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A Mukbanger Ate 1 Gallon (3.78 Liters) of Pickles For Lunch.
This Is What Happened To Her Brain.
BT is a 33 year old woman, presenting to the emergency room with nausea, vomiting, and
a splitting headache.
She tells the admitting nurse that she had never had less food inside her body than at
this moment, because several gallons of liquid had just exited her body, from the end that
was supposed to put out solid waste.
Earlier in the day, BT was trying to record a pickle mukbang.
Since March 2020, she had lost all interest in work, when everything became “work at
home.”
Her job in sales, became a job of making it look like work was happening, when really
nothing was getting done because everything was just endless, long-winded virtual calls
of co-workers talking about nothing.
She felt her career had become something that could have been an email.
Sometimes when she was required to be on camera, but didnt need to say anything, she would
point her work computer’s webcam at a video loop of herself on her tablet to make it look
like she was there, but really, she was off doing her own thing.
BT loved mukbangs, where people would eat food on camera.
She found these therapeutic, where she could eat with a feeling like someone else was there
with her.
If no one was taking work seriously, and she now had all this extra time on her hands,
then why not make a few mukbangs myself now, she thought.
For BT, almost instantly, she had an audience.
Every day, she’d notice the same names commenting.
They would send her messages and tips and as she made more videos, she knew exactly
what to expect.
But she wanted more.
To grow her audience, she noticed that when she ate something different or excessive,
she’d attract bigger and bigger numbers.
One day, while in the grocery store, BT found gallon jars of pickles.
She remembered seeing earlier that other people had posted themselves eating these gallon
jars, and those videos got huge numbers.
But, she needed to be different.
Maybe she could just eat the gallon and enjoy it, without the need for a rush.
She looked on her phone and pickles are healthy and low in calories, so it’s going to be
no problem, she thought, and she bought the gallon jug, and prepped herself for the feast.
At home now, excited for lunch, BT cracked open the jug, and started eating the pickles.
She felt good.
She loved the crunch of the cucumber on her teeth as the pickle juice dripped out with
flavor.
Nothing like a nutritious meal, she thought as she started explaining to her audience
the health benefits of pickles.
Pickles are cucumbers and cucumbers are vegetables, so all of this is obviously healthy.
And you know what?
Athletes use pickle juice to replenish their electrolytes and prevent cramps, and can you
believe this?
It’s also a probiotic, so undoubtedly it helps with digestion, and because stomach
bacteria affects the brain, it basically just heals the whole body, she said to everyone
as she slowly finished the gallon jar of the pickles.
She had to take a few bathroom breaks inbetween.
And then she started drinking the juice.
By this time her lips were all puckered up from all the vinegar and she could feel some
sores in her mouth, but this didnt matter, because there’s nothing wrong with a good
pickle, she thought.
Immediately after finishing the whole gallon of pickles, BT felt bloated.
She had seen some people get sick trying to eat it quickly, so doing it slower was absolutely
the right thing to do.
But about 20 minutes after her last sip of the juice, BT could feel her stomach rumble.
At first, it was just a just a little shake, but very quickly, it felt like her stomach
was folding on itself as she clenched her body together as hard as she could, and ran
to the bathroom.
On the toilet now, BT felt like all her organs had liquefied and exited her body into the
bowl.
As the hours passed, she felt almost every drop of water squeeze out of her body, as
her stomach and her intestines kept shaking and quaking.
In a world of hurt, she imagined her brain getting sucked out of her skull and flushed
into the toilet as the trembling in her abdomen become more and more intense.
After all this time, she had no urge to drink any water.
Laying down now, BT could swear her skin was inside out.
She could see herself kneeling on the floor while staring at the wall.
She couldn’t speak but she wished she could.
As she replayed herself eating the pickles, she was there being laughed at and confused.
It kept everyone watching pleasantly amused enough to stay.
But as it starts to feel like an ice pick had been jammed into her head from the back,
she becomes weak, and she calls for 911, as she’s brought to the emergency room where
we are now.
At examination, BT told doctors something about pickles.
It wasn’t coherent because she was slurring her words.
They weren’t exactly sure what happened.
But there’s several clues as to what could be happening because she smells like pickles,
and a blood test reveals that she has Acute Hypernatremia.
Hyper meaning high.
Natr referring to sodium or more formally natrium as indicated by its symbol on the
periodic table of elements.
And emia meaning presence in blood.
High sodium presence in blood.
Acute meaning that there were no underlying problems that are leading to this issue,
aside from the 1 gallon of pickles inside her body at the moment, which brings us to
the first clue.
