A 19-year-old went into a coma and nearly died after he drank more than a quart of soy sauce, a case study published in the Journal of Emergency Medicine on June 4 said.
The teen reportedly drank the condiment after he was dared by his friends. According to the doctors in Virginia who conducted emergency treatment, the teen is is the first person known to have deliberately overdosed on such a high amount of salt and survived, with no lasting neurological problems.
After he drank the soy sauce, the man began having seizures and was rushed to the ER. Once there, doctors administered anti-seizure medication, but the man was already in a coma. After the medical staff flushed his system of soy sauce, they replaced it with a water and sugar dextrose solution.
"He didn't respond to any of the stimuli that we gave him," Dr. David J. Carlberg, who treated the victim, told LiveScience.com. "He had some clonus, which is just elevated reflexes. It's a sign that basically the nervous system wasn't working very well."
After five hours of treatment, the man's sodium levels returned to normal. Three days later he woke from his coma. A month after the accident, he returned to college and showed no effects of the accident.
