A Boy Ate 150 Gummy Vitamins For Breakfast. This Is What Happened To His Bones. TJ is a 14 year old boy, presenting to the
emergency room with muscle weakness, stomach pain, and a broken arm. Sitting in triage as he was deemed low priority
by hospital staff, he begins to lose consciousness, before slipping into a coma. You see, last spring, TJ and his mother had
had enough. Coming home from school everyday, TJ would
see his dad wasted away in a drunken haze. One day, his dad went out to buy groceries. He never saw his dad again. His now-single mother thought to move to America,
so the two together went to the big city to visit. They weren’t poor, but neither spoke English,
nor did they realize that things here are a bit different than at home. Since childhood, TJ had been a fan of gummy
candies. He was curious to see what they tasted like
in America, so his mother bought him many bottles. To them, candy coming in a bottle didn’t
seem strange, after all, they thought everything was supposed to be nice in America. Everyday, he would eat 30-40 pieces, not knowing
the candies were actually vitamins. As the days went on, TJ’s mother noticed
that his belly was becoming swollen. They always joked back home that American
food makes one fat, so maybe eat a little less, she thought. One morning, while watching some videos, TJ
opened a new bottle of gummies, and without realizing it, ate all 150 pieces. Nothing like a good breakfast, he thought. About an hour after eating the whole bottle
of gummy vitamins, TJ can’t stop urinating. He begins to cry out in pain. He’s suffering a massive stomach ache and
tells his mom that he feels like a giant rubber band is squeezing him. This epigastric pain begins to push into his
throat. As his mother tries to lay him down, TJ trips,
falls, and breaks his arm. The two call for help. Inside the ambulance, TJ feels nauseous and
starts to experience shock from his accident as he’s brought to the emergency room where
we are now. Upon arrival, the admitting nurse triaged
TJ’s case, thinking it to be a mere bone fracture. But as he slipped into coma, immediate attention
was brought to him. The broken bones were merely a sign of underlying
problems, and given the patient’s history of present illness, there’s several clues
as to what’s happening. At physical examination dry skin was found
on his legs, along with fractured nails and obvious ascites, or fluid buildup causing
a swollen stomach. The latter, means that TJ has liver damage,
but a blood test indicates that his liver function is normal and that he’s really
suffering from hypercalcemia. Hyper meaning high. Calce short for calcium which is an essential
electrolyte And emia meaning presence in blood. High calcium presence in blood. Looking at the bottle of the gummy vitamins
TJ ate, there is no calcium to be found. His mother tells the attending physician that
he hasn’t vomited or defected since eating all 150 gummies for breakfast, meaning there
hasn’t been been a major net flow of food out of his body. Those vitamins should be floating around,
somewhere in his blood, and thus should be detectable in large amounts. Additional sampling of blood finds no significant
elevations in vitamins A through E, and no elevations in iodine, zinc, selenium. Instead, it reveals that TJ is dehydrated,
which is consistent with his profuse urination before falling into coma, but also leads us
to the first clue. Absence of vitamins in blood after eating
150 gummy vitamins means they could have exited the body in the urine. His profuse urination before presenting to
the emergency room could be consistent with this. Vitamins B and C are classified as water soluble,
meaning they dissolve in water, concentrate in the kidneys, and appear in urine. But this doesn’t make sense for vitamins
A and D, which are fat soluble vitamins, meaning they are oils and because oils don’t mix
with water, these vitamins can’t be urinated out. Humans don’t pee fat. So if they aren’t in TJ’s blood, can’t
be urinated out, and he didn’t vomit or defacate in the ensuing time period, then it
means the excess vitamins A and D must be hiding somewhere in his organs. But which organ could it be? It couldn’t be the muscles as they’re
a tissue that holds on to water, which doesn’t mix well with fat. It couldn’t be the heart as that’s almost
entirely a muscle too. It could be the brain and the nerves as those
are made of 60% fat, but to get there would mean the vitamins would have had to flow through
the blood first, which they didn’t. And because TJ ate the vitamins, the gummies
traveled from his stomach into his intestines and absorbed into his liver. Which was shown earlier to be damaged with
the physical sign of ascites. This indicates that TJ is suffering from hypervitaminosis
and it’s responsible for his liver damage, his hypercalcemia and his broken bones. Transjugular liver biopsy, where a catheter
is placed through the jugular vein in the neck, guided through the heart and down into
the liver where a sample is collected, finds that TJ has an increased number of fat-laden
stellate cells, meaning that vitamin A had been accumulating for some time in his liver,
engorging the cells, causing them to die and form scar tissue inside the liver. This means that TJ is experiencing vitamin
A induced hepatotoxicity, and that the 30-40 gummy vitamins he ate like candy everyday
since arriving to America, were slowly destroying his liver. This makes sense because in eating 150 gummy
vitamins for breakfast, TJ had consumed 187,000 IU of vitamin A in a single sitting. You would have to eat 720 eggs to have matched
this vitamin A intake equal to 63 times the recommended daily amount and because he would
typically eat 30-40 pieces per day which is 20 times the recommended daily dose in addition
to his other foods, then we can conclude that his liver damage is because of Hypervitaminosis
A due to mistaken ingestion of gummy vitamins as candy. Vitamin A, formally retinol, has been shown
to be an antagonist on vitamin D action, meaning when there’s too much of A in the body,
then the effect of D could be impaired. But lets go back to the name of TJ’s condition
hypercalcemia. High calcium presence in blood. Vitamin D acts by increasing intestinal absorption
of calcium, meaning it increases calcium levels in the body through more uptake in food. TJ didn’t eat any extra calcium in his gummy
vitamins, but he did eat 75,000 units of vitamin D, 188 times the recommended daily value. And if vitamin A blocks the effect of vitamin
