitting
Speaker 1: in a nice comfy chair and they're watching video of
Speaker 1: a pleasant beach scene. That's nice too. I like that
Speaker 1: movie a lot. What makes you wonder I kind of
Speaker 1: want to see the video, Like, how exactly relaxing is
Speaker 1: the speech? What if you're looking at the beach and
Speaker 1: thinking like, Ooh, I don't know, sharks. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: you could, um it certainly remind there are these wonderful
Speaker 1: videos called moving Art that you can find on I
Speaker 1: think they're on Netflix, and they're basically that kind of vibe,
Speaker 1: like really soothing ambient music. Um and then these just
Speaker 1: beautiful scenes of things like beaches or mountains and sometimes
Speaker 1: wildlife depending on what the theme of the episode is.
Speaker 1: But it's some great nap timefair Oh nice. Uh well
Speaker 1: so anyway, so the results of the study were basically
Speaker 1: that observed behaviors in reported desire to bite the nails
Speaker 1: and engage in these repetitive body focused behaviors. It singled
Speaker 1: out to sit stuations especially which were stress and boredom
Speaker 1: and uh. In Stromberg's article, he quotes Fred Penzel, who's
Speaker 1: a psychologist who helps patients who deal with nail biting,
Speaker 1: and Penzel says of people in these conditions, quote, when
Speaker 1: they're under stimulated, the behavior provides stimulation, and when they're
Speaker 1: over stimulated, it actually helps them calm down and he
Speaker 1: compares it to nicotine actually, with the idea that the
Speaker 1: nicotine and cigarettes can sort of be a stimulant when
Speaker 1: you are under stimulated, and it can be a relaxant
Speaker 1: when you are over stimulated. Uh So, another question is
Speaker 1: how do you quit if you if you're a nail
Speaker 1: biter and you want to stop. I've read several ideas.
Speaker 1: One of course, is just trying to replace nail biting
Speaker 1: with an incompatible alternative activity. So in situations where you
Speaker 1: might find yourself biting your nails, have something that you're
Speaker 1: doing with your hands that you know you can't bite
Speaker 1: your nails at the same time, or alternately, I've read
Speaker 1: people say, hey, just work of or put tape over
Speaker 1: the ends of your fingers. There's even there are even
Speaker 1: companies that make especially tailored, nasty tasting, clear nail polish
Speaker 1: so that if you put your fingers in your mouth,
Speaker 1: that is disgusting. All right, on that note, we're going
Speaker 1: to take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Thank Alright, we're back. So we're talking about nails. And
Speaker 1: one question that I find myself thinking about when when
Speaker 1: sometimes I'm bored or idle and I start staring at
Speaker 1: my own nails is how fast exactly do these suckers grow? Well,
Speaker 1: there is an answer to this, and it varies from
Speaker 1: not not only from person to person, but throughout a
Speaker 1: person's lifetime. But an average figure that's often cited is
Speaker 1: that fingernails tend to grow about zero point one millimeters
Speaker 1: per day one tenth of a millimeter per day. So
Speaker 1: at this rate, if you wanted to grow nails as
Speaker 1: long as a six meter saltwater crocodile, it would take
Speaker 1: about sixty thousand days or about a hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: four years. But unfortunately, even if you could live that long,
Speaker 1: your nails would probably not keep growing at such a
Speaker 1: dependable rate indefinitely. And one of the great studies in
Speaker 1: the history of fingernail research is actually uh something that
Speaker 1: contributes to our understanding of this fact. And it's something
Speaker 1: that's also in the spirit of Albert Hofman with LSD
Speaker 1: or Barry Marshall, the guy who put a Helicobacter pylori
Speaker 1: in his in his stomach to prove that it was
Speaker 1: the cause of ulcers rather than say stress or acidic
Speaker 1: foods uh it. It is a bold act of self experimentation,
Speaker 1: and I will say, an astonishing feat of commitment over time.
Speaker 1: And this is the story of a doctor named William Bean.
