Eet je haar niet op!

quote:

Trichophagia (Greek: τριχοφαγία, from τρίχα, tricha “hair” + φάγειν, phagein “to eat”) is the compulsive eating of hair. Most often, long hair is masticated (chewed) while still attached to the head and then swallowed. The hair eventually collects in the gastrointestinal tract causing symptoms such as indigestion and stomach pain. A purgative can be given to induce the elimination of the resulting trichobezoar.

In some cases, surgery may be required to remove the mass. In 2007, an article in The New England Journal of Medicine reported the removal of a hairball weighing ten pounds from the stomach of an eighteen year-old Chicago woman suffering from trichophagia.

There has been at least one reported death, occurring in 1999 in the UK (though this resulted from internal bleeding following the operation to remove a very large hairball).

quote:

This is what I found in someone’s stomach. Before surgery, I wasn’t quite sure what was going on until I found this big hairball in his stomach. He also had a small bowel obstruction from another hairball that had broken off and migrated downstream (aptly named Rapunzel syndrome). Post op I found he’d been eating hair, even sneaking it out of his mom’s hairbrush.