Man Slips into Coma After Consuming a Quart of Soy Sauce

A 19-year-old man slipped into a coma after consuming a quart of salty soy sauce on a dare, according to Discovery News.

According to those present at the time, the man began twitching and seizing, prompting his friends to bring him to the emergency room where he was administered anti-seizure medication.

Already in a coma by the time he arrived at the University of Virginia Medical Center, Dr. David J. Carlberg, the patient’s doctor, said the man didn’t respond to any of the stimuli administered to him.

“He had some clonus, which is just elevated reflexes,” he explained. “It’s a sign that basically the nervous system wasn’t working very well.”

Too much salt in the blood, called hypernatremia, is often seen in people with psychiatric conditions who develop a strong appetite for soy sauce, Carlberg said. The condition is dangerous because, as water moves out of the body tissues and into the blood by the processes of osmosis, water leaves the brain, causing the organ to shrink and bleed.

To flush the salt out of the boy’s body, Calberg said they immediately began administering a solution of water and the sugar dextrose through a nasal tube. Once in place, streaks of brown material began draining out the nose and into the tubes.

Within a half hour, the physicians had pumped 1.5 gallons of sugar water into his system. Five hours later, his sodium levels normalized, though he remained in a coma for a total of three days.

However, days later the man was back in college and doing well, making him the first person known to have deliberately overdosed on such a high amount of salt and survived with no lasting neurological problems,

Though rare in the United States, consuming excess salt was a traditional method for suicide in ancient China, according to the doctors’ report on the case.