Speaker 1: Oh all right, so, Dr William B. Bean was a
Speaker 1: physician in a medical historian who lived from nineteen o
Speaker 1: nine to nineteen eighty nine, and he taught medicine at
Speaker 1: the University of Iowa College of Medicine and the University
Speaker 1: of Texas in Galveston. In a into his medical practice
Speaker 1: and his teaching and his research, William Bean was a
Speaker 1: prolific writer, and I think it's worth saying that he
Speaker 1: was also an unusually good writer. An example that I
Speaker 1: saw pointed out in a paper on Bean's life was
Speaker 1: a passage that I'm about to read, which which he
Speaker 1: wrote simply praising the virtues of books for the dedication
Speaker 1: of a library. And I just thought this was so lovely. So, Robert,
Speaker 1: do you mind if I read this here? Bean wrote,
Speaker 1: Books remind us of friendship. They lead us to equanimity
Speaker 1: and peace, at least peace of mind. They help us
Speaker 1: maintain our individuality without the austere and crushing loneliness of
Speaker 1: those who love only themselves. The wisdom we gain from
Speaker 1: books leads us to act as though we were building
Speaker 1: our ideas for eternity, mindful that the nature of life
Speaker 1: and death are so ordered that we and our works
Speaker 1: are fleeting and falling grains of sand in the hour
Speaker 1: glass of time. If we can avoid the apathy of
Speaker 1: those who claim to know that nothing matters, and the
Speaker 1: sheer folly of those who know that they personally matter immensely,
Speaker 1: we shall have been worthy successors to that silent company
Speaker 1: of physicians, our medical forebears, whose spirits watch over us here.
Speaker 1: Through the careful and scholarly making and the wise use
Speaker 1: of books and libraries, they build our great tradition. By
Speaker 1: following them, we must add to it, as physicians, wise
Speaker 1: and humble in the care, the comfort, and sometimes in
Speaker 1: the cure of our fellows, in their sickness and in
Speaker 1: their sorrow. Oh, that is beautiful. And he actually brings
Speaker 1: some of this uh, some of this thoughtful writing spirit
Speaker 1: to his scientific papers. So this really remarkable self experiment
Speaker 1: that William being carried out is revealed by the title
Speaker 1: of a paper that he published in nineteen eighty and
Speaker 1: the Archives of Internal Medicine called Nail Growth thirty five
Speaker 1: years of observation. That is dedication. And yes, so that
Speaker 1: is correct, You are understanding the title correctly. There William
Speaker 1: Being meticulously tracked the rate of his own nail growth
Speaker 1: for thirty five years, beginning sometime in the early nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: I think even as earliest nineteen forty one, and he
Speaker 1: published his findings in a series of scientific articles, the
Speaker 1: first of which appeared in nineteen fifty three and all
Speaker 1: the way up until nineteen eighty. I think the one
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty was the last one. So thinking about
Speaker 1: this problem, I immediately would have a question, which is,
Speaker 1: how exactly do you track how much your nails grow? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: you can look at your nail and I don't know,
Speaker 1: it looks this long today. But uh like if if
Speaker 1: you clip them eventually or if something comes off of them,
Speaker 1: how do you know how much it has grown? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I know when when when you brought up this study, Like,
Speaker 1: the first thing that comes to mind is some is
Speaker 1: like a bearded professor type who has one hand that
Speaker 1: has those big, long spiral fingernails up. No, he didn't
Speaker 1: do that, uh he know, but he did find an
Speaker 1: interesting way. Being actually explains in this paper that there
Speaker 1: are a number of ways to track the growth of
Speaker 1: your nails. Uh and this is his method quote. I
Speaker 1: make an indentation with the little file commonly employed to
Speaker 1: open small glass vials. On the first day of each month.
Speaker 1: I file a transverse groove just at the edge of
Speaker 1: the free margin of the cuticle, being careful not to
Speaker 1: push it back or interfere with it. Within a week
Speaker 1: or two after marking the nail, the end is recorded
Speaker 1: when the mark has just reached the free margin of
Speaker 1: the nail exactly one point four or five centimeters from
Speaker 1: the start. Early in my observations, I measured nail clippings
Speaker 1: by linear growth than by weight. With careful calculations, I
Speaker 1: found that anywhere from to more than fifty percent of
Speaker 1: the nail had been used up by unnoticed attrition. Not
Speaker 1: only does the length of the nail wear away, but
Speaker 1: the dorsal surface also wears down. If a fingernail is
Speaker 1: trimmed with scissors and not filed, sharp angles can be felt.
Speaker 1: Since scissors simply takes away bites without filing, these sharp
Speaker 1: points disappear in a day or two from unnoticed wear
Speaker 1: and tear. Uh And I found this very interesting. So,
Speaker 1: even apart from clipping being observes that somewhere between a
Speaker 1: quarter and a half of the mass of the nail
Speaker 1: just vanishes over time through regular wear and tear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's we we easily take these these tools that
Speaker 1: are fingernails for granted, because we use them all the
Speaker 1: time to varying degrees to interact with the world around us.
