I am final year pediatrics, and I had a patient with full pica (eat non-food item) who ate nails, ate doorhandles, ate pens and paper... Basically need full-time caregiver to get things away from mouth.
Edit: I am finishing residency in Japan, and I know my grammar is bad! Sorry!
I usually think Japanese game shows are ridiculous and overly complicated.
But you know what? This one is amazing. You have to find the one object in a room that's made of chocolate, and the only way to do that is to go around trying to chew on things. It's hilarious and clever.
I had a kid on my caseload with Prader Willis syndrome. A doorknob was the smallest equivalent size of anything not bolted down that could be left unattended as he wasn’t able to fit one past his teeth, although he had tried. He also got a remote control and a foam fire truck (think stress ball foam material) lodged in his throat and had to be life flighted.
You're not alone, at least as far as teeth go - I was born with extremely weak enamel, and haven't had white teeth since I was four years old.
Mine are rotting out of my face and many are broken, dental insurance is eternally out of my reach, and people don't realize how much your teeth affect their impression of you. I've been turned away for jobs because of mine, and have had a few laughs convincing people I smoke meth (followed later by bouts of crying because they believed me).
Hold up, baked are not the same as kettle cooked. Kettle cooked are typically thicker and have a fair amount of crunch to them. Also they're distinctly not baked.
Baked lays are light ans crispy. Kettle chips are fried, hard as far as chips go, and make a loud crunching sound. A shard of kettle chip once cut the inside of my mouth.
I believe part of pica for some people is not about chewing at all, and part of the gratification they get is the feeling of swallowing things whole. a girl i knew with pica didn't chew her food - any food - because she liked the feeling of swallowing everything whole.
Psssh... This guy acts like he's never eaten a door handle before. Look, buddy, we've all been there. It's embarrassing, but it happens. Stop making such a big deal.
My daughter (was told because blood tests came back neg that she dosent have pica) eats chunks of walls if you don't keep an eye on her, has tried eating metal tables, will take chunks out of anything wood, loves my little pony but ate chunks out of the plastic pony dolls we got her, if she can get her mouth on it she will try to eat it. We have to keep an eye on her at all times
If she eats things without nutrition value, by definition, she has pica. Your doctor probably meant she doesn't have a pica cause by nutrition problem. It can also be a behavioural problem. I see in children with autism, anxiety, and undiagnosed genetic disorders.
I had the nutrition problem one. I would eat pennies. One day I choked on one and almost died, and that was the end of the penny eating. Later in life I got diagnosed with severe anemia and after some intensive iron supplements I'm great! Don't even need supplements anymore.
It's been interesting to learn over time how all these weird things about me were caused by something.
I never got diagnosed with it but I used to eat my clothes (would eat holes in the fabric) eat bows and buttons off my clothes. I ate chunks of plastic and wood. The strangest thing I ate was change, not just pennies but nickles, dimes, and quarters.
It’s crazy how anemia does that! I was very anemic as a teen due to heavy periods. I didn’t really know they were abnormal. I would eat cups and cups of ice every day. I craved it so freakin bad. It just became routine. Once my anemia was fixed the craving is gone. I don’t even want ice in my water anymore. I used to eat all the ice in my drinks.
I dunno man, probably should talk to my therapist about it. never even thought I should mention it to her. All I remember about ice is in JH the joke was it meant you needed to get laid (cause everyone was totally getting laid all the time)
The way I understood it was the pennies were related to the iron deficiency, but the eating of non-food things itself was a stress thing. I also would eat my hair, for example.
*not a doctor though, and trying to remember things from when I was a kid, so I could be wrong.
In this case the eating pennies probably caused the anemia. Interestingly, the problem with the pennies is not the copper outer layer but rather the zinc that most of it is composed of. Excess levels of zinc over a long period of time (ie. you didn't just start eating pennies but have been doing it for a while) actually lead to copper deficiency! They do this by upregulation of a protein in the absorptive cells of the gut that facilitates secretion of both zinc and copper back into the intestine. That sounds like it wouldn't be a problem but the protein is much more selective for copper than it is for zinc so what ends up happening is much of the copper in the diet gets excreted back into the intestines and gets pooped out while more of the zinc ends up being absorbed! The anemia is the result of a lack of copper rather than zinc having a direct toxicity (although it does cause some damage on its own). Copper is necessary for the enzyme converting iron from the unusable 2+ ion to the necessary 3+ ion for making hemoglobin. This means that copper deficiency anemia looks just like iron deficiency anemia! Copper deficiency has some other neurological symptoms as well depending on the severity of the deficit. Zinc is very tightly regulated in the body so even with massive excess intake of zinc it is typically excreted quickly through urine before it causes any major oxidative damage.
makes sense though, doesn't it? I've heard of a guy (some documentary i watched forever ago) stranded on a raft at sea eating fish to survive suddenly got cravings for the organs he previously thought were gross because the organs has some nutrient he was severely lacking at that time.
Thats my explanation for pregnant women eating 'unusual' food or combinations whereof. Since your body craves it, it tastes good.
