A teenager overdosed and almost died after he drank too much soy sauce.
After a 19-year-old teenager was dared by his friends to drink the sauce, he soon started to twitch and suffered a seizure. The man was given anti-seizure medication after his friends took him to the University of Virginia Medical Center, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The seizure was caused by hypernatremia, where too much salt entered into the bloodstream. Excess salt causes the brain to lose water. The water moves from the brain to the organs, resulting in the brain to shrink and bleed. A quart of soy sauce has around 0.35 pounds of salt.
As the man was taken to the hospital, he slipped into a coma. Fox News reports, doctors worked for several hours emptying the man’s stomach with 1.5 gallons of water and sugar dextrose through a nasal tube.
“We were more aggressive than had been reported before in terms of bringing his sodium back down to a safer range,” said Dr. David J. Carlberg.
The man’s sodium level returned to normal, but was still in a coma for three days before waking up. Since then he has returned to school.