Speaker 1: But they are self replenishing, you know, unlike the various
Speaker 1: real tools we use on the on the on natural materials. Uh,
Speaker 1: those we inevitably have to replace as they wear out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it absolutely makes logical sense, but it's it's just hard
Speaker 1: to square that with my experience because I feel like
Speaker 1: I never notice my my fingernails just being were in
Speaker 1: a way, but obviously it happens a lot. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean it's like, like you say, if nothing else, you'll
Speaker 1: notice that that the sharp edge will go away, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty quickly on its own, even if you
Speaker 1: don't file them. Isn't that interesting? Yeah? Uh? And I
Speaker 1: also want to note Bean's dedication to accuracy and control,
Speaker 1: since he notes that at one point to make sure
Speaker 1: that the cuticle itself was not advancing or receding unnoticed
Speaker 1: of course, because you know, if the cuticle was moving,
Speaker 1: that would change how his measurements were happening with the
Speaker 1: with the file in the nail plate. Uh. Just to
Speaker 1: make sure the cuticle wasn't moving, Being made a tattoo
Speaker 1: in his thumbnail to use as a benchmark. What a
Speaker 1: little more on his on his method. This is a
Speaker 1: quote from an earlier paper by Being, which was reproduced
Speaker 1: in a Discover magazine article on him. I was reading
Speaker 1: so being wrights quote. When I first began to measure
Speaker 1: the rate of nail growth, I scored marks on all
Speaker 1: my nails. Within a few months, I found that each
Speaker 1: nail had its own pace. This was clearly distinguishable, even
Speaker 1: by the rather crude method that I used. Some nails
Speaker 1: grew rapidly, some in an intermediate phase, less rapidly, and
Speaker 1: some slowly. The differences were small, but regular. There was
Speaker 1: consistency in the variation. So if I applied a ratio,
Speaker 1: I could tell by measuring one nail what the others
Speaker 1: were doing. And this I did on several occasions. In
Speaker 1: simple terms, toenails grew more slowly than nails of the hand,
Speaker 1: and the nail of the middle finger grows more rapidly
Speaker 1: than the nails of either the thumb or the little finger.
Speaker 1: Or the other two middle fingers interact. So the middle
Speaker 1: finger is the one that he found to uh to
Speaker 1: grow the fastest. Yes, and this is a finding that
Speaker 1: has been reproduced in other studies that I'll mention in
Speaker 1: a minute. It is surprisingly interesting. Yeah, I would have
Speaker 1: guessed the index finger just thinking about like the way
Speaker 1: that I interact with things with my finger. Now, I
Speaker 1: would think, well, that's the one you're most likely. You know,
Speaker 1: you see some sort of strange film on a window
Speaker 1: or something, you need to scratch at it, You're going
Speaker 1: to use your index surely. Uh So that's that's that's interesting. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is um And we'll get to possible explanations for
Speaker 1: this difference in in just a bit here, but I
Speaker 1: want to read being summary of his paper from from night.
Speaker 1: He says, quote, a thirty five year observation of the
Speaker 1: growth of my nails indicates the slowing of growth with
Speaker 1: increasing age. The average daily growth of the left thumbnail,
Speaker 1: for instance, has varied from zero point one twenty three
Speaker 1: millimeters a day during the first part of the study
Speaker 1: when I was thirty two years of age, to zero
Speaker 1: point zero nine five millimeters a day at the age
Speaker 1: of sixty seven and uh, and pursuing that line of
Speaker 1: thought a little further, he actually does get strangely thoughtful
Speaker 1: and melancholy about it, or maybe not melancholy, at least
Speaker 1: there there's a kind of haunting and beautiful passage, or
Speaker 1: at least unusually so for a medical journal paper. And
Speaker 1: so this is my last quote from and he writes.
Speaker 1: The kind of pleasure and understanding that I get from
Speaker 1: studying natural history has long vanished from most contemporary teaching
Speaker 1: institutions that have become part of intensive care units, which
Speaker 1: are supposed to save the residual intellectual machinery of medical students.
