By OLUFUNKE
I once shared a story about Justin Richard, whose handle on Instagram is insulin_resistant1. He tested himself after eating dates and discovered that they did not cause a significant blood sugar spike.
Recently, I came across another video by a Nigerian. After eating dates, he checked his blood sugar level, and there was a huge spike!
The only explanation I can give for this is that Justin ate Medjool dates. Likely, this particular species does not cause a significant rise in blood sugar levels.
You should check your blood sugar after your next use of date powder; the species we have here in Nigeria might be causing spikes without your knowledge!
This week, we are talking about a condition called Pica, the compulsive swallowing of non-food items. But before I proceed, let me share a few stories.
I have a Facebook friend who is addicted to clay, popularly called nzu in Igbo.
People have tried to talk her out of this habit, but every day, she posts videos of herself eating the clay. You can sense a strong defiance in her attitude; she is not ready to listen.
We once had a family friend who was a nurse. Each time she got pregnant, her cravings were for plants that are not known to be used as vegetables!
She would personally go into the bushes in search of plants, cutting them carefully to ensure there was no latex dripping from them, as latex could mean the plant was poisonous.
She would then cook the plants like vegetable soup, with lots of stockfish.
In another case, Maksud Khan, a man from Satna, Madhya Pradesh, India, checked into a hospital with severe stomach pains, initially suspected to be caused by food poisoning.
When doctors performed an endoscopy, they found hundreds of coins, three pounds of nails, dozens of shaving blades, shards of glass, stones, and even a six-inch piece of rusted iron shackle inside his stomach.
This isn’t the first time someone has ingested foreign objects like Khan did. In fact, a 2012 study published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology examined 33 patients at the Rhode Island Hospital who had swallowed items such as pens, batteries, knives, and razor blades.
The word Pica is derived from Latin, meaning magpie, a bird known for eating almost anything it finds.
The term is used in English to describe a psychological disorder involving the consumption of non-food items.
Pica is a mental health condition where a person compulsively swallows non-food substances. It mostly affects pregnant women and children. The behaviour must persist for at least one month to qualify as pica.
People with pica compulsively eat items that have no nutritional value. Some may consume relatively harmless substances, while others eat potentially dangerous ones.
In the latter case, the disorder can lead to serious health consequences, such as lead poisoning.
It is common for healthcare providers to miss the condition entirely. This often happens when people do not disclose it to their doctors or fail to report similar behaviour in their children.
Another reason is that infants and young children naturally put things in their mouths as part of normal development, a type of pica that usually resolves on its own.
There is no single cause of pica. In some cases, deficiencies in iron, zinc, or other nutrients may be linked to it.