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Next time an urge for a Girl Scout cookie hits, you should count your blessings that a sugary snack is the only thing you're craving. Donna Lee's persistent craving was far more unusual: baby powder.
Every day for close to two decades, Lee would eat a handful (sometimes two) of Johnson & Johnson baby powder. “I kept a large container on stock,” said the 52-year-old who lives in Queens, N.Y. After breakfast, Lee would reach for her baby powder, which she kept on her nightstand near her bed. “I would sit on the side of my bed and just eat it.
“It felt comforting when I did it,” she says. “I would feel satisfied."
Lee struggled with pica, an eating disorder that's marked by odd cravings for non-food items, such as dirt, metal or chalk. It's lately been the subject of several episodes of TLC's "My Strange Addiction," which has featured people who eat toilet paper, household cleaner, soap, the insides of couch cushions and even glass.
Pica is usually diagnosed in infants and children, explains Dr. Greg Chasson, an assistant professor of psychology at Towson University in Baltimore County, Md. It's fairly common in little kids: Between 10 and 32 percent of children ages 1 to 6 try to eat stuff that isn't actually food, according to National Institute of Health statistics. Few studies exist that detail the rate of pica in adults, but it is often seen in pregnancy; Chasson points out that pregnancy is a natural time for the craving system to kick into gear, so it’s not surprising the system would go awry.
“We don’t really know what’s driving pica,” said Chasson. He says that pica is sometimes caused by a nutritional deficiency, such as iron or calcium, but sometimes, pica can happen in adults who just crave certain textures.
Though Lee has no recollection of craving baby powder before her 30s, an aunt told that she had showed signs of craving it as early as infancy. “I would put my little hand out towards her palm when she was putting the baby powder on,” said Lee.
Chasson said that in many cases, people with pica are ashamed by their behavior. That shame may keep some from seeking professional help – including Lee, who kept quiet about her baby powder fixation.
“I didn’t talk about it with anyone,” said Lee. “I definitely didn’t tell my doctor, or else he would have told me to stop.”
Consumption of non-food items can be dangerous, and complications of pica include bowel obstructions, bowel perforations and cutting of the intestines. The first line of treatment for pica is to rule out any nutritional deficiencies, Chasson says. If the patient doesn’t seem to have a nutritional deficiency, the next line of treatment used consists of behavior therapy, which analyzes the specific context in which the eating occurs and targets events surrounding the eating pattern.
Lee believes her case was rooted in a nutritional deficiency. In 2003, Lee started taking vitamins and supplements such as vitamin C, zinc and potassium. “Since taking the vitamins, the cravings went away,” said Lee. “The cravings never came back.”
What's the weirdest food -- or non-food -- that you've ever craved? Moms, did pica hit during pregnancy?
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I sometimes crave uncooked pasta. And I always eat ice. Blood work is fine, no iron deficiency. Not very good for my teeth I'm sure.
I munch on uncooked pasta as well.. It is horrid for my teeth. If I don't have it, I crave it so bad !!! Feel like a pasta junkie !!
When I was a kid, I ate tons of uncooked pasta, as much and as often as I could. I preferred the flat egg noodles because they didn't seem to hurt my teeth as much, but I'd take what I could get. I'd literally eat it til my gums bled. I'd also occasionally eat Minute Rice raw, but it wasn't as good as pasta. I guess I outgrew it or I just figured out it was killing my teeth, because I don't really crave raw pasta now. Although, I have to admit, I'll still occasionally munch on a piece or two when I'm cooking. I thought I was the only one!
yeah pica applies to non-food items, not non-cooked items.
I craved Pine-sol when I was pregnant. The smell would make my mouth water. I never ate it but I did buy Life-savers in bulk and just eat the green ones.
I crave the smell of Pine-Sol everyday. I think it is the best thing in this world. If I didn't think people would think it was weird, I would wear it as a perfume. I am totally addicted. The original brown Pine-Sol, of course.
I love Pine Sol too! I emailed the makers telling them how much I love their product and they sent me a coupon for the BIGGEST/FAMILY-SIZED bottle FREE! It was awesome! Just a heads up :)
Anti-anxiety drugs can sometimes help people break the pica pattern -- after, of course, nutritional deficiencies are ruled out and behavioral/psychotherapy hasn't worked.
During my pregnancies and the months after, I craved the smell of gasoline. I would even plan my trips to the gas station several times a week so I could smell it while pumping. If I got behind a car with a lot of exhaust while driving, it was like heaven. I thought about it all the time. I thought I was crazy, but after I looked it up online, I found plenty of others who had the same thing. I did have low iron and was on supplements, but it didn't get rid of the cravings.
During my pregnancy w/ my 2nd child ( I have 4) I had to fight the craving to eat bleach! Didn't understand it then and wouldn't believe in such a thing now if it hadn't happened to me!
i too would crave bleach with all three of mine!!! its horrible !! my biggest was handy andy floor cleaner amonia i would crraave the smell of it!