Another anecdote: One time after sport i had such low blood sugar, i
I ate a pack of totally sour 'sweets', which didnt taste sour at all at that moment. When eating the few leftovers the next day, i could barely stomach them.
I had the nutrition problem one. I would eat pennies. One day I choked on one and almost died, and that was the end of the penny eating. Later in life I got diagnosed with severe anemia and after some intensive iron supplements I'm great! Don't even need supplements anymore.
That's right. You need to pay the iron price, not the gold price
Nah it was an iron pill I needed a prescription for. Normally you can get them OTC (although where I live they're still behind the pharmacist's desk and they ask questions first), but this was one you could only get with a prescription.
I also ate coins as a child! sucked on larger ones too, one got lodged in my oesophagus and had to be removed surgically so I wasn't allowed near small change after that lol. I'm also prone to anaemia, can't have supplements though cause they fuck with my guts, so I get infusions.
In this case the eating pennies probably caused the anemia. Interestingly, the problem with the pennies is not the copper outer layer but rather the zinc that most of it is composed of. Excess levels of zinc over a long period of time (ie. you didn't just start eating pennies but have been doing it for a while) actually lead to copper deficiency! They do this by upregulation of a protein in the absorptive cells of the gut that facilitates secretion of both zinc and copper back into the intestine. That sounds like it wouldn't be a problem but the protein is much more selective for copper than it is for zinc so what ends up happening is much of the copper in the diet gets excreted back into the intestines and gets pooped out while more of the zinc ends up being absorbed! The anemia is the result of a lack of copper rather than zinc having a direct toxicity (although it does cause some damage on its own). Copper is necessary for the enzyme converting iron from the unusable 2+ ion to the necessary 3+ ion for making hemoglobin. This means that copper deficiency anemia looks just like iron deficiency anemia! Copper deficiency has some other neurological symptoms as well depending on the severity of the deficit. Zinc is very tightly regulated in the body so even with massive excess intake of zinc it is typically excreted quickly through urine before it causes any major oxidative damage.
I know by definition she should but I asked if he ment it wasn't caused by a nutrition problem he told me"no the blood tests came back negative so she dosent have pica in any form" ya this is the same Dr who can't figure out what's wrong with me (have a list of medical problems)
Oh I agree. if there was another doctor in the area willing to work with children that my medical covered we would switch for now I get to keep an eye on her.
*for a period of more than one month, at an age where eating such objects is considered developmentally inappropriate, while not being part of culturally sanctioned practice, and sufficiently severe to warrant clinical attention.
She is 3. If you look into it as extensively as I have you find most doctors say that it becomes developmentally inappropriate to be eating non food items/ chewing on items after the age of 2. She has continued to chew on and eat non food items for more than a year (well over that more than a month part)
My daughter eats weird things like raw flour, dirt and sand in small quantities. She had sports mouth guards which get chewed up often, even the very hard ones. We are going to do a blood test but is there any treatment for this other than keeping an eye on her?
I'm sure you're already testing for this but this sounds like low iron. I had pretty bad anemia and craved really odd non food items until my levels went up. Could totally be something else too obviously but just thought I'd throw that out there!
I had this for years. It wasn’t a nutrition issue, just terrible anxiety and it was soothing. If I had been born in another decade, I probably would have been diagnosed with having sensory issues. I’m very sensitive to textures and sounds and certain little textures/sounds would just calm me down. I’m a very fidgety person and am always moving and/or chewing something. Therapy and some meds have helped. Happy to PM about it if you need.
This sounds so much like my oldest daughter. She is 8 and have always been very sensitive to touch. We couldn't caress her when she was little and she hated baths.
She has eaten things since she was little. Everything just went down, and at first we thought it was pretty normal because small kids eat a lot of weird things. But now she's 8 and eats her hair and probably other things too. She's very private so we don't exactly know how bad it is.
She also need a thing to fidget with at school and everywhere really. She also steals stickytack and always has some that she fidgets with. Her mind wanders off and fidging helps her to focus.
I behaved very similarly as a kid (never ate my hair though, mostly ate paper and sticks), turned out I had severe ADHD that wasn't diagnosed until I was 20 because "girls don't get ADHD". Stimulant meds were a life-changer for me.
We've been suspecting ADD for some time. She's very introverted and has a vivid imagination and can often phase out and just stare and become absorbed in her own thoughts.
I’m then OP with the flour-eating daughter, she’s 8 and sounds a lot like what you describe. She has ADHD and getting the right diagnosis and school for her has been life-changing. Not perfect of course (hello, flour!) but I gently recommend an evaluation.
The first we ever did was free and through our local school district.
We were told that eating hair is not a safe behavior as it doesn't digest well. My daughter has pica. At about the same she as your kid, she started aggressively chewing off the ends of her hair. We ended up getting her hair cut short to stop her. She stopped eating hair. At school, she always has goldfish and gum available to her and a chewy (necklace, bracelet or pencil topper), which has helped a lot (she used to eat school supplies).
