DON'T DO YOURSELF IN

Death can come in many forms, avocados included. If we can stomach enough of them, many of our daily foods are lethal. Down 30-plus glasses of water in a few hours, for instance, and you'll do yourself in. One major cause of water intoxication is by drug-induced extreme thirst. Of course, the human stomach usually doesn't hold much more than four cups, but the toxic effects of overindulgence can build up as your intestines move the food along. Here's how much you'd need to eat of a few foods to flirt with fatality.

Avocado
This fatty fruit contains almost twice as much potassium as a banana. When too much of the metal hits the bloodstream, it interrupts the heart's rhythmic beating, causing it to slow or even stop. For the average woman that would be 250 cups or 200 avocados, for the average man that would be 300 cups or 240 avocados.

Watermelon
Heaps of any fluid-rich fruit could kill you. Cells inundated by water expand to normalize their electrolyte balance. Swelling like this in the brain can damage nerve cells and pinch off the oxygen supply. For the average woman that would be 80 cups or 3 watermelons. For the average man that would be 130 cups or 4 watermelons.

Coffee
Too much caffeine can make you dizzy, raise your blood pressure, and even give you seizures. Way too much can send your heart into fibrillation, an arrhythmic beat that fails to pump blood. For the average woman that would be 50 cups. For the average man that would be 70 cups.

Dark Chocolate
Like caffeine, the theobromine in cocoa dilates blood vessels and increases heart rate. Scarf enough and these effects can combine to drop pressure while speeding up your ticker a total shutdown. For the average woman that 82 cups or 332 bars. For the average man that 98 cups or 398 bars.

Nutmeg
Eat as little as 6.5 teaspoons of this holiday spice to get a 12-hour high and a two-day hangover, thanks to the psychoactive chemical myristicin. Eat multiple cups to trigger organ failure. For the average woman that 22 cups of ground nutmeg. For the average man that's 27 cups of ground nutmeg.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

City Page Survey

Fall Book Discussion and Movie Series