A woman with a bizarre compulsion to eat her own hair swallowed so much in six years a 1ft-long ball weighing a STONE had to be removed from her stomach.
Mum-of-one Sophie Cox, 23, was diagnosed with trichotillomania and trichophagia six years ago after she began yanking out locks in her sleep.
She then began to find comfort from plucking out and eating her hair during the day but thought it was nothing more than a harmless habit.
But she began suffering stomach pains and was losing weight during her pregnancy with daughter Alice but doctors could not work out why.
Two months after her baby was born in October 2014 the pains became excruciating and left her doubled in agony.
Sophie, of Cheltenham, Glos., said: “By October 2015 I couldn’t eat without vomiting and my stomach would swell up.
“I’d lost six stone in two years and dropped six dress sizes, taking me to a size 12.
“Doctors had no idea what was wrong with me, they tested me for gallstones and stomach cancer but found nothing.
“By then I was reliant on my partner Craig and family to look after Alice as I was in constant agony. I thought I was dying.”
In November 2015 Sophie had an endoscopy at Cheltenham General Hospital where a small camera was passed down her throat and into her stomach.
It was then that doctors discovered the giant hairball.
Sophie said: “When they showed me the scan I was speechless. It looked like something from a horror film.
“The specialist hadn’t seen anything like it in 30 years. It was too big to break down in my stomach, leaving me malnourished and dehydrated.
“Seven years-worth of my brunette locks were clumped together in my tummy and the hairball was growing by the day – it was killing me.
“It was 30cm long and weighed a stone, a huge mass of my hair clumped together with bile.”
Sophie had to wait four months for surgery and in April the hairball – called a trichobezoar – was removed in a six-hour operation.
She said: “I felt instantly better when I woke up, even though I was sore and groggy.
“It was disgusting. I cried with relief that it was gone.”
Sophie was a toddler when she first yanked her hair out and ate it but says her family wrote it off as ‘a phase’ because she stopped after a few months.
But in 2010 when she was 17 she noticed bald patches and realised she was pulling out her hair in her sleep.
She said: “I would wake in the night and find strands of hair in my mouth.
“I was so embarrassed I was ashamed to tell anyone or try and get help.”
By 2011 the compulsions began to come during the daytime when she was ’emotional, tired or stressed’.
She recalled: “If I was having a hard day I would absent-mindedly wrap a lock of hair round my fingers, tug it out, and then feel a satisfying pain shoot through my scalp.
“Then I’d stuff the strands into my mouth and feel instant relief.
“Friends would notice and slap my hands away from my head, but they thought it was a habit, not a condition.
“If I repressed the urge during the day I’d only pull out more clumps at night.”
Ashamed of the condition, Sophie attempted to hide it by wearing clip-in extensions.
In 2013, age 20, her mum spotted the patches and insisted she saw a doctor.
Sophie said: “I was diagnosed with trichophagia and prescribed anxiety medication.
“It didn’t work. I continued to rip my hair out, taking pleasure in the pain and in chewing it.”
In March 2013 Sophie met partner Craig Saunders, 25, and for the first few months of their relationship managed to keep the illness a secret.
But when he asked her to stop wearing hair extensions she admitted the truth.
Sophie recalled: “When I explained my compulsion, like everyone else he struggled to understand it.
“But he promised he would do all he could to support me.”
By November 2013 Sophie she cut her hair short to limit the damage and says she was tugging and chewing it less.
But within a year after the birth of baby Alice she was becoming desperately ill thanks to years of eating her hair.
Since the operation she is monitored regularly for hairballs and is on the waiting list to see a psychologist to work out the underlying cause of the condition.
She added: “I’m just so thankful the hairball was found before it was too late.
“Now I can get on with being a hands-on mum.”
