Hi everyone, Doctor Bernard here. This is a case that happened in the United
States, de-identified for the patient, but her story of how she got to where she did,
may not be too unfamiliar. As always, references to subject matter with
links to similar cases published in literature in the description below. I make a new video every month so if you subscribe
and hit like we’ll get some gas station sushi together. A Woman Drank 35% Hydrogen Peroxide At Lunchtime. This Is What Happened To Her Brain. KJ is a 40 year old woman, presenting to the
emergency room, with her eyes wide open, but she was completely unresponsive. She was foaming at the mouth. You see, KJ could never remember a time in
her life, when she was healthy. When she was young, she had an eating disorder
that would periodically put her in the hospital. Oftentimes doctors would document she had
an acute onset psychosis with delusions and hallucinations because of hypoglycemia. Hypo meaning low. Glyc from Greek referring to glucose or sugar
and emia meaning presence in blood. Her erratic eating habits caused hypoglycemia,
which can cause changes in one’s mental status resulting in hallucinations, delusions
and acute onset psychosis. Skin deep, this could have been the cause
of all her problems, but there was a lot more going on. KJ eventually got the help she needed for
her eating disorder, but she never really seemed to get healthier. She was always sick with a cold or the flu. Sometimes she’d have a headache and couldn’t
go to school because of it. She was always exhausted, she’d get a rash
on her face if she was out in the sun for too long, and she’d have body aches and
chills before eventually, acute onset psychosis would bring her back to the hospital. To KJ, these were serious issues, but to everyone
else, she was being a drama queen. You have a headache? Well you sleep too late at night her mom would
say. You have a rash on your face after being in
the sun? What a big surprise, that’s called sunburn,
sweety, mom would say. At doctors visits, her mom would often interject
when the doctor asked a question. Mom downplayed all of KJ’s signs and symptoms
giving doctors the impression that things weren’t as severe as KJ described. And sometimes, Mom would just refuse to bring
KJ to the hospital, locking KJ in her room, telling her to figure it all out herself. As an adult, KJ couldn’t understand why
she felt so awful all the time, but she just accepted it as fact. Maybe she did feel fine, that it was all in
her head, so maybe she should just keep quiet, she thought. In the hospital for an acute onset psychosis
at the age of 24, doctors put KJ on antipsychotic medicines, but she didn’t need antipsychotic
medicines. When she was ready to go home, the nurse involved
in her care wrote a name and a phone number on a card and urged KJ to call it and schedule
an appointment. Not wanting to step on doctors’ toes, the
nurse suspected KJ had autoimmune disease, where the immune system attacks the body. The nurse brought it up on psychiatric rounds,
the blood tests were borderline, the signs and symptoms were nonspecific meaning they
could have been a variety of different things, but everything was shrugged off. At the rheumatology doctor’s office, KJ
was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, also known as Lupus. This made sense with all of her problems,
the rash on her face, the flare ups, always getting sick, the muscle aches and pains,
and the acute onset psychosis. Lupus is a time when the immune system is
actively attacking the body and having the diagnosis finally brought KJ to peace, her
health problems weren’t in her mind, her mom was wrong, she wasn’t being a drama
queen and doctors were overlooking this and they didn’t have KJ’s health in their
best interests, she thought. She took medicines for this lupus, and everything
was OK But a few years later, things started to get
worse again. KJ had swelling in her hands and feet, she
had trouble with her shoulders and hips as doctors determined her immune system had been
attacking them to the point of rheumatoid arthritis, where the immune system starts
attacking the bones and the joints causing permanent damage. This new disease would mean that she would
have to take more medicines, and even then, there’s no guarantee that she won’t need
things like a hip replacement later in life given how aggressively her immune system had
been attacking her joints. But KJ had had enough. She had been taking all these medicines for
her lupus for all these years, and she didn't get any better, she ended up developing even
more disease she thought. And now with this arthritis, doctors wanted
her to take this cocktail of medicines that she couldn’t even afford. If they had only taken her more seriously
when she was younger, maybe all of this could have been prevented, she thought as she went
online and tried to find her own therapies. A while back, someone had recommended to KJ
about these alternative therapies for her lupus. At first, it was smelling some oils, and she
didn’t really feel much better, maybe a little. But as she dived deeper into this space, she
came across hydrogen peroxide therapy. The communities online were adamant, hydrogen
