> a case of a 60-year-old woman that presented to the emergency department with chest pain after she attended a wedding and ate a large amount of wasabi, assuming it to be an avocado<p>It should probably be cleared up that she suffered left ventricular dysfunction from eating too much wasabi - I had originally read the title thinking she was emotionally distressed from not getting her avocado, but instead it's more like a nervous system shock from the wasabi/wasabi poisoning(?) itself?
I’m curious with something as poorly understood as takotsubo, how they are so confident to rush to the conclusion that the wasabi must have triggered. I actually read the full text and I dont see any discussion on eliminating confounders, and this is just one case.<p>At best this suggests further research is in order, but I’m not convinced anything can be definitively concluded here about the cardiotoxicity of wasabi.<p>Case report or not, what passes for medical research makes me shake my head.
Since no one has mentioned it yet, the etymology of the phrase:<p>The name "takotsubo syndrome" comes from the Japanese word takotsubo "octopus trap", because the left ventricle of the heart takes on a shape resembling an octopus trap when affected by this condition.
This is very reminiscent of something which happened to a friend of mine a couple of years ago. She'd never eaten Japanese food before and I took her to a local sushi joint. She mistook wasabi for guacamole and ended up putting a large lump of it in her mouth. Fortunately, I noticed it immediately and asked her to spit it out, and by then her eyes were already teary and her breathing was quite labored. She didn't at first, perhaps because she was concerned about the embarrassment it'd cause. I had to repeat again, this time adding that she shouldn't be worried about anything and just spit it out and she did. Finally, rinsing the mouth with a jug full of cold water and eating some Gari (the pickled sweet ginger that's served with Sushi) alleviated her symptoms.<p>I texted her the link to this hinting that I might have saved her life that day. Evidently, she still avoids Japanese food, thanks to that incident.
My parents are both very healthy; my dad's 80 and my mom is in her early 70s. They're typically mistaken for much (10-20 years) younger.<p>So it was quite a shock to hear my mom was in the hospital for a heart issue a couple years back.<p>She was ultimately diagnosed with Takotsubo.<p>They had been watching a play at an outdoor theater, and during a very stressful/dramatic/revealing moment in the play (I think with loud drums, etc), she had these chest pains and was rushed to the hospital.<p>Very interesting to learn about this condition I hadn't heard of. The "good news" is that, if you recover, and go a few weeks (I want to say 6+) without a recurrence, the heart re-strengthens and you're not any more likely to have heart issues again than anyone else.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takotsubo_cardiomyopathy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takotsubo_cardiomyopathy</a>
I don't have access to the full article, but my only real question is - HOW? I don't know how you'd mistake a mouthful of wasabi for anything, except maybe trying to swallow a flamethrower. I can't imagine getting through the first mouthful and then moving on to the "eating a large amount" stage.
If I know anything about trending, there's going to be a few new Youtube channels now dedicated to wasabi ingestion, hopefully complete with medical personnel available if something should go wrong.
Every time boulevardesque stuff like this gets too prominent on the HN frontpage, I go do a deep dive into daily politics to see if there is anything that is being buried.