http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=pica Sat, 18 May 2013 15:56:52 -0400 Liveleak http://edge.liveleak.com/80281E/u/u/ll2/logo.gif http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=pica Sat, 08 Dec 2012 15:42:55 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=829_1354998049 The_Stressman Pica ( / ' p a http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=829_1354998049 The_Stressman JRStress &quot;Citizen Journalism&quot;: <span class="highlight">PICA</span> pica, dirt, dust, diet, jrstress91 Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:16:36 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b88_1330521137 alekffs A DENTAL nurse told yesterday how she has EATEN 4,000 washing-up sponges due to a rare disorder. Kerry Trebilcock, 21, has also munched more than 100 bars of SOAP.She suffers from pica, which causes victims to crave objects that are not food. Kerry, of Mylor, Cornwall, said: "One day I will beat this and be able to have a shower or do the washing-up without feeling hungry." Sponge eater Kerry said she likes to spice up her bizarre snacks with hot sauce or mustard. Sometimes, she dips them in tea or hot chocolate like biscuits. She also chomps on chunks of soap - but only organic fruit-flavoured varieties, with lemon and lime her favourite. Kerry said: "I have been very particular about the type of sponges and soaps I'd eat and how I'd prepare them. "If I went out for the day I'd carry a small plastic bag of cut-up pieces of sponge with some tomato and BBQ sauce in Tupperware. I was never without a 'snack'." Other pica sufferers eat metal, coal, sand, chalk - or even lightbulbs and furniture. Petite Kerry, who weighs just 8st, has endured shocking stomach cramps, constipation and diarrhoea. And although she has cut down on her sponge munching, she has been unable to totally shake the condition. At one point Kerry was eating five a day topped with hot relish, BBQ sauce, ketchup, mustard, jam or honey. She said: "The sauces and dipping the sponges in drinks softened them - and I'd chew them until the flavour was gone. Then I would swallow the sponge." Sponges are commonly made from cellulose wood fibres or foamed plastic polymers. Organic soap contains olive or palm oil, glycerin and plant scents, plus oatmeal to lift off dead skin. Kerry's eating habits changed after a holiday to Morocco in 2008, during which she picked up an infection of hookworm, a parasite that lives in the small intestine. At first, she began craving junk food. But then something strange happened. She said: "After one dinner where I ate a double helping of lasagne and a tub of ice cream, I still felt hungry. "To distract myself, I decided to wash the dishes. I took out a new sponge from a packet and had an overwhelming desire to eat it. "I sat down with a glass of water and chewed the sponge until it was gone. "It tasted of nothing but I found eating it enjoyable. "Finally my hunger was gone and my stomach felt satisfied." Afterwards, though, she felt embarrassed and scared - and cried herself to sleep. But the next morning, as she washed herself with lemon and lime soap, she had an urge to eat some and swallowed a chunk. She said: "I knew something was very wrong with me but I didn't want to tell anyone as I felt like a freak. But after a week I'd eaten nine sponges and over a pound of organic soap." Her hookworm infection was diagnosed by her GP but she kept quiet about her cravings in case he thought she was mad. She said: "I would go to the supermarket and buy over 40 sponges and different types of organic soap. "It made me hungry just smelling all the different soap products in the cleaning aisle. The cashiers joked that I must love cleaning!" Kerry, who also eats normal food, finally confided to a friend in 2009. And after seeing the doctor again, she was told she had pica and could seriously damage her digestive system. A programme of counselling and vitamins has set her on the road to recovery. And she is determined to succeed. But it is a slow and arduous process. Kerry said: "I still have a one-inch square of sponge and three teaspoons of organic soap with each meal. "But I am making progress and speak to other sufferers of pica on internet forums, which helps. "There are some out there far worse than me who eat car tyres, spoons and even sofas." Kerry is trying to curb her pangs with Floral Gum sweets. She said: "They taste like soap so they help me get the flavour I desire without doing any damage. I know one day I will beat this." Kerry's student sister Jody, 20, told how the family initially found her sponge munching hard to understand. She said: "Watching her eat a sponge or soap was extremely weird. But Kerry has educated us all about pica. "I'm so proud she has worked hard to fight this condition and is recovering through counselling. "She is really brave to talk about it so openly." Source: http://www.thesun.co.uk http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b88_1330521137 alekffs Girl likes to eat washing up sponges and soap due to a rare disorder. WTF. WTF,girl,rare,eating,disorder,pica,youredoingitwrong,craving,hookworm,parasite,weird,omnomnom,sponges,soap,cornwall Fri, 15 Oct 2010 18:57:37 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ba0_1287182873 gmccuiston Chile's Rescue Formula: '75% Science, 25% Miracle By MATT MOFFETT, ANTHONY ESPOSITO And CAROLINA