Speaker 1: The teeming mass of hope and pain, technical virtuosity, and
Speaker 1: depersonalization called a health center delivers packets of what is
Speaker 1: termed medical care. The capacity to look remains, but the
Speaker 1: capacity to see has all but vanished. Teachers and students
Speaker 1: forget that the ability to palpate is not the same
Speaker 1: as the ability to feel. As a gentle countercurrent, I
Speaker 1: set forth here this most recent five year installment of
Speaker 1: the observations of the growth of my left thumbnail. It
Speaker 1: is a very long record of the growth of human
Speaker 1: deciduous tissue. Its duration has little precedent in clinical medicine
Speaker 1: or human natural history. Still, the nail provides a slowly
Speaker 1: moving keratin chimograph that measures age on the inexorable absissa
Speaker 1: of time. So there's something actually strangely profound going on here,
Speaker 1: which is by meticulously measuring the slowing of the growth
Speaker 1: of his fingernails over time, he's actually watching his body
Speaker 1: become less cellularly productive every single year as the circulation
Speaker 1: slows down. As that's one probable, at least partial explanation
Speaker 1: for it. As the body grows older, it becomes less
Speaker 1: efficient at producing new cells. Uh, the fingernail growth just
Speaker 1: slows and slows, and he's measuring it in such minute
Speaker 1: detail that he can see it happen month by month
Speaker 1: as the body says, all right, we are we're going
Speaker 1: to slow down on nail production, but we're all in
Speaker 1: on ear hair. My god, I would love to read
Speaker 1: a William Bean study on his ear hair. I think
Speaker 1: it would be so lovely. All right, So that was
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, But we're gonna take a quick break. But
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're going to consider what more
Speaker 1: recent research has had to say about nails, and then
Speaker 1: we'll get into some other nail related topics before we
Speaker 1: close out this first episode on on on the subject.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. Alright, we're back, all right. So
Speaker 1: in the last section we talked about the research of
Speaker 1: a doctor named William Bean who very carefully studied the
Speaker 1: rate of his own nail growth for thirty five years,
Speaker 1: and he published that study in nineteen eighty. But I
Speaker 1: was looking for more recent stuff about the rate of
Speaker 1: nail growth, and there was a New York Times Q
Speaker 1: and A from eleven that addresses this by c Claiborne
Speaker 1: Ray and uh. The The author here interviews Jeffrey S. Dover,
Speaker 1: an Associate clinical professor of dermatology at the Yale School
Speaker 1: of Medicine, who reports the following. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: we still don't know all of the factors that influenced
Speaker 1: the rate of nail growth, but it's generally accepted that
Speaker 1: fingernails grow about three times as fast as to nails. Robert,
Speaker 1: does this square with your experience? I don't know if
Speaker 1: it squares with mine. I mean, I don't doubt their findings.
Speaker 1: But prior to either but but but if you but
Speaker 1: but but prior to this, hey, have you had quiz
Speaker 1: me on this, I would have guessed that the rate
Speaker 1: was more or less the same. I feel like you know,
Speaker 1: just from when it is by observing my nail growth.
Speaker 1: When it is time to trim my fingernails, it's probably
Speaker 1: time to trim my toenails. Though, now now that I
Speaker 1: think about it, maybe fingernails do seem to require trimming
Speaker 1: a little more frequently. But I would don't know. I
Speaker 1: would have guessed at this particular rate that it would
Speaker 1: be three times as fast as toenails. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think I would have naturally come to this conclusion either,
Speaker 1: but this seems to be a pretty consistent finding. Fingernails
Speaker 1: grow a lot faster, and three times the rate does
Speaker 1: seem to be the average of the findings. Um uh.
Speaker 1: They also, of course, they confirm what William being discovered,
Speaker 1: which is that nails tend to grow more slowly as
Speaker 1: you get older. And uh, let's see. And then speaking
Speaker 1: to Bruce Robinson, a clinical instructor of dermatology at Lennox
Speaker 1: Hill and Mount Sinai Hospitals in Manhattan, fingernail growth apparently
Speaker 1: peaks in your teens and your twenties and then declines afterwards,
Speaker 1: and then there's another very strange fact, handedness, as in
Speaker 1: left handed or right handed, appears to affect the rate
Speaker 1: of fingernail growth. So if you're left handed, the nails
Speaker 1: on your left hand will tend to grow a bit faster,
Speaker 1: and vice versa. And the rate also tends to increase
Speaker 1: in summer and decrease in winter. And it tends to
Speaker 1: be a little bit faster in men than in women,
Speaker 1: and tends to be a little bit faster in women
Speaker 1: during pregnancy. Well, I mean, on the handedness side of that, Uh,
Speaker 1: it would certainly be meeting the demand because you'd be
Speaker 1: more likely to to use that hand for you know,
Speaker 1: scratching at things, manipulating things with your fingernails and therefore
Speaker 1: wearing them down. Yeah, but I mean it makes you wonder, like,
Speaker 1: what's the mechanism There is there some genetic kind of
Speaker 1: coding for handedness that says, okay, I know you know.
Speaker 1: Do your genes say okay, I know that you're left handed,
Speaker 1: so let's make the nails on the left hand grow faster.
