Soy sauce overdose puts man into a coma

A 19-year-old man who drank a quart of soy sauce went into a coma and almost died from excess of salt in his body.

The teenage man reportedly drank the sauce on a dare and is the first person have deliberately overdosed on such an extreme level of salt and have survived with no lasting brain damage.

Doctors at the University of Virginia Medical Center treated the man when he was already in a coma four hours after he was treated at an emergency room for seizures, which he began experiencing right after drinking the soy sauce.

"He didn't respond to any of the stimuli that we gave him," Doctor David J. 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."

The team proceeded to flush the salt out of the man's body by administering a solution of water and sugar. Within a half hour they had pumped 1.5 gallons of sugar water into the man's body.

The man's sodium level returned to normal about five hours later. He remained in a coma for three days and woke up on his own.