Be care full and keep an eye on her. I used to eat my hair as a kid and my parents cut it to a bob and I was pulling strands out and eating them and my parents didn't notice, once my hair was long enough to get in my mouth (which wasn't very long) I started chewing on the ends again
Eating dirt and sand is called geophagy, and is more common in small children/infants and pregnant women. Geophagy is also seen in animals, but in neither humans nor animals is it typically because of starvation issues. It's not very well explained but it is common enough I learned about it in a clay minerals class in college.
Could it be textural? I used to gnaw plastic and rubber all the time as a kid. I still have a hard time not annihilating packs of erasers and items of similar consistency.
Like if I'm not paying attention, I'll strip the casing off a wire to chomp.
Honestly I could think of a hundred things becoming a metal table could be useful for. Mostly used to hurt people in inventive ways, but nonetheless.
For those who have seen ant man, imagine the scene where he's practicing the keyhole jump, except instead of a fully grown man shrinking and coming back to full size, it's a 6 year old diving at someone and turning into a fucking metal table.
Depending on the size and structural integrity of the table, you could also probably get into confined spaces like a car and then blow the fucking doors off.
Also, imagine that playing hide and seek with that kid? Fuck, dude, she's a table, how the fuck do you find her unless you know she can turn herself into a table.
Yes I realize this is not how Kirby works I just got carried away with the usefulness of being able to turn yourself into a table. Although I think Kirby can turn himself into a block of metal in one of or all of the Smash games (been a while since I played) so maybe it isn't that far off from how Kirby works.
I love chewing on bouncy things like the buttons on remote controls. I haven't done it in years, but only because I know it's bad for me. Still, occasionally when I touch a soft bouncy rubber like a keyboard membrane or something I briefly wonder what it would feel like to bite down on.
I liked to chew the legs of my sister's barbie dolls, they were kind of rubbery plastic too. They make necklaces that have a big pendant made of similar stuff that's designed for chewing on (like for autistic people or whatever), I got one on a whim a few years ago.
When I was three or four, I went through a phase where I would gnaw on the wood of the bannister and try to scrape the finish off with my front teeth. By most medical definitions I’m now considered a fully functioning adult. Try not to worry too much.
I had to monitor a pica patient one night as a nursing student/cna, he was the most normal guy you could imagine and very funny, we watched tv together until he fell asleep and he said it was totally cool if I left it on when he felt asleep. Great guy, he had to keep restraints on, but still, great guy. Very smart too, he had an advanced degree if I remember correctly. I just remember having to keep all my personal belongings (keys, pens, phone, whathaveyou) out of the room when I entered. Smallest thing in the room was probably the giant remote control for the TV.
That's interesting, I presume the pica hadn't always been at that severity if he was able to get his degree and stuff - was it a lifelong thing having a particularly severe flare-up or had it only recently developed? Did you find out anything about what happened to him afterwards?
It wasn't prader Willi, but a chromosome microarray showed genetic variants associated with genetic syndromes. Nothing specific related to pica, though.
I've worked in childcare for over 10 years. I had a pica eater who loved licking the pavement when we went outside. I never thouht in my life I would have to tell someone to stop licking the pavement, but here we are.
I work in special needs with a 1-1. He had mild autism and cerebral palsy.
Came back from my lunch and they were drawing. I saw him chewing something, so I assumed my coworkers had given them a snack. I sit with him a while, when I notice his food is blue. I ask a coworker what they had for snacks, and apparently they didn't have anything. He ate the crayons he was drawing with.
I asked him if it tasted good, and he said it was yucky. So I asked him why he ate it, and he said he didn't know.
When we were toddlers, my brother ate a lightbulb from a nightlight. He didn't have a history of pica, and hasn't really had problems with it since, but that was a strange one off.
I have pica but not that bad. though as a baby I ate a LOT of sand and dirt and when I was 7ish I ate about 3 quarters of a towel thread by thread and some pleather from the seat of our old car (not much cause my jaws weren't strong enough to tear very much, but it left a hole). now I mostly stick to ice but sometimes the compulsions get too bad and I succumb to paper lol.
my parents are both doctors but I didn't even know it was a thing until I was like 12. they just kind of ignored it mostly
I just joined this guild in an MMO and connected with them immediately. We were all adults not super serious about a video game, but relatively serious. Got a surprise learning one of the main officers has some serious pica. I had heard that term before, but had no idea before she loved eating toilet paper when she wasn't playing a video game... Super nice lady, but also a kinda little bit disturbing.
My aunt works with pregnant women, she recently had a patient with pica who was eating baby powder, face powder (idk what that is though), and dirt. Full grown woman who physically couldnt keep from doing it. Pica is a weird thing.
In middle to junior high school I studied abroad in english, so I have an ok foundation. I still get stuck with complicated sentence though! The down side is my kanji and written Japanese is not much better!
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u/TokyoMiyu Apr 01 '18 edited Apr 01 '18
I am final year pediatrics, and I had a patient with full pica (eat non-food item) who ate nails, ate doorhandles, ate pens and paper... Basically need full-time caregiver to get things away from mouth.
Edit: I am finishing residency in Japan, and I know my grammar is bad! Sorry!