Speaker 1: Or is there something else at work? Is it more
Speaker 1: kind of an adaptation to use of the hand, And
Speaker 1: so as an illustration of the explanation of this question. Uh,
Speaker 1: there there was a study that I came across because
Speaker 1: I saw a reference to it in a Wired article
Speaker 1: by Nick Stockton. But the study was by this British
Speaker 1: dermatologist named Rodney Dauber who worked at Churchill Hospital in Oxford,
Speaker 1: and I think he sometimes lectured in dermatology at Oxford
Speaker 1: University as well. I couldn't actually find if Dauber is
Speaker 1: still alive, so I'm not sure, but I hope he is.
Speaker 1: But so, around the year nineteen eighty or eighty one,
Speaker 1: Dauber suffered what he described as quote a mallet finger
Speaker 1: deformity of the left ring finger whilst playing rugby, and
Speaker 1: so basically this means his finger got jammed. This usually
Speaker 1: happens when something strikes you hard on the fingertip and
Speaker 1: it bends the finger by force, and in doing so
Speaker 1: damages the tendon that you normally used to straighten your finger.
Speaker 1: I've read that this can also be called baseball finger,
Speaker 1: but that that I don't know that sounds like that
Speaker 1: should mean something else, like the tip of your finger
Speaker 1: is swelling to baseball size. But with this injury, Dauber
Speaker 1: saw an opportunity to test a theory about why the
Speaker 1: fingernails grow at different rates, and he so so in
Speaker 1: the spirit of William Bean. Also he performed this experiment
Speaker 1: on himself and he published the results in Clinical and
Speaker 1: Experimental Dermatology in nineteen eighty one. Study was called the
Speaker 1: Effect of Immobilization on Fingernail Growth. So Dauber notes that
Speaker 1: there had been some other theories to explain the observed
Speaker 1: difference in nail growth, and some of these differences where,
Speaker 1: for example, the nails on our longest fingers tend to
Speaker 1: grow the fastest. So remember we mentioned earlier beans finding
Speaker 1: that the middle finger has the fastest growing nail, and
Speaker 1: so maybe this is an evolutionary adaptation. Since the middle
Speaker 1: finger is usually a person's longest finger and likely to
Speaker 1: be the first one to come into contact with an
Speaker 1: object if you just sort of extend your whole hand,
Speaker 1: maybe we have a genetic predisposition to have a fast
Speaker 1: growing middle fingernail, and so maybe the differential growth is
Speaker 1: programmed in the genetic level. Another explanation was possibly people
Speaker 1: whose fingers are immobilized due to hemi parisis or neuropathy
Speaker 1: tend to show decreased fingernail growth as well, and so
Speaker 1: perhaps the lack of nerve supply slows the growth of
Speaker 1: the fingernail. But finally, there was another theory which is
Speaker 1: known as terminal trauma, which I should have checked to
Speaker 1: see if they ever made that into like a uh,
Speaker 1: Michael Doodakov movie or something. But but the the terminal
Speaker 1: trauma theory is that the nail as on some fingers
Speaker 1: grow faster because those fingertips are used more often. And
Speaker 1: under this idea, the more fingertip encounters pressure or damage,
Speaker 1: the faster it's nail grows. And this theory would be
Speaker 1: consistent with with observations by a Legro, Clark, and Buckston
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties that both nail biters and manual
Speaker 1: workers have more rapid nail growth. So yeah, that's a finding.
Speaker 1: If you bite your nails or if you tend to
Speaker 1: do you know, hard work with your hands, your nails
Speaker 1: grow faster than in people who don't do these things. Interesting,
Speaker 1: so just supply meeting demand exactly. So Daubert decided to
Speaker 1: test this by comparing the growth of the nails on
Speaker 1: both of his ring fingers, both while his finger was
Speaker 1: splinted to help it heal from the rugby jam and
Speaker 1: while it was unsplinted and in normal use, and his
Speaker 1: results supported the terminal trauma theory. In general, the nails
Speaker 1: on his left hand grew slower than on his right hand,
Speaker 1: but the left ring finger, which was in the splint
Speaker 1: that nail grew even more slowly while it was splinted
Speaker 1: and thus immobilized, and once he could use his finger again,
Speaker 1: the nail grew faster. An also interesting note in general
Speaker 1: the so if you're if you're right handed, the left
Speaker 1: hand nails tend to grow more slowly than than your
Speaker 1: right hand. But no matter how your handedness breaks down,
Speaker 1: toe nails tend to grow at the same speed on
Speaker 1: the left and right. So this might be a result
Speaker 1: of handedness being more important for you know, what you
Speaker 1: do with your limbs than footedness. Now, something that comes
Speaker 1: to mind on that point, and this would this would
Speaker 1: have to be something. This would actually be a kind
Speaker 1: of topic that I would I would love to look
Speaker 1: at in the future, is what what affects shoes have
Speaker 1: on this because because of course we so many of
Speaker 1: us wear shoes, of great number of us and certainly
Speaker 1: I think individuals more likely to be heading up or
Speaker 1: participating in study of this sword. And we know from
Speaker 1: the shoes change like the shape of our foot. You
Speaker 1: know that these are these are not natural um sheaths
Speaker 1: that we're putting our our feet into. And I wonder
Speaker 1: if if our shoes would be serving to apply more
Speaker 1: of a constant and sustained pressure on the nails. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's kind of an open question for me. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder I wondered about exactly that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So why did the toenails grow slower than the fingernails?
