Does eating ice cause anemia?
Compulsively chewing on ice is a symptom of anemia, not a proximal cause. Iron deficiency is usually due to diet. Chewing on non-nutritive items is known as pica, and anemia is a notorious cause of that. I’ve been borderline anemic, am not now, and I still love to chew on ice. So part of it’s just taste. If you notice yourself chewing on ice a lot, you might want to get your iron levels checked out. And apparantly there’s a message board devoted to ice chewing: http://www.icechewing.com/viewtopic.php?t=7 Who knew? Sources: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000584.
Compulsively chewing on ice is a symptom of anemia, not a proximal cause. Iron deficiency is usually due to diet. Chewing on non-nutritive items is known as pica, and anemia is a notorious cause of that. I’ve been borderline anemic, am not now, and I still love to chew on ice. So part of it’s just taste. If you notice yourself chewing on ice a lot, you might want to get your iron levels checked out. And apparantly there’s a message board devoted to ice chewing: http://www.icechewing.com/viewtopic.php?t=7 Who knew?
