Doctors warn that 19-year-old Tempest Henderson is very much at risk to her health by eating life-threatening substances. And the girl is trying in every possible way to overcome her painful passion.
"Delicacies" from the household store
“I remember the first time I put my fingers in a box of detergent and then put them in my mouth, I tasted incredibly great,” Tempest tells The Daily Mail. "It was both sweet and salty at the same time."
In addition to the powder, the girl was also addicted to soap and, within six months, ate it up to five pieces a week! According to her, she especially liked the taste of green soap: while standing in the shower, at first she simply licked the lather from her skin. Then she began to put a small piece of soap in her mouth and suck on it.
Subsequently, already overeating on soap like ice cream, Tempest felt cleaner than when she “just” took a bath. "It was great!" she says.
After six months of regularly eating soap and powder, the girl, knowing full well that this was unnatural, finally found the strength to seek help from doctors who diagnosed her with a rare mental disorder PICA (perverse appetite).
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People with this disorder usually have an addiction to objects that are not meant to be eaten. They swallow coins and batteries, eat chalk, clay, coal, tooth powder. Sometimes PICA is observed in pregnant women, but in this case, "perverse appetite" is due to a lack of calcium in the body.
In the case of Tempest, doctors say, perverse appetite triggered stress. “Everything became very stressful for me when my friend, Jason, said that it was all over between us and went to study in Kansas, in a business college,” she admitted. "I was devastated, I didn't want to live."
A month after breaking up with her boyfriend, the girl herself went to study at a medical school, hundreds of kilometers from her family and home in Florida. In the new place, the depression only intensified, Tempest was almost constantly depressed. It was then that she developed a strange addiction to eating synthetic detergents.
Dr. Barton Blinder, a recognized authority on PICA treatments, says soap can have a serious impact on Tempest's health: “Toxic chemicals can cause metabolism and total body poisoning,” he warns.
When the mother found out about her daughter's secret passion, she hastened to take Tempest from school, suggesting that it was some kind of new drug invented in a student environment.
Currently, the girl lives with her parents again and, under the supervision of specialists, is trying to get rid of her “soap addiction”. When she has a desire to bite off a bar of soap, she, on the advice of psychologists, remembers something good.
Burton Blinder prescribed intensive behavioral therapy to the girl in order to focus her thoughts on more interesting things than soaps and laundry detergents.
In addition, while walking and visiting friends, she was advised to avoid places where substances hazardous to her health are present.
Naturally, in the very house of the Henderson family, they no longer use soap or powder - only liquid detergents. And, according to Tempest, she doesn't want to taste the liquid "delicacy" yet.
Adele "ate" seven sofas and two armchairs
In general, the inhabitants of the Earth, as medical practice shows, are distinguished by the widest range of gastronomic tastes.
In the same Florida, in the city of Bradenton, lives 30? a year-old woman named Adele, whose story was told on US national television on the show My Strange Addiction in February 2011.
At the age of ten, Adele's cousin, as a joke, suggested that she taste the foam rubber used to stuff sofa cushions. The girl liked it. And since then she "ate" about 91 kg of synthetic fiber or seven sofas and two chairs!
Today, when Adele needs to leave the house somewhere, she always takes another piece of foam rubber with her, because she cannot do without it even for two hours. Surprisingly, a woman's stomach does an excellent job of handling unusual "food".
Gastroenterologist Christopher Olenek of the Sarasota City Health Center, who has been observing Adele lately, says he has seen many people with PICA in his lifetime chew toilet paper, eat soap like Tempest Henderson, swallow paper clips, pens, pencils., rulers and even razor blades. But the phenomenon of Adele, who has eaten, in fact, a toxic substance for 20 years, and at the same time physically remains healthy, stands apart.
“All possible ultrasound and fluoroscopic studies have shown that foam rubber in Adele's stomach does not remain and is not excreted naturally, it is simply digested,” exclaims Dr. Olenek with delight. “It's incredible, but it's a fact that requires the most careful study!”