Speaker 1: I wonder if that is natural among all people, no
Speaker 1: matter what you do with your feet, or if that
Speaker 1: is more an artifact of shoe wearing. Like I wonder
Speaker 1: if if you run around barefoot a lot or often
Speaker 1: like kicking at things with your toes, would your toenails
Speaker 1: grow faster? Right? Yeah, that's another good point. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: because like I guess I think of like the beach
Speaker 1: person who is going out barefoot in a lot. Like
Speaker 1: on one hand, you're not going to have the end
Speaker 1: of your shoe um pushing against your toe nails or
Speaker 1: restraining your feet, but perhaps you're you're more likely to
Speaker 1: you know, to scratch around it things to use your
Speaker 1: toenails in a way that is more in keeping with uh,
Speaker 1: their their evolved purpose. I guess yeah, I didn't find
Speaker 1: any evidence of whether anybody has studied this question, but
Speaker 1: if you are a toenail fingernail researcher out there, maybe
Speaker 1: look into this. Does being a barefoot person make the difference? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but anyway to summarize it, so, I think it looks
Speaker 1: like there's pretty good evidence that when fingertips are put
Speaker 1: to more work by touching things doing you know, just
Speaker 1: generally manipulating objects, putting pressure on the fingertips wear and tear,
Speaker 1: the nails grow faster. And this could explain part of
Speaker 1: the difference in growth made by handedness and the differences
Speaker 1: that are observed based on what we do with our hands,
Speaker 1: such as if you're a manual worker. But that brings
Speaker 1: us to I guess the last thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about before we have to wrap up this first episode, um,
Speaker 1: which is coming back to the idea of humans as
Speaker 1: a non clawed animal. Of course, you know, so we
Speaker 1: we think about animals like big cats that have powerful
Speaker 1: teeth and claws, hard parts anchored in the bodies for
Speaker 1: tearing the flesh. The flesh of other animals. And in contrast,
Speaker 1: humans don't have claws, so we have tools. We have
Speaker 1: a claw like hard tool power at our fingertips. But
Speaker 1: in a way, nails are still sort of like claws,
Speaker 1: even if in diminished form. And what seems to be
Speaker 1: definitely true is that nails evolved from organs that were
Speaker 1: very claw like. Yeah, yeah, certainly when we looked at
Speaker 1: to other primates, we see, uh, we we see true
Speaker 1: claws and things more like like true claws versus our
Speaker 1: own fingernails, which are still useful. Again, Uh, these are
Speaker 1: very useful to scratch, to scrape, and and and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of us find this to be the case.
Speaker 1: To manipulate very small objects, uh, which you know, which
Speaker 1: of course is is very much the domain of of
Speaker 1: of of human engineus. You know, even even those of
Speaker 1: us who will have we're fortunate enough or or just
Speaker 1: through the luck of our lives, are not doing a
Speaker 1: lot of like like like intensive labor. You're still gonna
Speaker 1: have to pick up a pin off of the floor
Speaker 1: at some point, right, You're still gonna have to occasionally
Speaker 1: engage in that kind of uh, you know, a fine
Speaker 1: manipulation of small things and for that our nails are
Speaker 1: are are perfect. Oh yeah, I mean I would say
Speaker 1: probably the characteristic motor activities of human beings compared to
Speaker 1: other animals. One is what you do with your with
Speaker 1: your like throat and your mouth is language, of course,
Speaker 1: and the other is fine motor movements with the fingertips. Right.
Speaker 1: But of course we do have tools that that stand
Speaker 1: in for a lot of these other uses. So we
Speaker 1: don't need a great big old uh, you know, velociraptor
Speaker 1: type talent or anything, because we have other tools that
Speaker 1: can stand in for that, that sort of claw and uh.
Speaker 1: And so this is a thought by many data to
Speaker 1: to play a role in the changing shape of our
Speaker 1: fingers over a human evolution. Um. So basically, our our
Speaker 1: primate ancestors had something more like true Claus and it's
Speaker 1: and we have the stunted, flattened versions of Clause. And
Speaker 1: the reason here maybe because some two point five million
Speaker 1: years ago, you know, or or more, we started using tools,
Speaker 1: and two things impacted the shape of our fingers and nails.
