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Topics: Health, Food And Drink, News, Weird, Science
Olivia Burke
Topics: Health, Food And Drink, News, Weird, Science
We all have our favourite condiments which we completely drown our grub in on a daily basis, as a quick drizzle can seriously elevate any meal.
But if you're favourite sauce is soy, take it easy when you're covering your food in the stuff - as too much of it can have very sinister consequences.
And no matter how good it might be, it's really not worth risking your health and wellbeing for the sake of a perfect bite of whatever your eating that is perfectly seasoned with that scrumptious umami flavour.
So, you should take this shocking report published online by the Journal of Emergency Medicine as a cautionary tale if you go a bit crazy with the soy sauce on your scran.
A 19-year-old US man guzzled a quart of the dark-coloured liquid - in what was later reported to be part of an initiation to join a university fraternity house - before running into serious trouble.
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The case report detailing the horror incident in 2013 explained that he began experiencing seizures and foaming at the mouth shortly after consuming the soy sauce and was rushed to hospital.
Two hours after drinking the popular Chinese dip, the young lad was said to have been grinding his teeth incessantly, while also being generally unresponsive.
He was unable to respond to verbal commands and his arms were stiffly placed at his sides, the report said.
The patient was treated by medics, who administered anti-seizure medication in the hopes of stabilising him while also attempting to suck out 'brown material with scant streaks of blood' from his stomach with a tube that ran from his nose.
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He fell into a coma before doctors decided he needed to be transferred to the University of Virginia Medical Center.
Dr David J Carlberg, who was working when the patient was brought in, previously told LiveScience: "He didn't respond to any of the stimuli that we gave him. He had some clonus, which is just elevated reflexes.
"It's a sign that, basically, the nervous system wasn't working very well."
According to the report, the teenager's blood sodium levels that were measured at the medical centre were the highest ever recorded in an adult who somehow survived hypernatremia, or salt poisoning.
This condition, which can lead to life-threatening complications if left untreated, occurs when there is too much salt in the blood and it is essentially a race against time to replace the water deficit.
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Soy sauce might be delicious, but it's also really toxic if you have too much of it, because there’s about 900 milligrams of salt in a single tablespoon of the stuff - meaning that too much of the soy would equate to a serious amount of salt.
More than your body could handle, as it happens - which is exactly what went wrong with this young man.
Quick-thinking doctors gave the college student water which had the sugar dextrose in it, in a bid to dilute the sodium in his blood and make him need a wee - seeing the teenager's body gulp six whole litres of IV fluid in just half an hour.
He went on to produce over four litres of urine in the end too, allowing the sodium concentration in his blood to finally drop after five hours of having sugar water pumped into him.
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Even though there was a serious risk that the 19-year-old would have been left with lasting neurological problems or brain damage, according to reports, he went on to make a full recovery.
He woke from the coma on his own after three days, while doctors said he seemed fine after returning to school a month later, adding that he was doing well in his studies.
Dr Carlberg credits the lad's miraculous recovery to the quick work of medics who reduced his sodium levels so rapidly.
He added: "We were more aggressive than had been reported before in terms of bringing his sodium back down to a safer range," saying that a slower approaches in the past have had poor or mixed results.
So take it easy on the soy sauce in future, lads.