Do you need more iron?

Do you need more iron?

December 11 2007 at 12:29AM
Independent Online

Cape Town - Do you nibble on dry macaroni? Or crunch an ice cube between meals? Do you crave cucumbers, or even eat soil?

If you do, you could have pica, a condition defined as the compulsive eating of substances not normally regarded as nutritional.

It is often an indicator of iron deficiency, according to a group of researchers from the department of medicine at Free State University.

The said in an article in the latest issue of the South African Medical Journal that they questioned 29 patients with low iron levels at three Bloemontein hospitals and discovered pica in 16, all but one of whom were women.

The patients reported various forms of the condition. One person ate soil and ashes; another ice, clay and chalk; a third ice and matches.

Compulsive eating of ice, including scrapings of frost from a freezer compartment, was known as pagophagia, the researchers said; that of matches, cautopyreiphagia.

There were also several cases of cravings for foods - ice and tomatoes (tomatophagia); ice and cucumber; and dry macaroni -- a phenomenon sometimes included in the definition of pica.

The researchers said many other types of pica had been described in medical literature.

People got cravings for cigarettes, crayons, faeces, mothballs, hair, foam rubber, aspirins, eggshells, vinyl gloves, popcorn (arabositophagia) coins and baking powder.

Pica was often thought harmless, but it could lead to abdominal problems, sometimes needing surgery, and poisoning of various sorts, they said.

In one of the Bloemfontein patients the pagophagia - ice eating - was so severe that the patient's damaged teeth all had to be removed.

"An interesting observation is the fact that pagophagia was the predominant form of pica in white patients in this study, whereas geophagia [eating soil] was predominant in blacks," they said.

They said four of the 16 patients noted a decrease or complete disappearance of their pica symptoms when they were put on iron therapy.

The single male patient with pica reported that it disappeared soon after he started dialysis.

"Pica is common and remains an important clue to underlying iron deficiency," the researchers said. "It needs to be recognised, and an underlying cause sought and treated."

Some doctors have suggested that ice may sooth oesophageal discomfort caused by severe iron deficiency.

Pica is the Latin word for magpie, a bird that collects all sorts of things for its nest. - Sapa

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