Speaker 1: First of all, curved nails would have increasingly gotten in
Speaker 1: the way of tool manipulation. And then secondly, broader fingertips
Speaker 1: allowed us to better grip uh stone tools. Oh, I see. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you have more of a claw at your fingertip,
Speaker 1: it makes more sense for your finger to narrow more
Speaker 1: taper towards the end, Whereas if you don't have a
Speaker 1: claw at the end, it makes more sense to have
Speaker 1: a flatter, broader finger tip that can probably more easily
Speaker 1: close around an object and keep it steady. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: think of some of our clawed humanoid icons, uh, the
Speaker 1: of Edwards as their hands or Freddy Krueger, or you know,
Speaker 1: various sort of humanoid monsters that have long, tapering fingernails.
Speaker 1: You might sometimes wonder, well, all right, well, those claws
Speaker 1: are great if your trim and hedges there, or or
Speaker 1: you know, harassing teenagers in their dreams. But what do
Speaker 1: you do when you need to manipulate another tool? Uh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna kind of be uh you know, um up
Speaker 1: the creek in that regard. Pumpkinhead can't play tennis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then here's another interesting thing to think about, Um,
Speaker 1: what about what what about? Yeah? Okay, obviously Edwards says
Speaker 1: their hands, Freddy Krueger, you know they have those impressive nails.
Speaker 1: If they get in the fight. But could they throw
Speaker 1: a punch? Could Freddie Krueger throw a punch? How about
Speaker 1: these various like a lizard man creatures that show up
Speaker 1: in all the manner of sci fi and fantasy. Uh,
Speaker 1: they just always have to slash and bite, right, I
Speaker 1: mean they couldn't because when you have a clause you're
Speaker 1: not You're gonna probably gonna have a difficulty forming a fist.
Speaker 1: So we know that that tool you seem to have
Speaker 1: played a role in the evolution and form of our hand.
Speaker 1: And there have also been some interesting studies that look
Speaker 1: at how the ability to to to form a fist
Speaker 1: uh and essentially throw a punch may have played a
Speaker 1: role in the form of our hand as well. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting hypothesis though, I mean I wonder, um,
Speaker 1: I can wonder about the idea of of punching as
Speaker 1: an adaptation just because it's so often results in the
Speaker 1: injury of one's own hand when you do it right. Well,
Speaker 1: that is that is something that these studies have looked into,
Speaker 1: and we have some path They may be many years
Speaker 1: old at this point, but I remember that was one
Speaker 1: of the factors that was considered, Like that sweet point
Speaker 1: um in the in the formation of the hand where
Speaker 1: it can both potentially form a fist and land a
Speaker 1: punch while also maintaining its integrity without damaging the thing
Speaker 1: that you need for tool manipulation. So it's doing a
Speaker 1: kind of a delicate balance there. But but this will
Speaker 1: led to an interesting question that I've often had, uh an,
Speaker 1: and that is, are sharpened nails useful in a in
Speaker 1: say a stand up fight? Would they be an advantage?
Speaker 1: Uh in a fight? And um, this is one of
Speaker 1: these things It's kind of been like an idle speculation before.
Speaker 1: I remember I remember seeing like a music video or
Speaker 1: a poster or Glenn Danzig, uh, the rock musician has
Speaker 1: um like sharpened fingernails, and and trying to figure out
Speaker 1: like what the limitations and or advantages of that would be. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I gotta say, if I were to imagine
Speaker 1: going into a fight with with long, sharpened fingernails, I
Speaker 1: think I would honestly be more worried about about trauma
Speaker 1: to my fingernails in the fight than I would be
Speaker 1: excited about my ability to use them as a weapon. Um.
Speaker 1: And this comes back to the duality we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: like our hard parts, like teeth and nails for some reason, Uh,
Speaker 1: even though they are the hard parts, we have kind
Speaker 1: of like special years of trauma toward them. And if
Speaker 1: you had long nails and a real scuffle, that just
Speaker 1: seems like a real liability. Yeah, and that that seems
Speaker 1: to be part of the consensus. I was looking around
Speaker 1: it is I couldn't find any real studies on this,
Speaker 1: but I was I found a lot of discussion about
Speaker 1: this on martial arts boards. Um So, on one level,
Speaker 1: people would say, Okay, in a stand up fight, if
Speaker 1: you were someone who's after you at being able to
Speaker 1: scratch someone with your nails is not a bad deterrent
Speaker 1: because you can irritate tissue. You can you know, you
Speaker 1: can go for the eyes. And then also something that
Speaker 1: worth keeping in mind is that your nails as they
Speaker 1: scrape tissue, they collect tissue, which provides a genetic sample
Speaker 1: of an attacker potentially. But others also point out, okay, well,
Speaker 1: this idea of sharpening your nails or having long nails
Speaker 1: for you know, to benefit you in a fight. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: these are the these can end up bending backwards rather
Speaker 1: than gouge in a you know, a high pressure situation.