peroxide is basically water, with an extra oxygen. You’re not just having a glass of H2O, you
gonna be chugging a glass of H2O2. And without a doubt, that oxygen is totally
what KJ’s body needed, because when extra oxygen is present, bad things can’t
happen to your cells. And you know, the immune system attacking
your body is just bad things happening to your cells, so definitely to fix KJ’s body
she needed this oxygen. KJ was skeptical at first because she knew
these alternative therapies could be suspect. Maybe something was there but nothing was
standard. None of the communities agreed on a route
of administration for this, because truth is you really shouldn’t be putting this
in your body. Some sources said to infuse it directly in
to the blood, but KJ wasn’t going to do that. Some sources said do not take by mouth but
others said it was fine so long as it was diluted. In the end, KJ decided that she would start
by diluting some and rubbing it on her skin so that the oxygen will absorb right into
her body. And after a few weeks as she got more comfortable,
she would start diluting the hydrogen peroxide to drink. And this is what she did. KJ would purchase 35% “food grade” hydrogen
peroxide bottles from big box retail stores. She read online that refrigerating the 35%
peroxide would help stabilize it chemically, so she’d put it in her fridge right alongside
her food. It was “food grade” anyways, so no problem
here, she thought. One day, KJ transferred the 35% hydrogen peroxide
into clear gallon water jugs. She only drank distilled water now because
tap water had impurities that she believed, made her lupus worse. She didnt know why when she bought the hydrogen
peroxide from the store it came in an opaque bottle. She made her own inference that the peroxide
needed to absorb the energy and positive vibes from around it so that when it was in her
body, it would just cure her of all the autoimmunity that plagued her organs and joints. 35% hydrogen peroxide is dangerous. If left on the skin, it can be corrosive because
it reacts and does in fact, release a bunch of oxygen. KJ made an effort to make sure she marked
the water bottles as hydrogen peroxide, but this time, she was distracted and forgot,
and put them back into the fridge without marking them. One day at lunchtime, KJ was thirsty and needed
to drink some water. She reached in for a bottle and poured herself
a cup, and this time for real, she was drinking H2O2, 35%. Immediately after taking a couple sips of
the concentrated hydrogen peroxide solution, she could feel it fizz and bubble on the way
down. At first she was panicked and didn't know
what was happening because she could feel air just blow right out of her nose, but then
she realized she drank the concentrated solution. She had been meaning to increase the concentration
anyways so that she could optimize the amount of oxygen in her body. And this was the last thing she would remember
as she collapsed to the floor and started emptying her stomach. People who were staying with her came to see
the commotion as KJ became completely unresponsive even though her eyes were wide open as she
was foaming at the mouth and they call for 911 and she’s brought to the emergency room
where we are now. At examination, doctors find that KJ’s blood
pressure was high and she had a decreased level of consciousness. No one knew she drank 35% hydrogen peroxide,
although they suspected she might have consumed something because she was foaming at the mouth. What doctors did know for sure, was that KJ only had
reflexes on one side of her body. This is called hemiplegia, hemi meaning half
and plegia referring to paralysis. KJ was paralyzed on one side of her body,
meaning something could be wrong with her brain, giving doctors some clues as to what’s
happening. A scan of KJ’s brain, revealed that parts
of it were ischemic. Isch- derived from Greek meaning a holding
back of and -emia meaning presence of blood. So parts of KJ’s brain weren’t getting
enough blood flow and therefore not getting enough oxygen which could explain why she’s
paralyzed on one side of her body, but how would something like this happen with hydrogen
peroxide? It’s supposed to hyperoxygenate parts of
the body, right? That’s what they say, but what’s happening
to KJ is a result of too much oxygen present, and so much, that it’s blocking blood flow in her brain. You see, when hydrogen peroxide comes in contact
with human tissue, it reacts. The reason why chemicals react is so that
they can become more stable, meaning hydrogen peroxide when it’s concentrated like 35%,
can be a little unstable. It breaks down to water, that’s stable,
and oxygen, also stable, but when it does this, it releases a lot of heat. In almost all known living beings, cells have
metabolic activity, so they’re creating and using energy to function. A consequence of this activity is the production
of some hydrogen peroxide. We’ve already established that it can be
unstable, and so cells want to stabilize Hydrogen Peroxide by promoting its breakdown to, water
and oxygen, and cells have the machinery to do this through an enzyme, a protein, known