PICA SAN JOSE MINE, Chile-One by one, they emerged through a swinging door, out of a pit a half-mile deep, pumping fists and hugging family. A great-grandfather. A 44-year-old who promised a church wedding for his wife. A 19-year-old greeted by his father. And, lastly, the miners' 54-year-old foreman. The rescue of Chile's 33 trapped miners came to a joyous and successful close less than 24 hours after extraction began, when Luis Urzua walked out of the Phoenix capsule. Mr. Urzua approached Chilean President Sebastian Pi~nera and said, "Just as we previously agreed, I'm now handing over my shift to you." Mr. Pi~nera, smiling broadly, responded, "Like a good captain would do, you were the last one to abandon your ship." Rescuers cheered and hugged Mr. Urzua, and the president led the crowd in singing the national anthem. The most striking thing about Wednesday's rescue of the trapped miners, after 70 days underground, was how easy it looked. The capsule that gave each man a trip to freedom seemed more like an off-kilter elevator than a part of history's most audacious mining rescue. Nothing about the San Jose rescue was easy, of course. Every aspect of the mission was planned and patiently managed, from initial efforts to locate survivors of the Aug. 5 cave-in to NASA's input on the rescue capsule that brought them home. Even so, as the 33rd man appeared-followed by the successful extraction of the six underground rescue workers-Chileans acknowledged the proceedings were blessed with an element of luck. "It was 75% engineering and 25% a miracle," said topographer Macarena Valdes. Ms. Valdes was speaking of her own role in the rescue, as she augmented science with a touch of gut instinct to help guide rescuers' probe drills into the rock, in hopes of finding survivors, in the days after the miners' disappearance. Her method paid off after more than two weeks, when searchers sent one of their narrow probe drills down through the rock, punched it into the chamber where the men had taken refuge, and, from more than 2,000 feet above, felt someone tap back. Throughout the miners' ordeal, and under an international gaze, Chile's rescue operation ran with surgical precision and extracted the men far sooner than the government's initial December estimate. As Wednesday's rescue wore on, miners emerged at an accelerated rate. Florencio 'Avalos was the first to surface, shortly after midnight Wednesday local time, to a tearful reunion with a young son and a hug from Mr. Pi~nera. The second miner out, 40-year-old Mario Sepulveda, appeared more than an hour later, pumping his fist and running around leading chants of "C-H-I-L-E! Chi-Chi-Chi-Le-Le-Le! The Miners of Chile." From a bag he had brought up with him, he elaborately presented mine rocks to officials. Then they began to come every 45 minutes, and faster still. Following the late afternoon rescue of miner No. 25, Ren'an 'Avalos-the 29-year-old brother of Florencio, the first out-a government official said the Phoenix capsule had cut the round-trip time to about 25 minutes. No. 17, Omar Reygadas-a 56-year-old father of six, grandfather of 14 and great-grandfather of four-came out at noon Wednesday. It had been his third time trapped underground. No. 21 had explaining to do: As Yonni Barrios had waited to be rescued for weeks under half a mile of rock, his wife of 31 years-and the rest of Chile, through the local media-discovered that he had a mistress keeping vigil at the site, too. Mr. Barrios had been separated from his wife, the papers said, but had told her he was living on his own. No. 24 was Jose Henriquez, 55, who had asked for 33 small Bibles to be sent to the miners so he could lead a prayer group. No. 32, Ariel Ticona held up the phone that was used to make first contact with the outside world. About 2 1/2 hours after the final miner, Mr. Urzua, was extracted, the sixth and final rescue worker safely returned to the surface to further cheers. "Mission accomplished," Mr. Pi~nera declared as he hugged Manuel Gonz'alez. These moments followed weeks of darkness that began with the Aug. 5 cave-in. Rescuers had little cause for initial optimism, judging by the survival rate of other mining-accident victims. The apparent record-holders for surviving a cave-in, three Chinese miners in Guizhou province, had chewed coal to sate their hunger during their 25 days underground in 2009. More typical was the 2006 accident in Pasta de Conchos, Mexico, where 65 workers were trapped deep in a coal mine after an underground explosion. In that case, rescuers considered themselves fortunate merely to have retrieved some corpses. After the world lost contact with the miners, it was the job of Ms. Valdes, the topographer, to help set the direction of the drilling rigs that sent probes deep into the rock to try to locate any surviving miners. Through 17 days, it seemed hopeless. "It was like using a shotgun to hit a mosquito at 700 meters," she said. "It wasn't impossible, but very difficult." Adding to the challenge, Ms. Valdes, 30 years old, was a woman in a profession dominated by men. She was teased, she said, over a superstition among Chilean miners that having women around is bad luck. Even after some 30 probes failed to find the mark, Ms. Valdes stuck with a hunch: She always shifted the angle of the drill about one degree lower than recommended by geologists in the planning department, to adjust