Speaker 1: And that also it might make forming a fist that
Speaker 1: much harder to do. So, ultimately, it doesn't look like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence for the idea that that
Speaker 1: our nails are are really a um, you know, that
Speaker 1: much of a defensive benefit. Though obviously they can be
Speaker 1: used to scratch and claw if neat be so they're not.
Speaker 1: They're not completely useless in that regard, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like there are a lot of ways to really
Speaker 1: encourage them back towards a more defensive claw purpose that
Speaker 1: we would find in other animals. Interesting. Uh So, so
Speaker 1: his Danzig never commented on why he's got long fingernails.
Speaker 1: He doesn't say anything about it. I do not know
Speaker 1: it's possible that he did, uh, and I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: just not aware of it. I can't say that. I've
Speaker 1: read a lot of interviews with the man over the years. Uh.
Speaker 1: But I imagine that the case there was that he
Speaker 1: did it because it looked cool and creepy, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like, uh, something out of a nos Ferato movie. Right.
Speaker 1: Do you see so many and so many different types
Speaker 1: of vampires and ghouls and creeps that have have long nails,
Speaker 1: long tapering nails, and it you know, it looks creepy
Speaker 1: and cool. I would say the ultimate example of that
Speaker 1: for me is the way klaus Kinski looks in Werner
Speaker 1: Hurtzog's knows Ferrat, where he's got long, creepy nails. Oh
Speaker 1: it's it's it's spine tingling. Oh yeah, those are some
Speaker 1: Those are some wonderfully nasty fingernails. I do. I had
Speaker 1: to reacquaint myself look up a picture of that. Has
Speaker 1: been a while since I've I've seen it, though, I
Speaker 1: guess the the original Nosferatu also had some pretty creepy nails,
Speaker 1: and the Willem Dafoe version also pretty gastly. Oh. Shadow
Speaker 1: of a Vampire. Yeah, that's a great movie. Actually, I
Speaker 1: feel like that that is a sort of forgotten gym.
Speaker 1: I need to revisit it or shadows. Did I say
Speaker 1: Shadow of of Vampire? Shadow of the Vampire? I can't
Speaker 1: remember what the article is, but it's the one with
Speaker 1: Willem Dafoe as Max Shrek and it's it's fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to say it's the same director who had
Speaker 1: done that really weird art film to Gotten prior to that,
Speaker 1: which which I don't think there's really any compar are
Speaker 1: some going to be made between the short film and
Speaker 1: in the vampire film, but I don't interesting. But of
Speaker 1: film trivia, nonetheless, I never saw that one. Well, Robert,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. We're here on vampires, and I know we're
Speaker 1: out of time, so we gotta wrap up part one.
Speaker 1: But Vampires is the perfect lead in to next time,
Speaker 1: where we're gonna be talking about corpses and mythology and
Speaker 1: magic and religion, all surrounding beliefs about nails. That's right,
Speaker 1: so be sure to uh tune back in. I guess
Speaker 1: this will be Thursday. We will continue our discussion of
Speaker 1: fingernails in the meantime, if you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, so we'd love to hear from you. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you all have fingernails, or at least you've had them
Speaker 1: at some point. Uh. The same goes for your toe nails.
Speaker 1: You have a useful information about this topic, You have experiences,
Speaker 1: you have you have injuries, uh, you have fighting experience, etcetera.
Speaker 1: All these things that you might wish to share with us,
Speaker 1: and we would like to hear from you. Uh. Likewise,
Speaker 1: just another reminder that if you use the Facebook, there
Speaker 1: is a Facebook group for our show. It is the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Bow your Mind discussion module, which you can uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it has to be invited to however it works.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that basically we're not active on any
Speaker 1: real social media account out there, but there is a
Speaker 1: fair amount of activity in that one little place, so
Speaker 1: I encourage you to check it out if you wish.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to listen to other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Bowl your Mind, check out some
Speaker 1: of these past topics of discussion. You can find us
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcast and wherever that happens to be.
Speaker 1: We just ask that you rate, review and subscribe. Huge
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
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Speaker 1: with feedback from this episode or any other to suggest
Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
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