A man has drank a quart of soy sauce and nearly died. Livescience.com reported that a 19-year-old drank the soy sauce after being dared by his friends and went ito a coma from too much salt in his body.
The case report was published on June 4th in the Journal of Emergency Medicine. He is the only known person to have hever deliberately overdosed on that high an amount of salt and survived without lasting neaurological problems.
"Too much salt in the blood, a condition called hypernatremia, is usually seen in people with psychiatric conditions who develop a strong appetite for the condiment, said Dr. David J. Carlberg, who treated the young man and works as an emergency medicine physician at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C," reported livesciences.com.
Reportedly too much salt in the body can cause the brain to lose water. When the man drank the soy sauce he started to have seizures and was taken to the emergency room by friends. At the hospital he was given anti-seizure medicine and was already in a coma once arriving. The hospital was the University of Virginia Medical Center.
"He didn't respond to any of the stimuli that we gave him," Dr. David J. Carlberg said. "He had some clonus, which is just elevated reflexes. It's a sign that basically the nervous system wasn't working very well."
Salt was flushed out of his body at the hospital and a solution of water and sugar dextrose was placed through a nasal tube. After about five hours his sodium levels became normal.
"Though it's rare in the United States, consuming excess salt was a traditional method for suicide in ancient China, according to the case report.
Carlberg said he believes the young man survived because the team got his sodium levels down so quickly," reported livescience.com.
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