Paint-chip salad, side of hair? Meet pica
Nearly all little kids put weird things into their mouths. But children over age 2 -- or full-grown adults -- who regularly eat paint chips, stones, paper clips, cloth and other inedible items likely have a rare disorder: pica.
Pica was named for the black-billed magpie (Latin name: Pica pica), a bird with a reputation for its indiscriminate eating behavior. The long list of items people with pica may be inclined to eat includes starch, clay, chalk, wood, burned matches, raw potatoes, laundry detergent, hair and feces.
Doctors have recorded the case of a man who ate 40 toothpicks a day, a woman who chewed three trays of ice daily and licked the dust off of Venetian blinds, and another who ate clay pots and cigarette ashes. A medical museum in Missouri displays the 1,446 items removed in 1929 from the stomach of a woman with pica, including screws, nails, straight pins, safety pins, buttons, pebbles and thimbles.
Last year, doctors reported in the New England Journal of Medicine the case of an 18-year-old who ate so much hair she amassed a 10-pound hairball in her abdomen, which had to be surgically removed.
The hair-eating womanâs pica, not surprisingly, led to stomach pain, bloating and eventually constant vomiting (because food she swallowed couldnât get past the hair).
Pica has also led to lead poisoning in those with a penchant for paint; potassium poisoning in those who snack on burnt match heads; and parasite infections in those who swallow soil. Pica can also, depending on the snack, lead to holes in the digestive tissue and cause teeth to wear down pretty quickly.
Doctors and scientists arenât sure what causes the disorder. Some think itâs hereditary, some think itâs linked to mental illness, and still others surmise that it stems from a lack of nutrients, particularly calcium, zinc or iron.
Pica is uncommon in the U.S. and rarer still among adults. But the kind of pica characterized by eating dirt, clay and plaster is far more frequently found in places where people live in poverty and malnourishment. In Haiti, the poor sometimes eat cookies made of mud, salt and shortening. In sub-Saharan Africa, some groups of pregnant women and children eat dirt, especially the calcium-rich soil from termite mounds.
In fact, pica is particularly prevalent among pregnant women in Africa; surveys of women in parts of Nigeria, Kenya and Sudan suggest that half to two-thirds eat clay or dirt during pregnancy. The few scientists who study the phenomenon have theorized that eating earth may boost immunity, help remove toxins from the body or settle the stomach during morning sickness.
But eating soil -- and other strange things -- isnât always linked to ill health, mental or physical. Pilgrims at the sacred Catholic sanctuary of Chimayo in New Mexico eat the dirt on which the chapel stands in the hopes it will perform miracles.
And some people (think sword-swallowers) eat strange things for entertainment. French sideshow act Michel Lotito, popularly known as âMonsieur Mangetoutâ (âMr. Eats Everythingâ), spent the late 20th century eating bicycles, television sets, shopping carts and even a plane -- all cut up into little pieces. The plane, a Cessna, took him two years to eat in the late 1970s and landed him in the Guinness World Records book.
Mangetout would pass most of what he ate, but an X-ray once showed many scraps of metal still in his gut -- as well as an extra-thick stomach lining, thought to be the key to his success. He also claimed to have his limits: A plane he could stomach, but he wouldnât touch hard-boiled eggs or bananas. As the saying goes, thereâs no accounting for taste.
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