Many people enjoy eating and crunching ice cubes in their mouths. Sometimes, there’s nothing like having that as a refreshing break from the warm weather. But consuming more than healthy amounts of ice cubes indicates that this refreshing “snack” has become an addiction. Yes, there is such a thing. The strange addiction to eating ice cubes is called pagophagia.
Enjoying a cube of ice once in a while could be a nice past time for some, but taking such likeness to eating ice cubes to the extreme might mean that you are suffering some nutritional deficiency. Consumption of excessive quantity of ice or pagophagia can be a symptom for anemia.
In the past, no link was made between the aforementioned disease and this strange pica (craving to eat or consume largely unhealthy objects such as paper, dirt, soap, etc.). It was on 1969 that an initial study was published where it was revealed that severe iron deficiency anemia was marked by pagophagia. Anemic individuals usually do not connect their unusual appetite for ice cubes to their ailment, until their doctors ask them about it. People with this addiction love to order their extra-large iced tea with lots of ice, or would prefer to sip on their glass of water filled with lots of ice cubes. Some anemic persons would get their water bottle and put it in the freezer so that they could drink ice cold water. That is called bottle freezing, which is somehow a subtler variation of ice cube eating.
On a closer study, it appears like some forms of pica are due to some nutritional deficiency. On the case at hand, it seems that ice tastes better to a person when he is having iron deficiency. Some doctors observe that when one suffers from severe iron deficiency, the coldness of ice or iced water or liquid soothes the esophageal tenderness that he experiences. Aside from that observation, the occurrence of pagophagia in anemic persons cannot yet be given a better explanation by the medical world.