Pickles are high in sodium.
The one gallon that BT ate has at least 20 grams of sodium in just pickles alone, not
counting the pickle juice that she drank.
If the juice has the same sodium content as the small pickle juicer bottles,
then the juice alone could be around 10-15 grams of sodium.
But this brings us to the difference between sodium and salt.
Table salt is usually sodium chloride, that’s a chemical solid made of sodium and chloride.
The reason why this is important, is because baking soda, which doesnt really taste salty,
can also cause hypernatremia because it’s sodium bicarbonate.
If BT packed around 30 grams of sodium into her body during the gallon pickle mukbang,
then it’s like she ate 78 grams of table salt.
This is a problem because 40 grams of table salt, can be lethal, as doctors see BT quickly
start to lose consciousness and have a seizure.
The medical team notes that BT doesn’t respond when they call her name.
She’s still breathing, but she doesnt respond to pain, her muscles seem stiff, but when
they shine a light into her eyes, they notice that her pupils do respond.
All of this meaning that something is happening to her brain, but why?
This brings us back to hypernatremia, high sodium presence in blood.
If a potentially lethal dose of sodium went in to her body, then that should explain it,
but, is that real?
She had watery stools for hours, meaning there was a net flow out of her body.
So, wouldn’t the sodium have exited her body there?
Maybe.
You see, the interesting thing about sodium is that wherever it is, water will flow towards
it.
In this small science experiment, I take salty water and place it into a semi-permeable tube,
meaning only water can flow in and out of it.
I submerge the tube in a pool of distilled water that has no salt in it.
And you’ll see that water flows in to the tube.
That water flows towards where there's sodium.
If a gallon of pickles and juice were sitting inside BT’s stomach and intestines, and
water follows sodium, then it means not only is the gallon in there, but more water was
drawn in to her gut.
This explains why she felt bloated after finishing the jar.
But the stomach and intestines are muscles, so when they stretch because water is flowing
in, that reflex ripples down and tells the other end of the GI tract to push things out.
This reflex explains why you use the toilet after a big meal.
But in BT’s case, it was a big stretch.
And all those watery stools are big a problem, bringing us to the next clue.
The thing about hypernatremia, is that it’s measured as the amount of sodium per liter
of water.
We already know BT ate a lethal amount of sodium from the pickles, but this isn’t
her only problem.
She also has massive water loss after hours on the toilet.
She doesn’t just have high sodium presence in blood, she has less total body water.
When the denominator is a smaller number, the value increases, making the sodium measurement
even more concentrated.
She may have put out some sodium from the watery stools, but the blood levels point
to the fact that the sodium absorbed in to her body from the small intestines into her
blood…
And if water follows sodium, then it means BT’s salty blood is sucking water out of
all her organs.
The muscles hold on to water, so if they lose some volume, it could cause some cramps, maybe
explaining why she’s stiff.
The liver is big, and if it shrivels up, maybe something could go wrong there, but probably
not too big of a deal.
But if she’s had a seizure and is unresponsive and unconscious, and those are related to
the brain, then it means her brain is shrinking because she’s so salty.
As the water gets sucked out of her brain quickly, the blood vessels shear and rip apart.
This bleeding can cause permanent damage.
If she’s lost a lot of water, then the answer is to replace that water, and add even more
to try to dilute the sodium.
We can’t pull out the sodium from her body, but the more water present, the lower the
sodium as the medical team starts fluids to rehydrate her, but, something’s wrong.
When there’s hypernatremia, the brain will try as hard as it can to resist shrinking.
It makes itself saltier by pumping things in so that less water gets drawn out.
This adaptation takes around a day to happen.
Meaning if the medical team corrects BT’s hypernatremia quickly, then the brain might
be too salty from the adaptation, and the water needed to correct her hypernatremia
would swell in, causing to brain to expand, maybe to the point of crushing up against
the sides of the skull.
The medical team don’t know how long ago she ate all the pickles.
They don’t know exactly the details of how it all went down for her.
But it seems to be working.
BT seems to be doing ok.
But as the hours pass, her blood pressure starts to drop.
Her kidneys stop making urine as they completely shut down.
But her reflexes were still in tact.
Her pupils still reacted to light.
So it may not yet be too late.
And it wasn’t.
As BT regained consciousness in the hospital, she was transferred to the step-down unit
before being sent home, where she was able to make a full recovery.
Gallon of anything challenge, is never worth it.
Thanks so much for watching.
Take care of yourself.
And Be Well.