Ann Gabriel | Vigorbuddy
A NewsBeat Social video reports a 47-year-old man being rushed to a San Francisco emergency room from eating ghost peppers. Doctors says that the man might have torn his esophagus from undergoing such challenges.
Ghost pepper challenge fanatics push themselves to test the limits of human potential, but that nature can also easily backfire – sometimes with dangerous or deadly consequences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml34DVpOCnA
The said victim almost died from the attempt, if not treated in time.
Ghost peppers, or Bhut Jolokia, is one of the hottest, most-painful to consume chilies in the world.
These peppers are tipping the Scoville scale, a measure of the ‘heat’ brought by these carefully cultivated instruments of pain. Other types of hot peppers include the Naga Viper, Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, and Carolina Reaper.
Before being brough to the hospital, the patient had been “at a local restaurant featuring a hamburger topped with ghost pepper puree as part of an eating contest”, according to a case report published in the journal Clinical Communications by University of California – San Francisco emergency department personnel.
Upon arriving at the ER, doctors noted that he was experiencing severe abdominal and chest pain after the challenge had left him violently “retching and vomiting”. For whatever it’s worth, the patient had successfully finished the burger.
The potentially deadly consumption prevented oxygen to reach his organs.
Doctors immediately performed surgery putting a tube into his chest and collected a deadly fluid that contained “hamburger, onions, and other green vomitus material”. This led to the discovery of a 1 inch esophagal tear.
The operation required three chest tubes and one gastric tube before he began to recover.
The spontaneous rupture in the esophagus that the patient experienced is known as Boerhaave syndrome, caused by trauma from vomiting. With treatment, 20 to 40 percent of Boerhaave patients die.
When you are motivated by friends, peers or colleagues to take on a ghost pepper challenge, you now have a very good reason to say no.
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