Dear Doctor, Regarding chewing nails, are they digested or can they build-up in balls in your bowels?

Question

How can chewing finger/toe nails harm insides of digestive track?

Answer 1

digested... there are powerful acids and enzymes that can actually do that... so stuff don't really pile up in your digestive tract... unless, of course other circumstances occurs

Answer 2

Nails--human ones, that is--are mostly cartilege, and thus mainly protein. The stuff digests just fine. Fingernails do not build up as balls anywhere in your digestive tract.

HAIR, on the other hand, can: the ball is called a trichobezoar; it is extremely rare in humans, but isn't particularly rare in cats. (I do NOT want to know how people get trichobezoars! I fear it's from bathing their cat. THINK about it!)

SOME vegetable fibers (particularly those in persimmons, I believe especially inadequately ripened persimmons) will form balls, too; those are called phytobezoars--I've actually come across a couple of those. Usually, they're only seen in folks with troubles digesting things...

If they existed, finger/toenail balls would be onychobezoars. No such has been seen in humans.

...Yet...

Answer 3

Fingernails are made of keratin, NOT "cartilage"!

Keratin is not digestible in our guts, nor of many other organisms.

Keratin is also the main component of feathers, fur, hair, and the epidermis of skin. Birds of prey regurgitate the fur and feathers of their prey, as pellets; they cannot digest them. Cats (for example) vomit fur they ingest (often their own fur, from grooming their coats); they cannot digest keratin. We can probably not digest keratin, either.

I think that the molecular strucure of keratin is too stable, due to crosslinked S=S bonds between adjacent cysteine residues, to be attacked by the proteases in our gut.

Answer 4

we make gelatin out of the hooves of animals.. color then and use them for jello

Answer 5

uh no they break down in the stomach

Answer 6

THEY ARE DIGESTABLE