Understanding Pica: What You Need To Know

Signs & Symptoms

There are no specific symptoms that an individual can have when it comes to pica, as each case varies, but the most significant sign a person may have pica is if they are ingesting items not considered food and with no nutritional value. Rather, the symptoms associated with pica are broken down into subcategories based on the substance eaten.

These subcategories include acuphagia (sharp objects), amylophagia (starch), cautopyreiophagia (burnt matches), coniophagia (dust), coprophagia (feces), emetophagia (vomit), geomelophagia (raw potatoes), geophagia (dirt, soil, clay), hyalophagia (glass), and lithophagia (stones). Mucophagia (mucus), pagophagia (ice), plumbophagia (lead), trichophagia (hair, wool, other fibers), urophagia (urine), hematophagia (blood) which is also known as vampirism, and xylophagia (wood, paper).