14 DAY TRIAL // Some conditions can induce real bizarre eating behaviors. Pica ("magpie" in Latin) is a disease characterized by the appetite for non-food substances. These people will ingest anything, like a magpie, from non-food substances like dirt, paper, coal, soil, chalk, glue and clay but will also have a curious appetite for stuff that could be considered foods, like food ingredients (e.g. flour, raw potato, starch), for over a month at an age where ingesting these objects is not developmentally normal.
Pica is found especially in pregnant women and small children, especially those developmentally disabled. It was supposed to be due to mineral deficiency, but no real cause and no cure for this disorder have been discovered. Pica is dangerous, as it can induce poisoning and gastro-intestinal obstruction or stomach tearing, but also infestation from animal feces with parasites. Coprophagia (eating feces) is a symptom observed in very few patients with dementia, schizophrenia and depression. The ingestion of other people's feces can induce infections spread through feces, like Hepatitis A, Hepatitis E, pneumonia, and influenza, bacteria and parasitic worm eggs.
Now what about this case of trichophagia (when people eat their own hair)? Medics from the Rush University Medical Center extracted a 10 pound (4.5 kg) (!) hairball from a teenage girl suffering from trichophagia.
The 18-year-old woman had a 5-month history of pain in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen, abdominal distention, postprandial emesis (vomiting after eating), and had lost 18 kg (40 pounds).
Physical examination detected a tender, epigastric (on the upper stomach) mass, but not visible. Instead, tomography revealed a huge gastric mass extending along the entire stomach, but not blocking the stomachal outlet.
Gastroscopy revealed a large stomachal concretion, and when questioned, the patient revealed she had been suffering of trichophagia for years. The hair ball was too large to be extracted with the endoscope (37.5cm x 17.5 cm x 17.5 cm or 1.2 ft x 0.6 ft x 0.6 ft); laparoscopy did not work, thus open surgery had to be made. One year later, the woman presented no abdominal pain or vomiting, and gained about 9 kg (20 pounds). She stated she has stopped eating her own hair.