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Soy sauce overdose almost kills 19-year-old

A 19-year-old was hospitalized after drinking too much soy sauce.
A 19-year-old was hospitalized after drinking too much soy sauce.
(Maryellen Baker / For the Times)
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When your mother told you not to pour the entire container of soy sauce on your bowl of white rice, she had a reason. Apparently, too much soy sauce really is dangerous.

A 19-year-old in Virginia went into a coma and almost died after drinking a quart of soy sauce, Discovery News reported.

So what on Earth would possess someone who’s not a professional sushi eater to consume that much soy sauce? A dare, of course.

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The teenager drank so much soy sauce, he started to suffer a seizure. His friends took him to the hospital, where he was given anti-seizure medication. He remained in a coma for three days before he woke up on his own.

The 19-year-old experienced hypernatremia, a condition caused by too much salt in the blood. The salt causes the brain to lose water, shrink and bleed, Dr. David J. Carlberg, the doctor who treated the young man, told Discovery News.

The teen is the first person known to have overdosed deliberately on a high amount of salt and survived without any lasting neurological problems, Fox News reported.

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