Hair is made up of proteins called keratin which cannot be broken down by our body. They can only be processed at very high temperatures which do not exist inside our body. So, when you swallow small strands of hair accidentally, they just end up passing out of the body with other undigested food.
Hair proteins get denatured by gastric acid and become oxidized, which in turn causes the change of hair color to black, regardless of the original hair color.
For the most part, it's not a health threat. It's so benign that the Food and Drug Administration in its Food Code guidelines doesn't even place a limit on strands per plate. The FDA has received no reports of people getting ill from ingesting hair found in food.
Due to smoothness, the ingested hairs resist digestion as well as peristalsis and get accumulated in the gastric mucosal folds. Eating of hairs for a long period leads to trichobezoar. Its main location is in stomach.
It can result in serious medical consequences and can even be fatal. People who eat hair over a long period of time may begin to have abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, or constipation due to the accumulation of hair that develops into a hairball, medically referred to as a trichobezoar.
Hair in food also poses a physical risk as a person can choke on it, it can get stuck in the throat or cause nausea and vomiting. However, besides the physical aspect of hair is a potential route of Staphylococcus aureus contamination from the human scalp.
Eating your hair may lead to a large, matted hairball (trichobezoar) in your digestive tract. Over a period of years, the hairball can cause weight loss, vomiting, intestinal obstruction and even death.
So, if you ever happen to spot a strand of hair in your food, by all means pick it up and throw it away, and continue eating your food. And if you swallow a strand by mistake, don't worry, for you are most likely to continue living exactly the way you were before swallowing it.
Because the digestive tract can't break down hair, strands can accumulate in the stomach and intestines, causing blockages and a range of serious health complications, including intestinal bleeding, weight loss, nutrient deficiencies, ulceration, anemia, and, very rarely, death.
The Rapunzel syndrome is an unusual form of trichobezoar found in patients with a history of psychiatric disorders, trichotillomania (habit of hair pulling) and trichophagia (morbid habit of chewing the hair), consequently developing gastric bezoars. The principal symptoms are vomiting and epigastric pain.
Dislodging the Hair
If you suspect that you have one or two hairs stuck in your throat, try to just swallow them. The hair will travel through your digestive tract like food does and your body will excrete them. Your body will not break down the hair because it's made of keratin, a dense protein.
Globus pharyngeus, also called globus sensation or globus, is a feeling of having something stuck in the throat. It can cause persistent clearing of the throat and may be a sign of sinusitis or other conditions.
Although human hair is biodegradable, itsaccumulation in waste streams due to uncontrolled disposal leads to clogging,and poses serious environmental problem.
In response to rising levels of androgens (mainly dihydrotestosterone) during and after puberty, the skin of the abdomen begins to produce coarser, longer and more pigmented hair (terminal hair). This process primarily affects men.
The most common problem hair loss points to is one of several different skin conditions, like keratosis pilaris (an inflammatory disease of the hair follicles), eczema or seborrhea (dermatitis that leads to patches of itchy, red skin), psoriasis (a condition where the body's immune system start attacking healthy skin) ...
Rapunzel syndrome is caused by the ingestion of hair. Rapunzel syndrome is characterized by a compulsive disorder of pulling one's own hair and ingesting it. There are several psychiatric disorders that are associated with Rapunzel syndrome, such as trichotillomania, trichophagia, and pica.
Happy trails on women can also intensify for a variety of reasons. Gals dealing with hirsutism, a condition caused by atypically high levels of androgens, may have darker, coarser-haired happy trails. But that's kind of a whole other thing. If you spy a happy trail on your date, do not ask her if she has hirsutism.
It's possible — and normal — to have hair almost anywhere on the body, so a few hairs on your nipples are nothing to worry about. Lots of girls have them.
A single strand of hair probably won't do much harm. The only scenario in which hair would pose a health threat is when you eat a whole clump, as it could form a giant hairball in your stomach.
Symptoms and Complications of Bezoars
Feeling full after eating a small food portion. Vomiting. Nausea. Abdominal pain.
Trichophagia, the eating of hair, is a subset of trichotillomania, which is the compulsive pulling out of one's own hair.
Trichotillomania is a disorder characterized by chronic hair pulling that often results in alopecia. Eating the part of hair pulled out is a common practice and trichorhizophagia is a new term to denote the habit of eating the root of hairs pulled out, associated with trichotillomania.
Rapunzel syndrome is a rare type of trichobezoar with an extension of the hair into the small bowel. Clinical presentation is deceptive and vague, ranging from asymptomatic abdominal mass to gastrointestinal perforation. There are only few cases reported in literature, with the youngest age being 3 years.
Even if the object is not likely to injure your customer, finding an object in their food can be very distressing for a customer (who knows that harmful microorganisms on the object could make them ill). Common examples of physical contaminants in food businesses include: Hair.