A woman was left unable to speak, swallow or move her limbs due to brain damage sustained as a result of drinking a litre of soy sauce.
The 39-year-old, from the USA, who has been identified as CG in a case study, drank the large quantity of the condiment after watching a video online that claimed doing so could cleanse her colon of toxins.
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However, due to the subsequent sodium levels in her blood, she went into cardiac arrest. CG was found to have 200g of salt in her blood, which is five times higher than what is considered to be a lethal dose.
Doctors attempted to reduce these levels, but the change was too rapid and she was left with irreversible nerve damage.
Dr Bernard, who discusses unusual medical cases on his YouTube channel Chubbyemu, shared the details of CG's story with his 862,000 subscribers.He said that according to CG's husband, she had been in poor physical and mental health in the six months prior to drinking the soy sauce. CG had been living off a diet of white bread and canned fish and was severely deficient in vitamins. She had also been hospitalised as a result of paranoid schizophrenia.
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The husband found her collapsed and she went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital.
Doctors attempted to dilute the sodium levels in her blood and the treatment seemed to be working, as she drifted in and out of consciousness over the coming days.
However, on the fourth day doctors determined she had central pontine myelinolysis, meaning her nerve cells couldn't transmit signals and she was unable to move her limbs, speak or swallow.
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Dr Bernard believes most people would be unable to stomach such vast quantities of soy sauce without puking. Even if they had, they would be urgently compelled to drink water due to extreme dehydration - but CG also resisted these urges.
He said: "CG had some quality to her that could separate her mind from drinking soy sauce."
Dr Bernard argues that CG may have been an undiagnosed sufferer of coeliac disease, whereby gluten ingestion damages the small intestine. He claims that if this was the case, her white bread diet would have aggravated her condition and this could have made her delusional.
Dr Bernard added that the soy sauce toxin cleansing theory is based on 'half truths' and was not a medically advised treatment.
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