Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Food posioning

Caused by: bad food

Symptoms: Nausea (basically anything eaten after the bad food) and stomach pain (frequent)
Duration: Usually the effects last 24 to 48 hours. The vomiting starts within 2 to 6 hours of eating the bad food and as time progresses, it becomes infrequent and diarrhea sets in (which stops after 48 hours).

Treatment: Fresh air, drinking ginger ale/Gatorade (to avoid dehydration), Wal-Dram II (Meclizine tablets, antiemetic) and crushed ginger mixed in water.

Lessons learned
Mistake 1: Despite feeling odd about the food, I ate it - Never will I eat something that tastes different.

Mistake 2: I took a lot of time before heeding to advice, thinking its just a simple stomach upset - Take advice at the earliest.

Also I decided to lower the alcohol intake. Infrequent high doses of alcohol must be bad for the stomach.

The story
I got poisoned after dining at a Chinese restaurant (Fort collins, CO). Although general tso chicken I ordered, looked and tasted different, I ate the whole thing. I even remarked to my friend’s that that was no general Tso that I know of!. After dinner we headed out to a bar and had three shots of vodka. Usually I get the buzz after three shots (my safe limit), but not this time. A bit perplexed, I went to bed and started throwing up around 5 in the morning. I assumed it must be the alcohol. Frankly I don’t like to be disturbed in sleep, so I went back to bed. Again at 7 i vomited. Now for some strange reason, I felt stupid that I drank three shots of vodka. So I drank around 1.5 liters of water to compensate for the alcohol. Promptly came the water. That made me conclude that it should not be the alcohol. The thing with alcohol is that you vomit only once and its done. I assumed that my stomach is upset for some strange reason and drank water mixed with ginger. Also I took some butter milk to compensate for the acidity, no effect. In Panic mode, I started listening to advice and concluded it was food poisoning. Went to the drug store and took 2 tablets of Wal-Dram II. By the time I visited the drug store the condition was near stable.

References
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001652.htm
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/food_poisoning/article_em.htm

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