Woman coughs up 10 lb hairball:
A previously healthy 18-year-old woman consulted a team of gastrointestinal specialists. She complained of a five-month history of pain and swelling in her abdomen, vomiting after eating and a 40-pound weight loss. After a scan of the woman’s abdomen showed a large mass, doctors lowered a scope through her esophagus.
It revealed “a large bezoar occluding nearly the entire stomach,” wrote Drs. Ronald M. Levy and Srinadh Komanduri, gastroenterologists at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. For the uninitiated, a bezoar is a hairball. “On questioning, the patient stated that she had had a habit of eating her hair for many years — a condition called trichophagia,” they wrote.
The woman underwent surgery to remove the mass of black, curly hair, which weighed 10 pounds and measured 15 inches by 7 inches by 7 inches, the doctors said. Five days later, she was eating normally and was sent home.
There is a rare condition called trichotillomania, where people pull out their hair over and over again, mostly because they like it and can’t seem to stop. I guess trichotillomaniacs sometimes eat the hair they pull out. Or, perhaps they chew the hair while the hair is still attached, and sometimes manage to swallow it.
I don’t think that this disgusting post belongs under the category of “food recalls.”
Care to respond?
Well, she DID throw up a lot. I guess that’s sort of a food recall, don’t you think?
In all fairness, there are some people like me who experience slight discomfort from their hair.
My theory is that it comes from an allergic reaction, perhaps to something which gets deposited in the hair and therefore sits in contact with the body for long periods of time. Some people, like John Kender, have suggested that beans or another dietary source is the allergen.
Another theory of mine is that it could be a form of “sensory impatience” caused by there being no nerves in hair — some people like having instant tactile feedback on their environment, and hair causes “tacticle projections”. Hair just pulls in one spot while not providing a true sense of what’s going on along it. So if you feel something nagging at your hair, it’s hard to make sense of where it’s coming from without a lot of patience, and so it’s easier to just pull it out to get rid of the sensation.
Another theory I have is that the pores may be deprived of air when the hair is thick, causing irritation which is otherwise relieved by air. When my hair grows thick, it starts to feel like my head is “suffocating” and needs more room to breath. A buzz is literally refreshing. To me that’s no more crazy than someone wanting to wash dried mud off their skin.
Being male, I can shave most of my hair off and not have any social difficulties. Females have a harder time, socially and culturally. Shaving my hair off also relieves the discomfort which leads to pulling it out. The behavior is not a mental compulsion or OCD, at least not for me, but a response to a genuine physical discomfort, exactly similar to wanting to removing clothing that itches.
I think the connection between TTM and OCD is overplayed, and that OCD is a secondary symptom of cultural pressures for nice-looking hair, which causes some to be forced to choose between looking good and relieving physical comfort by removing hair. If forced into this catch-22, it can become an obsession like OCD.
As for eating hair, that might indicate a nutritional deficiency. I’ve heard that people crave what their body needs. Perhaps there is a nutrient that chewing hair subconsciously reminds the body of, or even contains (if not in a digestible form). Or perhaps the act of chewing hair releases chemicals which increase overall comfort.
I sometimes nibble on hair, similar to nibbling on fingernails, but except for accidentally swallowing a few tiny bits resulting from nibbling it, I’ve never swallowed it intentionally.
Calling it a “psychiatric disorder” I think only increases stigma, and fails to recognize that there is a real physical discomfort that is occurring, and that pulling one’s hair out or eating it, is not simply because a person’s mind is messed up or they have a “broken brain”, or that they are trying to hurt themselves for perverted reasons, or that they definitely need to see a psychiatrist, or that they deserve pity. It is a learned response which relieves a real physical discomfort.
Suppose in a few years it’s discovered that the discomfort relieved by pulling hair out is all due to a common ingredient in food or household chemicals?
Ulcers were once blamed on stress and mental illness, until helicobacter pylori was discovered (through unorthodox means).
lee, Do you chew your own hair, or other people’s as well? What about body hair? Would you, say, nibble on the hair growing on your bb?
“As for eating hair, that might indicate a nutritional deficiency.”
I think if hair solved any nutritional urges, many more of us would be eating it. As such, this sounds very far-fetched.