A 19-year-old man who drank a quart of soy sauce went into a coma recently thanks to an excess of salt in his blood, according to reports.
The foolish man, who is currently unnamed but whose case has been recorded in the Journal of Emergency Medicine was dared by his friends to ingest the quart of soy sauce, caused hypernatremia in his system, which is normally seen in those with psychiatric conditions who grow to become obsssed with salt.
This lucky fellow is the only known case of someone purposely overdosing on salt, and then surviving the incident with no permanent neurological damage, as reported by the Virginia doctors who treated him.
The reason hypernatremia is so dangerous, is that it removes water from the brain. When too much salt is present in the bloodstream, the body reacts by drawing water from the tissues, and into the blood through osmosis, in order to balance the amount of water with the excessive salt.
If too much water leaves the brain, it can shrivel, shrink and eventually bleed out.
Upon drinking the quart, the 19-year-old started to twitch and have seizures. He was taken to a hospital, where they administered anti-seizure medicine. From there he was taken to a different hospital, where he was treated by Dr. David J. Carlberg.
"He didn't respond to any of the stimuli that we gave him," 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."
Doctors then moved to flush the salt out of his system with tubes; when they began the process the tubes were streaked brown thanks to the ridiculous amount of soy sauce in his system. After five hours his sodium levels returned but his brain showed effects from his multiple seizures for days afterward.
After a month, however, he was lucky to be showing no signs of his brush with death.
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