Trichobezoar: This is a bowel obstruction made up of hair, mostly seen in young women with trichotillomania and trichotillophagia. Additional symptoms may include pain in the upper abdomen, nausea, and loss of appetite.
Diseases/Disorders
Trichobezoars are formed from plant fibers, hair, and mucus. Clinical signs may be subtle such as anorexia, vomiting, weight loss and occasionally the stool may contain hair.
Trichobezoars comprise hair-like fibers that look like clothing fibers. In extreme cases, the compacted fibers fill the stomach and form a tail that extends to the intestines. The condition is known as Rapunzel's syndrome and mostly affects adolescent girls.
Rapunzel syndrome is extremely rare, with less than 64 cases reported since 1968. It is more common in young or adolescent females.
Trichophagia is the compulsive eating of hair associated with trichotillomania (hair pulling).
So, small amounts of hair would just pass right through your body, along with everything else you can't digest. Cats swallow fur all the time and also can't digest their hair. Whatever doesn't pass through their digestive systems builds up in their stomachs as a firm, dense, hairball.
Yellow stool may be caused by: Bacterial, viral, or parasitic infections that may be causing malabsorption. One of the most common is giardiasis (also called giardia infection), caused by a microscopic waterborne parasite.
Causes of anal discharge
Mucus-based discharge may be caused by: Infection due to food-poisoning, bacteria or parasites. An abscess due to infection or an anal fistula – a channel that can develop between the end of your bowel and anus after an abscess.
Parasites. Tapeworms and pinworms can appear as white specks in stools. Tapeworm infection is uncommon, but these specks are a key symptom. White or yellow specks may be pieces of parasitic worms.
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.
Trichobezoar is a rare disorder that almost exclusively affects young females.
Hemorrhoids may also cause a clear discharge slightly thicker than water in consistency. The discharge will usually stop after a few days of at-home hemorrhoid treatment. In severe cases, prolapsed or large hemorrhoids may need surgical intervention.
It may be tawny or clear in color, and a person is unlikely to notice it. When stool has visible mucus, it can be a sign of other health conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), ulcerative colitis (UC), or Crohn's disease.
Usually, the rectum stretches to accommodate stool. If the rectum is scarred or stiff it can't stretch as much as it needs to, and excess stool can leak out. Things such as surgery, radiation treatment or inflammatory bowel disease can stiffen and scar the rectum.
Pilonidal disease is a cyst (capsule-like sac) located in the natal cleft (crease) at the top of the buttocks (sometimes called “butt crack”) that can become infected (called an abscess) and cause pain and drainage. Although it is often thought that hair in the cleft is the cause, this is not always true.
Hair structure
The hair root is in the skin and extends down to the deeper layers of the skin. It is surrounded by the hair follicle (a sheath of skin and connective tissue), which is also connected to a sebaceous gland. Each hair follicle is attached to a tiny muscle (arrector pili) that can make the hair stand up.
After the hair ball has reached sufficient proportions to cause gastric irritation, there may be nausea, loss of appetite, dyspepsia, headaches, epigastric pain, and mild anemic symptoms. With increase in size, pain becomes more severe, the patient is able to eat less, and there may be blood in the stools.
Rapunzel syndrome is a very rare condition in which a large hair ball (trichobezoar) gets lodged in your stomach and extends into your small intestine. This causes the hair ball to look like a comma sign. The condition was first described in 1968.
Therapy can help people overcome trichotillomania. The most widely used type of therapy is called habit-reversal training (HRT). It's a type of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). In this therapy, people meet with a therapist to learn skills to help them reverse the hair pulling habit.
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.