“I could eat lychees three hundred a day, never regretting to live in Lingnan forever.” With the lychee season in full swing, people are scrambling to taste the sweet and succulent fresh fruit. A 23-year-old young woman, Ms. Wei, also wanted to indulge her craving. However, after eating five jin of lychees, she became dizzy and fainted.
Yesterday, a reporter at the Affiliated Hospital met the newly awakened Ms. Wei, who said sheepishly, "It was all caused by my greed for food." Ms. Wei considers herself a connoisseur of sweets and loves to search for all kinds of desserts and delicacies. With lychees recently on the market, she was not about to miss out on this fine fruit. She bought five jin of lychees, ate them while watching a movie, and in the comfort of the moment, the five jin of lychees were unknowingly finished.
As she burped and was cleaning up the lychee peels, Ms. Wei suddenly felt a wave of nausea, followed by symptoms like dizziness, palpitations, weakness, and cold sweeps. Just as she was about to call for her family, she felt the world spin and fainted. 10 minutes later, Ms. Wei regained consciousness, but she was still very weak, and her family quickly called for an ambulance.
After an examination by the emergency doctor, it was determined that Ms. Wei had hypoglycemia from eating too many lychees. "Lychees are so sweet, how can they cause hypoglycemia?" In response, Dr. Gong Yongjun explained that although the sugar in lychees is fructose, once ingested by the body, it must be converted into glucose by the enzyme transferase before it can be absorbed. When too many lychees are eaten, the supply of transferase is insufficient. Not only can it not convert the fructose, but it also leads to a lack of glucose in the blood, causing symptoms similar to hypoglycemia such as dizziness, palpitations, pale complexion, dizziness, and fainting. This is medically known as acute lychee poisoning, also called "lychee disease."