A large hair ball in the 8-year-old girl's stomach. Photo: screenshot of Knews

 After suffering several bouts of severe stomach pain, an eight-year-old girl in Northwest China was rushed to the hospital where it took doctors four surgeries to remove a 225-gram hair ball. 

The girl in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province has had the habit of eating hair for some five years.

She often had  stomachaches and had vomited after eating. When her mother massaged her belly to relief her pain, she felt a lump in the girl's stomach.

When doctors examined her stomach they found an 11-centimeter rock-hard hair ball.

The girl's parents had taken her to see a doctor when she was three years old after discovering that she liked to eat hair, but they were not able to break her of the habit.

"I do want to eat hair," the girl said in the video posted by Knews. "Hair doesn't taste better than chocolate, but I like eating it."

The girl's doctor, Lin Tao, said there are two possible reasons the girl likes eating hair: the girl might lack of some micronutrients that her body craves and hairs works as a supplement, or the girl may be suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder.

Knews