I don’t need to know the name for craving/ingesting unusual things. I do need to know the name of the “thing” that forms in the stomach, or elsewhere in GI tract, when a person eats his own fingernails and/or hair. Over time these things can collect and form a sizable mass, I am just looking for the medical term.
BobT
January 18, 2001, 5:49pm
2
I believe the word you are groping for is “bezoar”, which sort of a human furball.
I believe the word you’re looking for bezoar …
Are there any side effects to having a bezoar? Can it be dangerous?
PeeQueue
BobT
January 18, 2001, 6:18pm
5
From a 1987 issue of Science News
Bezoars, or stomach stones, are clumps of fruit and vegetable matter, drugs, hair, carpet fibers or other substances that can accumulate in the gastrointestinal tract.
While modern society has dropped the bezoar fad, it has contributed to the phenomenon in a unique way. Surgeons at the University of Missouri in Kansas City recently removed a 7-centimeter-long, tan, egg-shaped bezoar from the stomach of a 35-year-old man who admitted to nibbling and swallowing pieces of polystyrene (Styrofoam) cups.
Ashtar
January 18, 2001, 6:53pm
6
The Master has done a column on Bezoars before, although I don’t believe he goes into the details as far as medical prognosis.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_104.html
I imagine hairballs in humans work like they do in animals. It makes it near-impossible to digest food properly when they get too big. So eventually, it has to be taken out, or you die.
Cecil on bezoars , and a followup . Also relevant is Is it crazy to eat clay? , about folks eating odd things.
Lissa
January 18, 2001, 9:27pm
8
http://www.darwinawards.com had this to say about bezoars:
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow *
1999 Darwin Awards Nominee
(January 1999, England) Some people with nervous habits have good reason to be anxious. In January, a British teenager was rushed to hospital complaining of severe stomach pains. Surgeons who operated in a desperate - but unsuccessful - attempt to save her life were amazed to find a tangled mass of human hair the size of a football lodged in her abdomen.
Rachel, a 17-year-old hairdresser trainee, had been in the habit of chewing the ends of her tresses since early childhood. Specialist registrar Dr Andrew Stearman, of Poole General Hospital, Dorset, said: “The biochemical composition of hair makes it impossible for digestive juices in the stomach to break it down. It therefore accumulates, much like it builds up in the plughole of a bath or shower, attracting more hair and other food.”
Recording a verdict of accidental death, Hastings coroner Alan Craze said: “This was something Rachel was doing from time to time by habit. She would have had the impression, if she had thought about it at all, that it was passing through her system. Unfortunately, it was not, and built to a massive size.”
(…)
Pathologist Nera Patel later measured the hairball - known as a trichobezoar - at 1 foot long, 10 inches wide and 4 inches thick. She said: “It was closely compacted and intertwined in the shape of a football. No one in our medical team had seen anything like it.”
Rachel’s mother Norma, who was shown a picture of the fatal obstruction, simply said: “It looked like a dead rat.”
So can you bezoars form from eating your fingernails or not?
Rebo
January 18, 2001, 10:34pm
10
Lissa, that is just about the grossest thing I’ve ever heard. Thanks so much!
Bezoarsd can cause bowel obstruction, with symptoms of vomiting, pain, distension and obstipation (don’t pass gas or stool). These can be lethal if untreated.
Have never heard of a nail bezoar but could be possible if you ate an awful lot of them quickly. Hair is a lot more commonplace.