D, and prevents calcium in the intestines from absorbing it, then the source of his
hypercalcemia must be coming from something breaking down and dissolving inside his body,
and the largest stores of endogenous calcium, are the bones. Vitamin A is metabolized in the body to active
retinoic acid, which is known to stimulate osteoclast formation. Osteo meaning bone, and clast from Ancient
Greek clastos meaning broken. Cells that soften, then slowly break bone
down, and release the remaining calcium into the blood. This bone resorption had been accumulating
in TJ since he started unknowingly eating gummy vitamins like candy, until it reached
a threshold where a simple fall that should have been no problem for a previously healthy
14 year old boy, fractured multiple bones in his arm. The consumption of excess nutrients causing
bodily injury is a recurring modern world phenomenon. Milk was fortified with vitamin D in order
to prevent rickets, or the softening of bone that can cause permanent deformation in children. Because that vitamin D increased intestinal
calcium absorption and the fortification wasn’t standardized, the British Pediatric Association
in 1956 found 204 cases hypercalemia in infants who suffered vitamin d intoxication by drinking
milk. This led to a failure to thrive that could have
permanently stunted their growth. Epidemiological surveys showed that in Sweden
and Norway, vitamin A intake was on average, 6 times higher than in Southern Europe. In persons who's intake of vitamin A exceeded
5000 units per day, bone mineral density was 10% less and their risk of hip fracture was
more than double that of someone who consumed less than 5000 units per day. In 1597, a Dutch explorer stopped on Nova
Zembla in modern day Canada while trying to reach Indonesia. His men ate polar bear liver, and their skin
started sloughing off in the dead of winter as they became gravely ill. It was identified in 1942 that vitamin A was
the toxic component in seal and polar bear liver because in carnivores, 100 grams of
liver contains anywhere from 1.3-1.8 million units of retinol compared to 50,000 units
in an herbivore liver. In Kenya, a Homo Erectus skeleton dated from
about 1.5 million years ago, was found to have large osteocytes with lacunae that produce
osteolysis, the breaking down of bone with evidence of partial dissolution of the bone
matrix. The weakening of structural integrity in bones
is characteristic of vitamin A intoxication, and the dating of the skeleton coincides with
a hypothesized increase in meat consumption in early humans. They may not have understood which animal
livers were ok to eat, meaning that the mechanism of liver damage, ascites, hypercalcemia, and
bone deterioration is the same in this protohuman, as it is in TJ. We can mend the fractured bones. We can advise him on temporary behavioral
changes to limit his risk of further fractures. We can drain his ascites with diuretics where
spironolactone and furosemide, through different mechanisms increase sodium resorption in the
kidneys and because water flows toward the concentration gradient, water flows towards
the sodium, they help stimulate natriuresis. But there isn’t any way for us to directly
remove the vitamin A from his liver. He will have to bear the pain of his acute
and chronic Hypervitaminosis A until his liver has sufficient time to clear the retinyl esters. After all, there isn’t a better organ that
removes toxins from the body, than the liver. Pediatric research is out of the scope of
my training, it’s not an area I work in day to day, but the children like TJ are our future,
and I want to contribute to it. So, part of the proceeds from this sponsored
video will be donated to the Shriners Hospitals for Children, and my colleague and I will personally match
that amount. Thank you to Audible for sponsoring this video. Audible helps you listen to more books by
letting you switch seamlessly between devices, picking up exactly where you left off. Whether it's on your phone, through your car,
from a tablet, or at home on an Amazon Echo, you can get through tons of books (hands and
eyes-free) while doing almost anything. For my free book, I chose The Family That
Couldn’t Sleep, A Medical Mystery by DT Max Max. It highlights the story of prions and the
disease kuru, which is an infectious disease that results in fatal familial insomnia, where
the host has holes eaten into their brains. I won’t ruin the rest for you so go to Audible
dot com slash Chubbyemu or text “Chubbyemu” to 500500 to get a free book and to get started. Videomaking is not my full-time job. I definitely don’t do this for money, but there are I certainly don’t do this for clout, and
I don’t do this for money, but there are So any extras that I am
fortunate enough to get, I want to contribute to a better cause. I want to do good with the extras that I am
fortunate enough to get right now. or text “Chubbyemu” to 500500 to check out Audible. or text “Chubbyemu” to 500500 to get started. Because TJ and his mother were only visiting
the United States, we don’t know what became of them. At discharge, nail and skin dystrophy were
beginning to resolve and the ascites was diminished, indicating some recovery of liver damage. Because he realized the gummies he ate weren’t
candy but were actually vitamins, immediate cessation of supplemental intake ensued. A follow-up date was scheduled, but never
honored by the patient. So while the ultimate, final outcome of TJ
isn’t known, the last time we saw him, he was on the right track to recovery. Thank you so much for watching. Take care of yourself. And Be well.
Bone hurting chews
This is how you get boneitis.
edit: Boneitis gold?!? Thank you kind stranger ಠωŕ˛
I've seen a few videos from this guy and every time I learn something new. I was on a high dose of Vitamin A for a while a few years back. I remember having to get blood test done regularly as my doctor was concerned with my liver. After all these years, I know why.
He ate a considerable amount more the 150.
The thumbnail is HORRIFYING.
This guy's videos always fill me with a profound sense of anxiety.
Aren't vitamin gummies really expensive? Would you not stop to think that maybe there's a reason they are way more expensive than normal gummy bears?
Gummies are kind of an odd thing to consider a good breakfast...
He should have stuck with bacon pancakes for breakfast.