Woman Brain Dead After Performing Soy Sauce Colon Cleanse

A 39-year-old woman was left brain dead after drinking a liter of soy sauce in an attempt to flush toxins from her body, according to reports. Dr. Bernard, a University of Illinois adjunct medical professsor, shared a video on his YouTube channel Chubbyemu recounting the story of the woman who ended up going into cardiac arrest and was left with irreversible nerve damage due to the bizarre trend.

On the day of the incident, the woman was performing a "soy sauce colon cleanse" — a dangerous trend which involves people drinking a liter of soy sauce in two hours. Soon after drinking the soy sauce, the woman, only identified as CG by Dr. Bernard, felt her heart beating faster.

"She resisted all urges to drink any water. Over the next 30 minutes, while driving home, CG stopped on the side of the road and began to cry," the doctor said.

The woman's husband, Julio, allegedly found her collapsed in their home and called 911. On the ride to the hospital, she went into cardiac arrest. At the hospital, doctors discovered she was suffering from acute hypernatremia, which is when there is a high sodium presence in the blood. Doctors tried to bring the sodium levels in her blood to normal— but the rise was too rapid, which resulted in her being left brain dead, according to the Daily Mail.

According to the woman's husband, she was already in poor health having lost 25 pounds in the previous three weeks. She was on a diet for six months that consisted of only eating white bread and canned fish, leaving her extremely deficient in vitamins and iron. Prior to the incident, she reportedly had also been hospitalized for displaying signs of paranoid schizophrenia.

Talking about the incident, Dr. Bernard said the soy sauce cleanse is a hoax based on "half-truths."

"The correct part is that wherever sodium is, water will flow towards it," he said in the video, which has so far been viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube. "CG was told the soy sauce would stay in her colon. Toxin-filled water would then flow in and she'd be cleansed, but that's not how it happens."

Doctors determined that the woman experienced central pontine myelinolysis, which is a neurological disorder that occurs when the body's sodium levels rise quickly, pull water from the brain cells, and cause nerve damage, according to the National Institutes of Health. Symptoms include lessened awareness and difficulty speaking and swallowing. The woman is currently unable to talk, swallow, move, or speak.

Central pontine myelinolysis often lead to permanent paralysis, however, in some cases people recover from the condition after a few weeks to a month.