The hazard of eating spicy food went far beyond a bad stomach or a tough time in the bathroom for one woman, as it turned into a near-fatal experience that left her with multiple broken ribs.

In a scary accident, a woman in China enjoying a spicy meal suffered a coughing fit that left her with four broken ribs.

The woman, identified only by her surname Huang, told South China Morning Post that while eating the meal she launched into a coughing fit during which she heard a sharp cracking sound that came from her chest.

The Shanghai native said even as she initially brushed it off as something minor, she soon started feeling pain while breathing and talking. After a few days, Huang visited the doctor with increasingly unbearable pain and was suggested a CT scan to ascertain the root cause of the pain.

The scan gave Huang quite the scare after doctors told her that her ribs were cracked and advised her to wrap bandages around her waist for a month while the ribs healed.

The easy cracking of ribs was attributed to the woman's low body weight. When Huang visited the doctor for a follow-up, he explained to her that she had a thin upper torso, to the point that her ribs were visible and lacked muscle strength to support the bone structure, according to Must Share News.

"Your ribs can be seen clearly under your skin. There is no muscle to support the bone, so it's easy for your ribs to get fractured when coughing," the doctor told Huang, as per the SCMP report.

Huang revealed to SCMP that she is 1.71m tall and weighed 125 pounds, which is considerably low for an adult body size. Considering the severity of the situation, Huang said that she has decided to engage in physical exercise to increase her muscle mass and gain strength once she recovers from her injury.

Spicy food
Spicy foods are not as good as they were thought to be. Pixabay/cegoh
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