Whether these people are the same ones who eat in the restroom is unclear.

Licking Your Wounds

Another one that ratchets up the ick factor is our habit of wound licking, which may seem to rank up there with Puxley Addams’ habits of scab picking. Metaphorically, wound licking is the practice of heading back into our “corners” after a defeat and taking time to heal and recuperate.

In practice, wound licking seems like a far more disgusting enterprise - and there is a debate that has raged over whether or not the risks for this practice outweigh the benefits.

On one hand, word from the London School of Medicine and Dentistry claims that wound licking is evolutionary and as much a benefit for humans as it is for animals. Components in our saliva - namely, nitric oxide, helps protect cuts and breaks in the skin from unwelcome bacterial infections.

Additional studies have shown that human saliva contains other antibacterial agents including lactoferrin and lactoperoxidase, which help fight off developing infections, while also containing compounds that act as pain-relieving analgesics. Another study from Amsterdam has shown that wound licking may promote the healing of wounds, causing them to close up to two times faster than wounds that are left untreated.

That said - wound licking is still potentially unsafe. Despite the evolutionary benefits that we have in our mouths, they are still teeming with bacteria. For the same reason that we have to get emergency medical treatment and carefully clean out any animal bites, so too should we avoid introducing all of the bacteria in our mouths into an open wound. We have the benefit of sterile cleaning agents and surgical dressings to clean wounds and keep them germ-free while they heal. So why not side step the saliva treatment?