A Girl Drank 2 Bubble Teas A Day, This Is How Her Body Shut Down

Walking down a busy street on a warm, sunny afternoon after a tiring day, you’re craving something refreshing. Suddenly, you see it: a colorful bubble tea shop, beckoning you in. You order your favorite flavor, excitedly watching as the server fills the cup with chewy tapioca pearls, quick swirl of flavour, ice, and sweet, milky tea. You take that first satisfying sip, completely unaware of the dangers lurking within each delicious gulp. But did you know that beneath this innocent looking cup of

bubble tea, the wildly popular drink that has taken the world by storm, lies a silent killer? Whether it's the sweet deception of sugar content, the unsuspecting chewy choking hazards, or another hidden danger lying in wait... Maybe bubble tea isn't as refreshing as we thought. May 2020. An 18-year-old teenager in China developed an insatiable craving for bubble tea. The weather was getting hot in Shanghai, and for an entire month, she unknowingly set herself on a dangerous path downing the icy

drinks, sometimes even drinking two of the sweet beverages a day. The girl felt increasingly more thirsty over the days, and continued to drink more bubble tea as well as some soft drinks to quench this newfound thirst, but something was feeling off. She was getting nauseous and uncomfortable, having to make bathroom trips more often, until one day she collapsed in her home. The teenager’s unconscious body was found by her worried family, and rushed to Shanghai's Ruijin Hospital. When medical s

taff measured her blood sugar, they found it dangerously high, having skyrocketed to 25 times the normal level due to the massive sugar intake from her bubble tea habit. The teenager, dubbed “Bubble Tea Girl” by the internet, had slipped into a coma from hyperglycemia— high blood sugar levels. But was this just a freak accident, or is this a more common situation than we might think? The summer prior to Bubble Tea Girl’s hospitalization, a 16-year old boy in Hangzhou was going through a similar

predicament. Xiao Ying was hurried into the ER with a high fever, and his blood sugar levels measuring 124 millimoles per liter— about 20 times higher than average. The teenager had a daily habit of drinking bubble tea, and had suddenly started to feel extremely thirsty, even though he was drinking excessive amounts of water, feeling restless, and quite nauseous. By the time he lost consciousness, the situation was dire. In the hospital, his worried parents revealed that the teen drank milk tea

and soda daily, and, since he ate copious amounts of snacks like fried food and barbecue, but still felt hungry, they had just assumed he was growing. Both teenagers were diagnosed with a condition called diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA for short; a serious condition when there’s not enough insulin being produced in your body to help lower the extreme amounts of sugar in the blood, in order to process it to energy. Without enough insulin, the body starts breaking down fats as an emergency fuel sou

rce. The liver processes the fat into ketones, which normally only ever happens when your body hasn’t had a meal for an extended period of time. However, with DKA, fat is broken down too rapidly for the body to process. The ketones build up to dangerous levels in your bloodstream, causing your blood to become more acidic and if untreated, can lead to dehydration, a coma, and in severe cases, death. Xiao Ying’s doctors pointed out that DKA was very difficult to manage, transferring the teenager t

o the ICU. However, the teenagers weren’t the only ones who got their lives in jeopardy from drinking bubble tea. Another bizarre case from 2019 in Zhejiang involves a 14-year-old girl, dubbed “Xiao Shen”, experiencing agonizing abdominal pain, severe bloating, and constipation. When she finally dragged herself to the hospital after being unable to eat or have a bowel movement for several days, her painful ordeal alerted doctors to investigate the cause. Dr Zhang Louwei, the primary physician on

Xiao Shen’s case, was shocked when he ordered an abdominal CT scan, and ended up discovering small, circular objects filling the girl’s entire digestive system. There were over 100 of the granular, high-density shadows visible on the scan. Incredulous, he questioned the girl about whether she had somehow eaten anything indigestible recently. Xiao Shen stammered that she had one glass of bubble tea 5 days ago— it seemed that the shadows were tapioca pearls lodged inside her gastrointestinal trac

t! When Xiao Shen’s CT scan went viral, many health professionals were skeptical about the case. In an interview with Live Science, Dr Lina Felipez, pediatric gastroenterologist, said that the ingredients in bubble tea like tapioca, and common additives like guar gum, are “radiopaque”, which means they wouldn’t show up on CT scans or X-rays. And that a possible explanation might be an uncommon additive in the bubble tea’s tapioca pearls that could’ve helped them show up as shadows on the CT scan