as catalase. Cells generally have an idea of how much hydrogen
peroxide will be in their environment as a result of their metabolism, because they’re
adapted to it. That’s normal to them. They don’t have an idea of when 35% food
grade hydrogen peroxide is going to be ingested. As KJ drank it, the huge influx of hydrogen
peroxide reacted in her cells. And because a lot of heat is released when
that happens, those cells get burned and the tissue becomes injured. Doctors noticed caustic burns in her mouth
and throat when the foaming started to subside. When you consume something by mouth, it goes
into your stomach, in to your intestines and then absorbs into your liver where it goes
into your blood stream. Some of the bubbles will absorb in, but hydrogen
peroxide also keeps reacting as it goes down, causing those gas bubbles to get in to the
liver before it gets in the blood. But, blood contains hemoglobin, which is a
protein that has something called Heme, an iron containing compound, which is how blood
delivers oxygen to the rest of the body. And this kind of iron also happens to encourage
hydrogen peroxide to breakdown to water and oxygen. Typically, you want to have water and oxygen
in the blood, because that’s what it’s made of, but the problem is the amount. 1 milliliter of 35% hydrogen peroxide liberates
100 milliliters of oxygen. So just 5 milliliters of 35% hydrogen peroxide
liberates an entire breath’s volume worth of oxygen. Imagine an air bubble that large floating
around your body. The blood can only have so much oxygen in
it before it can’t have anymore. It’s kind of like how water can only have
so much salt dissolved in it. Or coffee can only have so much sugar in it. Then the bubbles start to form in the blood,
blocking flow. When this gets to the brain, blood cant flow
through anymore, meaning even if KJ had “hyper oxygenated” her body with hydrogen peroxide,
she’s actually blocked blood flow with oxygen bubbles, causing ischemia, a holding back
of the presence of blood, leading to permanent brain damage. Is there anything doctors can do to reverse
this? Maybe. This brings us to a concept called solubility. Salt dissolving in water is a solid dissolving
in a liquid. But oxygen dissolving in blood is a gas dissolving
in a liquid. Gases have a lot of particles which are moving
around and have a lot space in between. When pressure is increased, the average space
between gas particles decreases and the particles come in to contact with the liquid more often,
helping to increase the amount of gas that can dissolve in liquid. If KJ’s blood can’t hold anymore oxygen
because hydrogen peroxide has liberated huge amounts of oxygen in, then one solution would
be to put her in a high pressure chamber to force more oxygen in to her blood. We would just need enough to break up the
blockage in her brain to get more blood flowing though. This hyperbaric oxygen therapy isn’t available
at all hospitals, but luckily for KJ, the one she was at did have it, as she was sent
in. The US Poison Centers have logged these accidental
hydrogen peroxide ingestion cases, it’s been reported hundreds of times over the last
10 years, so that’s a minimum of how many times this has happened, because sometimes
it doesnt get reported, or a patient can be admitted into the hospital and no one would
have ever known about the case being related to hydrogen peroxide ingestion. And just a quick commentary on the folks selling
hydrogen peroxide as medicine. At 35% concentration, it’s considered a
hazardous material to ship, hazmat, but yet food grade is on the label making people think
it’s no big deal. Other times online, within the same item title,
they call it both 35% and 7.99% together. It can only be one of these, so not sure how
they’re justifying it as 35%. And as for hydrogen peroxide use, you might
remember a time when it was used to clean cuts and wounds. Since maybe mid 2000’s, hydrogen peroxide
is not commonly recommended for that irrigation as it appears it really doesnt do that much
against bacteria that might get in the wound, and in some cases, hydrogen peroxide might
impede wound healing, and in 1 reported case, it led to gas bubbles blocking blood flow
in the hospital in a patient, bringing us back to KJ. After hyperbaric oxygen therapy, her brain
no longer had signs of ischemia. Doctors treated the caustic injury to her
throat and esophagus. After more than a week in the hospital, KJ
was sent to a rehabilitation center to try and regain the function she lost during this
brain injury, as she was able to make a recovery. I understand when people have grievances with
the health system, but turning to this dark side not only didn't help KJ’s autoimmune
disease, it caused other major issues that could have been prevented. Thanks so much for watching. Take care of yourself. And be well.
Edit: I restarted 3 times at the beginning because she did what now?
Edit 2: so she continues to suffer from her initial issue(s) that caused her to take such drastic measures? Hopefully she’s getting help and trusts doctors more.
I don't have time to watch the video right now. How much is safe to drink? Now I'm curious to try some.