It’s the toxic compulsion that doctors claim could kill
her.
But this 19-year-old girl claims she is hopelessly
addicted… to eating soap.
A rare medical condition has left Tempestt
Henderson, from Florida, eating up to five bars of soap a
week – and washing powder too.
My bizarre compulsion: Tempestt Henderson, 19,
says she is addicted to eating soap – and can go through five bars
a week
‘It tasted so sweet, and salty’: Tempestt claims that
the first time she ate washing powder, it just felt
right
‘I remember the first time I dipped my fingers into the
washing powder,’ she said.
‘I dabbed the powder onto my tongue and it tasted so
sweet, and salty…it just felt so right. I was hooked straight
away.’
The nursing student says she knew eating soap was
dangerous, but ignored the warning labels on the box in favour of
licking the deadly powder daily, from the minute she woke up in the
morning.
Soon she had moved onto licking the bubbles of soap in the
shower, too, a habit that was getting her through up to five bars
of soap a week.
‘In the shower, I like to lather up a green bar of soap,
and lick the bubbles. And as the soap disintegrates, I pop a tiny
amount of the soap into my mouth and suck it. It’s
heavenly.
When you can’t stop: Doctors have diagnosed
Tempestt with a rare disorder called PICA, characterised by an
appetite for substances that are non-nutritive
‘I love the clean feeling it gives me. Eating soap feels
so much cleaner than just washing with it.’
After six months of eating soap, unhappy Tempestt decided
to be brave and seek medical advice. She was diagnosed with a rare
disorder called PICA, which doctors told her is characterised by an
appetite for substances that are largely
non-nutritive.
Sufferers have been known to compulsively eat metal,
coins, chalk, batteries and even toothbrushes. It can often be
caused by a mineral deficiency, which explains why pregnant women
often crave eating coal when needing iron.
But in Tempestt’s case doctors believed the condition was
bought on by stress.
‘Things got really stressful for me when my boyfriend,
Jason, split up with me and left for college,’ she
admitted.
‘He told me he was going to college in Kansas to study
business. I begged him to give the long distance relationship a go,
but he told me it was over. I was devastated.’
When Tempestt herself had to leave for college,
hundreds of miles away from her family home in Florida, things took
a turn for the worse.
‘College was five hours away from my family, and the
stress got bigger. With no boyfriend and my family miles away, I
got lonely, sad and depressed. I turned to bath soap and laundry
detergent and my problem got increasingly worse.’
Dr Barton Blinder, the world’s authority on PICA, says
that eating soap in these quantities could seriously affect
Tempestt’s health:.
‘With soap, the worry is the problems associated with
ingesting toxic chemicals, which are typically alkaline but there
are other toxic substances in soap.
‘These can damage someone’s metabolism and cause digestive
problems. With soap, you’re also concerned about the acid-base
balance of the blood.’
But for Tempestt, therapy got to the bottom of her
addiction to soap, and the cause of her PICA.
‘I always knew I loved the smell of washing detergent,’
she explained.