Woman Who Eats 'Salty' Toenails Says The Habit Began After Childhood Trauma

Janet Agyemang's story may have gone viral because of the toenails, but the reason behind the habit is much heavier than the clip first suggests.

The West Virginia single mom became widely discussed after appearing on TLC's My Strange Addiction in February, where viewers learned that she does not only chew her own nails. Her habit also includes human nail clippings from other people, including her children.

One scene that drew attention showed Janet after a hard gym session, lifting her sweaty feet and biting her toenails straight from her mouth. She described the taste as 'salty', a detail that helped make the clip spread quickly online.

At the time of filming, Janet said she was eating around 60 toenails a week. Over the years, that added up to almost two pounds of toenails since the habit first began when she was a child.

The health side is not just about the shock factor. Healthline discusses eating parts of the body under autocannibalism, while repeated nail biting is often called onychophagia. UCLA Health also warns that nail biting can lead to dental issues, nail-bed infections, and illness because bacteria can pass into the mouth through the habit.

Months after the TLC episode aired, Janet spoke in an exclusive interview with UNILAD about what the habit looks like now and why it has been so hard to leave behind.

Janet went viral after admitting to her toenail addiction on the TLC show TLC

Janet told UNILAD that the addiction is still 'the same' in many ways. She has reduced how often she eats her toenails, but she is still dealing with the urge to chew her fingernails.

The habit also remains tied to her children. On My Strange Addiction, Janet was seen asking a friend for nail clippings, and she now says she still keeps her daughters' clippings in a special container so she can have them with her at work.

"I'll save her nails, and I'll put it in the gum when I get to work to make me feel closer to her. And I'll chew gum until I leave work," Janet said, explaining that being away from her children for work is 'triggering' for her.

That detail makes more sense once Janet explains where the behavior began. During the UNILAD interview, she connected the nail chewing to trauma from her childhood and said the habit started almost 26 years ago.

Janet spent her early years in Ghana with her grandparents. Then, without being fully prepared for what was happening, she was sent on a plane to the United States to meet her biological parents.

"I was never told where I was going, I was just put on the airplane with a complete stranger and I was on my way to meet my real parents," she recalled.

The flight became the moment her coping habit started. Without her grandparents beside her, Janet felt anxious and began chewing her nails, then noticed that the action helped calm her down.

Meeting her parents did not make everything simple. After years of only brief phone calls, Janet said her father tried to make up for lost time, but her mother "treated her differently," which made the nail habit continue. Her father was later deported, another event that 'turned her world upside down'.

By adulthood, the behavior had become more than a childhood response. Nail biting and eating remained one of the ways Janet soothed herself when stress, separation, or old feelings came back.

Why the habit became more than a viral TV moment

The unusual part of Janet's story is easy to focus on, but she describes the habit as something linked to stress and separation rather than simple curiosity. That changes how the addiction reads: it is not just something shocking for television, but a coping pattern that followed her for decades.

Health experts often warn that nail biting can carry real health risks, especially when bacteria, fungus, or dirt from the nails reaches the mouth. Janet says she had not thought deeply about those risks for most of her life because the habit was tied to comfort first.

That also explains why stopping is not as easy as deciding the behavior is strange. For Janet, the urge is connected to moments when she feels emotionally unsettled, especially when she is away from her daughters.

After 26 years of chewing and eating nails, Janet says she has not suffered major health problems from the habit. Even so, she now wants to stop, partly because she is worried about damaging her veneers.

"You're so traumatized, you don't think about what it can do to you," Janet said.

"When we were doing the show, my oldest mentioned something about fungus. I never really thought about the impacts it could cause me."

Janet says people with the same condition have reached out to her since the show aired, which made her realize she is not the only one dealing with it.

Her advice to anyone who relates to her story is to find 'another way to cope with their stressor'. For her, the bigger lesson is not only about nails, but about finding a safer outlet before a coping habit becomes something that feels impossible to drop.