We are currently producing a show on Pica Syndrome and Pregnancy for Fit & Health TV. Is there anyone out there who is pregnant and suffering from Pica? Please let me know...! TVcastingIPA@gmail.com
I've heard of ice as one of the things people with pica eat.
My mom used to eat ice. She could go through an 8-pound bag every day. She had an iron deficiency which caused it. ONce she had her hysterectomy, her cravings for ice went away.
I craved ice when I was pregnant. I would keep a giant cup of it next to me at all times and would eat it to the point of not being able to feel my tongue. One day, in the process of eating MORE ice, I bit it and walked around with blood pouring out of my mouth until a co-worker let me know. After that, I went to the doctor. She put me on iron supplements and it went away. So bizarre!
I eat ice all the time, and have an iron deficiency. I've been on iron supplements for a while now, but the craving is still there!
Crushed Ice! I think my problem is the fact I swill so much Mountain Dew, my body craves Ice to get the pure water. The sight of Fresh Snow just makes me want to go dive face first into it! Next time I get caught in a Blizzard I should just get a spoon instead of a shovel!
I crave ice all of the time. I love to eat ice!!! I have craved ice ever since my first pregnancy 16 years ago. But, it has gotten really bad within the last year. I crave ice all of the time. I take a cup of ice with me everywhere. I have been told I was anemic. But, I cannot take iron supplements because they wreak havoc on the rest of my body. So, I am not sure what to do. I try to eat iron rich foods. But, that doesnt always work. As EDH says below, my teeth have also suffered from eating ice.
Pica extends also to eating ice. I had an out of control craving for chipped ice -- it was like being hooked on a drug. If ice wasn't near enough where I knew I could have it at a moment's notice, I grew panicky. The cause? Very low iron level. This was a warning sign I wish I'd known about. I ended up in the hospital for blood transfusions. Once the iron deficiency was resolved, the cravings went away. Unfortunately now my teeth have suffered as a result of the chewing.
Ice chewing is very much a sign of anemia. My mother used to keep a cup of ice around her all the time when I was a kid, chewing it all the time. Funny thing now is that I have WAY too much iron in my blood, and have to have blood draws to reduce it...
I craved ice and milk of magnesia tabs when I was preg. with my 3rd child and now he has to have blood drawn for too much iron.
I craved dirt when I was pregnant. Turned out I had an iron deficiency.
I grew up in a rural area and a lot of people would bake and eat red clay dirt. I think our diets were probably deficient.
I craved dirt when I was a child, from about age 2 through 6. I can remember having actual preferences for the dirt from specific locations. Odd.
I'm from a rural Georgia area where they mine Kaolin, which is a white chalky mineral. It's well known that some people around here, especially pregnant women, eat the clay. In some local stores, they even sell small bags of it. The labels say "not for human consumption", but there's no other reason people would buy it. It has kind of smooth texture, more like baby powder than dirt or sand. It's one of the main ingredients in Kaopectate.
Sioux606, I moved to Atlanta a few years ago. My spouse is from Griffin, GA and told me about people eating Kaolin. I thought it was a wives tale, until he told me. One day while driving back to Atlanta from seeing his folks, we stopped in a convenience store and just as you mentioned, there were bags of it for sale that stated, "not for human consumption". I cannot even imagine how it must taste!
When I was 11-12, about when I first hit puberty, I craved raw bacon something fierce. Yes, it's still food, but it gives people that "ick" reaction if I mention it, so it's practically in the same category as pica. I actually found the raw bacon really good, and still remember it tasting good. Eventually I gave it up on my own without outside help. Who knows, maybe it was an iron deficiency like everyone keeps saying (iron levels, first menstruation, you know how that works). The raw bacon seems to have helped in one way, though: I have never had one attack of salmonella.
Raw ground beef was/is my poison of choice....
Around my first pregnancy, I started chewing rubberbands off the newspaper....it came and went through the years, but now, I chew them all the time. I don't eat them or swallow them, I only chew it for the flavor. It's like an addiction.
You like the flavor of rubber bands? Sorry but I have to LOL.
i feel you! i loovee the smell of rubber and the taste through all three of my pregnancys
Pica hit me HARD in the last few weeks of my pregnancy. I became obsessed with toothpaste. I brushed my teeth at least 7 times a day, using up an entire tube in a week. I had to FIGHT not to swallow it. I would just squirt the tube in my mouth and swish it all over. It was such a wonderful feeling!! Then I gave birth and it was gone...now I'm back to hating the feel of toothpaste!
I would lick books. lick them til my toungue bled. About every 30 minutes. If I didnt my mouth would water uncontrollably
My 15 year old son, Ate about 25 pages of his Grandma's bible when she forced him to go to church, a few weeks later she was trying to make him read it again. He started eating the pages again! But I think he did that out of spite.
