What's This Called?

[Anonymous]

I had an eating disorder years ago, but I don't know if it's real or not. I describe it to my family and friends and they say it's fake. That I'm making it up. So when I had the disorder (I know it's not anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa), I had a constant desire to eat CLEAN toilet paper, CLEAN tissues, CLEAN napkins, etc. I would it eat, and my digestive system wouldn't work good. I wouldn't defecate for days at a time, even though I was still eating healthy meals three times a day, despite the tissue paper problem. I know it's real, and I want to tell them that. What is this called?

[Intraluminal]

Pica
Definition
Pica is the persistent craving and compulsive eating of nonfood substances. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition, classifies it as a feeding and eating disorder of childhood.
Description
The puzzling phenomenon of pica has been recognized and described since ancient times. Pica has been observed in ethnic groups worldwide, in both primitive and modernized cultures, in both sexes, and in all age groups. The word pica comes from the Latin name for magpie, a bird known for its unusual and indiscriminate eating habits. In addition to humans, pica has been observed in other animals, including the chimpanzee.
Pica in humans has many different subgroups, defined by the substance that is ingested. Some of the most commonly described types of pica are eating earth, soil or clay (geophagia), ice (pagophagia) and starch (amylophagia). However, pica involving dozens of other substances, including cigarette butts and ashes, hair, paint chips, and paper have also been reported. In one unusual case, the patient ingested transdermal patches of fentanyl, an opioid medication given for severe pain. Eating the skin patch increased the patient's dose of the drug by a factor of 10.
Although pica can occur in individuals of any background, a higher incidence of pica is associated with:

[523206720]

I remember people were talking about this at church several years ago. There is a certain nutrition deficiency people can have that can cause them to crave non-edible things as if they were food. I think it was an iron deficiency but I'm not sure. Somebody had this disorder and they wanted to eat one of the giraffes that they saw at the zoo. Other people want to eat chalk. It is caused by a nutrition deficiency but I'm not sure what.

[brnxsweet]

It sounds more like a bad habit but I'm no expert it's still not normal eating I suppose

[Anonymous]

It's not an eating disorder. But it is not good for you.

[xobrowneyedbeauty]

sounds like pica to me