Pardon Me, Is That A Hair In Your Soup?
I had a great Thanksgiving lunch. All my favorites, ham, turkey, dressing, giblet gravy, sweet potatoes, etc. Plus deserts like pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and chocolate cheese cake.
Everything was great. I even had the traditional nap in front of the football game!
A big meal like that got me thinking about eating. Have you ever gotten a hair in your food? Don’t you hate that?
I didn’t know until I read a recent article at CNN.com that some people eat hair. There’s even a name for it. The condition is called trichophagia.
Now the reason CNN was talking about this condition was because the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has a story about an 18 year old woman who suffered from trichophagia.
The condition was discovered after the woman sought medical help. “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.”
What the scope revealed is not for the squeamish. This poor girl had a “…mass of black, curly hair, which weighed 10 pounds and measured 15 inches by 7 inches by 7 inches, the doctors said.”
Oh, did I mention that there is a picture?
Turns out there is also a name for hairballs. The doctors call them a bezoar. Doctors! It’s like they have to have a different word for everything.
Anyway I guess this hairball is some kind of record. Now I don’t know why someone would eat their own hair. I mean, you have women who starve themselves to death while other women eat hair.
Have you ever heard of this? Do any of you know why someone would eat hair? Is it a dietary problem or a behavioral problem? Did you know hair can collect in your stomach like that? Wouldn’t you have thought it would just have passed through?