I get a very strong craving for dirt every so often. Luckily I discovered the Harry Potter themed jelly beans with a dirt flavored jelly bean. It totally satisfies the craving.
i had a craving for battery acid i drunk it by the gallon every day..... some nights i would go to radio shack and squzee the acid out of them one by one until a gallon is filled up. I JUST GOT DONE WITH A GALLON!!!!!!!!
I had the same craving! After drinking acid I then had a craving for Tums. It went on all day long...acid followed by Tums. Perhaps I'm bi-polar and my body wants to go from acid to base. By night time I'm back to neutral ph and sleep very well. What a crazy world it can be!
my son is autistic, he chews paper, straws and other types of plastic.. it is a soothing thing for him.
I had strange cravings of Play doh and crayons as a child. Good thing I outgrew it.
paper. nothing during my pregnancy.
I used to crave the smell of cigarette ashes during the last few months of my second pregnancy! I have never been a smoker and do not live around smokers. It was the weirdest thing! The only thing that helped me was chewing gum a lot! I used to joke with my husband about how I felt like a former smoker who was kicking the habit!
Paste in grade school. But I think it was just because it was soooo good. Try it, you'll like it.
I crave corn starch!!! Just talking of it I begin to salivate....I'm eating a box every two or three days. I love to put a heaping spoonful in my mouth,so much at times I have aspirated some of the starch into my lung.
HELP!!
My mother ate flour by the spoonful her entire life. She suffered from anemia and had to have intravaneous iron infusions as an adult. She always said she just liked the taste of the flour.
With both of my pregnancies I experience pica. I craved dirt and this orange cleaning fluid I would use. I never gave into the craving thank God, but the urge was overwhelming. Mine was pregnancy and low iron induced.
Paste has changed for the worst. Crayons no longer have their allure. There are no longer wax lips and all you people are twits! Pour yourselves a stiff drink and get real.
I have the same ice eating habit as EDH, and it is an addiction. I desired ice with all 3 pregnancies I had, however after the 1st and 2nd the need for ice went away. With the 3rd pregnancy the ice addiction stayed after the baby was born - going on 7 years now. I justify it to myself thinking, well, it is water, which is good for you right! Oddly enough, I hate drinking water unless it is very very cold. Time for the iron supplements!
I think some people on this blog think this is a funny thing...IT"S NOT!!!! My toddler son almost died from pica!!! Think before you write something on blogs!!!!!!!!
Should have paid more attention to what your toddler was putting in his mouth. No, it's not funny, just pathetic.
sheesh.....you could not put the diaper powder out of reach? Strange people have to obtain a license to get married or for a drivers license but any idiot can pop out a kid...
Drew, you're an @!$%#.
My grandmother told me that she had very strange cravings when she was pregnant. With one child she craved mud, and with another she craved.... wait for it ... KAROSENE. She used to dip her finger in karosene and lick it off. No, not one of my aunts, uncles or my dad is damaged by it.
I used to like to eat chalk as a kid too; perhaps I suffer a little bit from Pica too as a hereditary trait? Who knows...
Like many others, I craved ice and chewed it until my teeth hurt. I am also a potter and couldn't wait to go to the pottery studio to secretly eat dried clay and also purchased pumice stones at the drug store and ate them when I couldn't get my hands on clay. It was embarassing and yet it was something that was as basic a need as eating. After a trip to the ER with chest pains I learned that I was dangerously anemic. If you are craving any of these, and even though everything about you appears healthy (I exercised regularly, ate a healthy diet, had a normal weight), get to your doctor right away. My physician told me that the anemia could have caused heart damage if it had gotten much worse. As soon as the anemia was treated, all of the cravings vanished...it's hard to believe I even had the cravings and as for ice, I now take my drinks without ice, I hate the stuff.
At the age of 27, I was diagnosed with a colon cancer. During the long period of time preceeding my diagnosis, I craved talcum powder, dirt, grout, aspirin. I would watch myself lean over and pick up dirt and eat it, all the while being totally amazed that I would do such a thing. The desire was so strong it cancelled out my rational thoughts. I found out later I was severely anemic because of the large tumor in my colon. Almost forty years later I can't imagine eating any of those substances. The body knows what it wants.
My mother passed away from colon cancer. The earliest symptom that something was wrong was her insatiable craving for chipped ice. For at least a year, she spoke frequently about how much she loved eating ice. She would fill a huge tumbler with it and eat it with a spoon throughout the day. I wish my family had known that this was a big red flag that she was anemic. Perhaps if we had realized this, her cancer would have been diagnosed at an earlier stage and she would still be with us today.
I have Crohn's disease and my anemia may run from mild to severe. I always crave ice, but do not chew, just for the taste of it and the feel of it in my mouth. At times, I have too much and get heartburn. My favorites are the round shape with the hole in the middle or crushed. During my third pregnancy I craved Slurpees even during the winter.