for vibration in the drilling rig. One degree could mean a difference of several feet in the field, which could be a matter of life or death for the miners. On Sunday, Aug. 22, the probe she directed found its way to the miners' underground refuge. Then, rescuers began developing their own technological arsenal, combining modified mining gear with equipment commonly used by astronauts and submariners. Rescuers began supplying the trapped men with provisions through a five-inch-diameter shaft. They used the conduits to send small tubes, known as palomas, literally carrier pigeons, ingeniously stuffed with essentials such as bottled water, camping cots and chest straps to monitor their health. The lifeline gave rise to a high-technology life underground. The men wore clothing made with a bacteria-killing copper fiber, watched movies on a projector built into a cellphone, and communicated with rescuers over an ultra-flexible fiber-optic cable that maintains transmission capacity while twisting through rocky crags deep below ground. Chilean officials assigned psychologists and a personal trainer by video conference to tend to the men. Given the miners' sensitive condition, nutritionists cooked food at high temperatures to guard against infection by bacteria in the minutes between its packaging and its journey down the tube. To bore through the rock to reach the miners, the government created a kind of friendly competition among three different drills, one so massive it had to be hauled by a 40-truck convoy. Chilean naval engineers worked overtime designing the 14-foot, 900-pound capsule that hoisted the men out of the mine. It was equipped with a communications system and oxygen supply Observers say some of the innovation and management reflects Mr. Pi~nera's background as a billionaire entrepreneur who ran a successful airline. Mr. Pi~nera made such a big bet on getting the miners out that a political scientist dubbed him "the 34th miner"-suggesting his own fate was linked to that of the men below. With the rescue pod making its increasingly frequent round trips Wednesday evening, the sun over the Atacama desert gave way to a cold night. The mood turned visibly more festive. Some 300 police officers, or carabineros, have been working in shifts to maintain order, direct traffic and assure easy passage of emergency vehicles at Camp Hope, which at its height hosted between 2,500 and 3,000 family members, journalists, volunteers and rescue workers. "It's been a real privilege working here. This is now a part of history," said a carabinero wearing the traditional green uniform. "One day my grandkids will ask me where I was for the rescue of the miners at San Jose, and I'll say I was there." In spite of the overwhelming relief that greeted the miners' rescue, they will carry with them the 17 days spent underground out of contact with rescuers, sweltering and near starvation, the miners' chief psychologist Alberto Iturra, said recently. They had seemed reluctant to discuss the worst part of their ordeal, he said. "It's very difficult to tell something to someone and expect them to understand if they weren't there," he said. "The person who hasn't confronted death doesn't understand." http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ba0_1287182873 gmccuiston Chilean president thanks the presidents of half a dozen countries for their good wishes. Ours was not among them Chile,Rescue Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:20:08 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f4c_1257099146 ghastlyghost Margaret Daalman came to hospital complaining of stomach ache - and one glance at her X-ray shows why. Surgeons in Rotterdam in the Netherlands were flabbergasted when X-rays showed 78 different items of cutlery in the 52-year-old woman's stomach. They rushed her to surgery in a desperate attempt to remove the dozens of forks and spoons trapped inside her body one by one. She seems to have been suffering from some sort of obsession and every time she sat down for a meal she would ignore the food and eat the cutlery,' said one medic. The astonishing images were actually taken over 30 years ago - but they were published for the first time this week in a Dutch medical magazine. The magazine had asked for readers to send in examples of strange medical tales. A doctor at a hospital in Sittard in the Netherlands sent in the tale of Ms Daalman. When she went in for her surgery, Ms Daalman, a secretary in a local estate agents, told doctors: 'I don't know why but I felt an urge to eat the silverware - I could not help myself.' Medics also revealed it was not the first time that she had been treated for eating the cutlery. They said she had been diagnosed as suffering from a borderline personality disorder that left her with an urge to eat forks and spoons. She never ate knives, however - and could not explain why not. Ms Daalman made a full recovery and is said to be responding well to therapy she was receiving for the disorder. The ingestion of foreign objects is a little-discussed type of disorder, according to an article in Pyschiatry Online. Sometimes referred to as pica, individuals may crave and ingest non-food substances or an unusual quantity or selection of food commodities. The phenomenon, considered a form of self-harm, is difficult for physicians to diagnose as - unlike with self-harming patients who burn or mutilate themselves - the damage is not always obvious. It is also nearly impossible to prevent access to all potentially ingestible objects, the article added, making the behaviour difficult to stop without psychiatric treatment. Doctors in Rotterdam said they had never heard of someone consuming quite so many foreign objects before. