Soy sauce warning to be aware of after man nearly died eating too much

We all have a favourite food or drink, but one man's passion for soy sauce almost proved fatal.

Have you ever eaten the same meal you've felt sick of it, or maybe you can't live without three cans a day of your favourite pop?

Perhaps you only ever eat eggs for breakfast, or would live off pizza for every single meal if you could.

Well, back in 2013, a 19-year-old indulged his love for soy sauce a little too much.

Sure, a dash here and there with your cooking is normal, encouraged even, and who doesn't love the little soy sauce bottles shaped like fish that you can get with your takeaway?

He took his love to the next level, though, and drank nearly a whole litre of the stuff. To put that in perspective, quantity-wise, just 1 tablespoon of soy sauce contains nearly 40% of the daily recommended 2,300 milligrams of sodium.

Horrifyingly, he collapsed and had to be rushed to hospital.

As great as soy sauce is, it turns out that too much of it isn't a great idea (Getty Stock Image)

The teenager only survived because he was treated quickly, and to this day, his case is one of the most extreme cases ever recorded.

He developed hypernatremia, a condition caused by consuming too much salt.

The excess salt draws water out from your cells, and can cause seizures, brain shrinkage and even death.

The youngster went into a coma, and it later turned out that his friends had actually dared him to drink the massive quantity.

He is the first reported person to have deliberately overdosed with that much salt and to survive.

Not only that, but he walked away without any lasting neurological problems or damage, according to doctors.

Dr David J. Carlberg, one of the doctors who treated the man, said the condition is normally seen in psychiatric patients who develop a taste for condiments like soy sauce.

The unnamed teenager began to twitch and suffer from seizures not long after drinking the soy sauce.

The ER gave him anti-seizure medication, but he went into a coma, four hours after drinking it.

It later emerged he had drunk the soy sauce as a dare from his friends (Getty Stock Image)

"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."

They gave him a mixture of water and sugar dextrose in an attempt to wash out the salt, and within half an hour he has 1.5 gallons of sugar water pumped into him.

Within five hours, his sodium levels returned to normal. However, he remained in a coma for three days, and part of his brain showed 'residual effects' from the seizures.

Fortunately, after a month, he showed no lasting signs of the incident.

"We were more aggressive than had been reported before in terms of bringing his sodium back down to a safer range," Carlberg told LiveScience.

Apparently, gradual or accidental overdoses are more common.

In the 1960s and 70s, doctors actually used to give too much salt to try to combat poisoning, before they realised the harm it was causing.

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