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f4c_1257099146 ghastlyghost BIZARRE: Surgeons Remove 78 Spoons And Forks From Woman's Stomach (Netherlands) surgery, surgeon, removed, removal, knives, forks, Margaret Daalman, weird, bizarrem ghastlyghost, 2009 Sun, 05 Oct 2008 19:23:20 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=61b_1223249000 russes2010 The father of an 8-year-old boy who eats nothing but dirty shoes and sandals is worried about his son's health and seeking donations for medical treatment to cure him. After neighbors brought the existence of the shoe-eating boy to the attention of staff at the TV program Mun Plak Dee Na, they went to Hao village in Chiang Mai province on November 10 to investigate for themselves. There, they met K. Kao (he declined to disclose his surname) and his son Tinoy. K. Kao told them that his son had launched into strange diets at the age of two - before shoes, he apparently used to enjoy eating paper. "I'm anxious about his health but I can't do anything because I don't have any money," K. Kao said. "I hope some kind person will help him." As he spoke, Tinoy helped himself to a shoe, shocking the TV crew, who immediately offered him various snacks instead. But the boy continued munching on the shoe, oblivious to any of their tasty treats. The boy's teacher, K. Ratchanee Yordsiri, said that Tinoy likes to eat his friends' flip-flops. "At first I didn't believe it; I suspected a dog had chewed on the rubber sandal, but when I saw Tinoy biting into it, I was speechless." Maliwan Boonma, a doctor from Amphur Mae Jam Hospital, said that Tinoy's behavior is caused by a disease known as Pica. Children suffering from this disease are compulsive eaters of non-food items. "I have seen many children with this problem eat soil, plastic, even matchsticks. This chronic behavior may disappear in his teenage years, but his physical and mental health may be affected. He is visibly pale and skinny, and he suffers from bloody stools. He needs to improve his eating habits as quickly as possible." http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=61b_1223249000 russes2010 Sole food Sat, 17 Nov 2007 22:11:45 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=844_1195355505 barnesy BROKEN BOW, NE -- A young Nebraska girl is battling an extremely rare eating disorder. Mackenzie Sisson is just like any other eleven year old, only she's addicted to metal. "She can see a staple laying on the floor in a classroom, in the carpet. She can find metals in the rocks that you can never see," explained Mackenzie's mother Patricia. Mackenzie started eating unusual things in preschool. Things got worse in kindergarten. "She started chewing on the lead part that holds the eraser on a pencil, eating her erasers, breaking up her crayons," Patricia added. In second grade Mackenzie disassembled a school chair and put the screws in her mouth. Mackenzie is good at hiding metal objects in her mouth. She can hide two AA batteries under her tongue and speak normally. From doctor to doctor, no one could explain Mackenzie's affliction. After five years of searching for answers, the Monroe-Myer Institute in Omaha diagnosed her with pica, an extremely rare eating disorder. Mackenzie also has Tourette's Syndrome. Doctors tested Mackenzie blood levels for for lead. Mackenzie was a class 3, with a lead level of 37.9. The normal is 10. The high levels of lead have caused complications. In November of 2006, Mackenzie complained of abdominal pain and a fever. A CAT-scan revealed something both frightening and amazing. "The first words out of his mouth were 'Oh my god'. He took me over to his computer and showed me her body was covered," said Patricia. "If you have lead in your body on a Cat-scan it will show up white, and there was white all over her body." And I was scared, I didn't know what to do I wanted to go hug her and just take her away." Doctors thought the lead would pass through her system without surgery, but by December Mackenzie started vomiting at school. Doctors eventually operated. "He had to cut her intestine open in two different places. One to take out the four ball-bearings that were in there, and on the other side there was a little rock that had gotten stuck in her intestine that had scar tissue growing around it, so it had been there quite a while," Patricia explained. Mackenzie still has to be watched carefully. "I think she has a lot of frustration with it. And she doesn't understand the cause and effect of her problem. She doesn't understand the cause effect that putting something in her mouth will make her sick and cause her to possibly have a surgery." The Sissons family works with Nebraska's state lead program to put metal objects out of Mackenzie's reach. Since her last surgery, Mackenzie doesn't crave metal like she used to. Still, someone must monitor her at all times, Mackenzie checks her lead levels every three months. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=844_1195355505 barnesy Eating Disorder Makes Girl Crave Metal. girl,eats,metal,yummy!!