. On the other hand, Dr Zhang suspected Xiao Shen hadn’t exactly been honest about the amount of bubble tea she drank, in order to hide the truth from her parents who were right there in his office with her. He noted that she might have accumulated the amount of bubble tea pearls over a period of time, that it was probably not only one cup. For Xiao Shen’s treatment, he ended up prescribing laxatives to expel the undigested pearls. Huh. So are tapioca pearls really hard to digest? They’re not su

pposed to be. Tapioca is essentially a starch extracted from cassava root, with negligible amounts of protein and other nutrients. According to a 2009 comparative analysis studying different crops, cassava is actually one of the most easily digestible root vegetable-derived starches. However, Xiao Shen wasn’t the only person who had difficulty digesting bubble tea— in January 2020, a 13-year old boy in China’s Henan province underwent emergency surgery to remove two large lumps of undigested tap

ioca pearls from his intestines. He had consumed just two cups of bubble tea, so not exactly what you’d consider a copious amount. And a CT scan for a separate case in Tainan, Taiwan might have solved the CT scan mystery. September 2017, an 18-year old girl got into a traffic accident. Doctors in the emergency department of National Cheng Kung University Hospital requested a non-contrasted CT scan of the patient’s abdomen to confirm a liver laceration, but accidentally stumbled across something

else. They had found bubble tea pearls clearly visible in the girl’s stomach, and her duodenum—the first section of the small intestine. They found out that the patient had drank a cup of bubble tea three hours prior to the accident, and reported their findings in the Journal of Acute Medicine due to the unusual circumstances, concluding that boba pearls should be considered as a possible explanation for the pearl-like lesions being visible in these types of scans. Fortunately for Xiao Shen, the

laxatives did work. She was able to pass the pearls, ending her painful ordeal, instead of having to undergo emergency surgery to remove the blockage as well. After five days in a coma, hooked up on a ventilator and dialysis machine, "Bubble Tea Girl" finally woke up. She vowed to never drink bubble tea again, losing 35 kilograms in under a month. Thankfully Xiao Ying also recovered, promising to change his lifestyle and dietary habits, and start exercising. So, how do we actually know when how

much is too much? A typical 16 ounce cup of bubble tea contains 38 grams of sugar— which exceeds the upper limit of added sugar intake recommended by the US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. So, if you’re planning to have a cup of boba, you might want to budget for it by lowering your sugar intake for other things you plan to eat, and also ask for a lower amount of sugar, which is an option in most bubble tea stores. If you find that the chewy pearls cause some indigestion, consider forgoi

ng them or choosing another topping in your drink, like pudding or grass jelly. But, what happens if you’re trying bubble tea for the first time? On April 29th, John Michael Race, a Texas-based TikToker was filming himself in his car trying boba tea for the first time after he found milk tea delicious and had to go back to the store for more. John was referring to it as "bawbuh" and, with a confused chuckle, shook the tapioca pearls, believing they were meant to dissolve. Milk tea is so good, sh

e said I had to try the bawbuhs in it this time, so add the little, she said to shake it and I think they’re supposed to dissolve, but I’m obsessed, you just poke a hole in it. Oh my God I ch—ed on something! My car! My car! Oh my God. John's Tiktok video with the caption "you're supposed to chew apparently" exploded overnight, now sitting at 19 million views. While TikTokers were enthralled by the absurdity of the situation, and his genuine surprise at choking on the drink, making memes and eve

n a musical remix on Twitter, was John's simple mistake so unexpected? In 2019, a 19-year old college student in China was out with her brother to visit their friends and hang out. The siblings decided to stop by to get bubble tea— an obvious choice to get an icy drink on the sweltering last day of June. The duo headed to their friend’s house, talking and laughing, when suddenly, three of the tapioca pearls went down the wrong pipe, blocking the girl’s trachea. Choking, the girl collapsed in fro

nt of her friend’s house, leaving her stunned brother and friend to call for medical help. On the way to the hospital, her hands were already turning black from a lack of oxygen, and she fell into a coma. Medical professionals tried resuscitating the girl as soon as she arrived at the hospital, but it was too late. But could a bubble tea sip truly pose a choking risk? The Federal Institute for Risk Management in Germany wrote a report about this in 2012, cautioning parents about the aspiration a

ccident risk, and how children, especially under the age of four, could get the bubbles sucked into their lungs. They advised that if they absolutely had to taste it, a good solution would be to skip the straw. So what about adults, like John? John embraced his unexpected internet fame gracefully. A couple days after his first TikTok, he ended up filming a sequel—his second encounter with boba tea. This time, there was no mess. He smiles at the camera and offers a simple but critical advice to h

is audience, a lesson he learned the hard way: "chew and swallow." Chew and swallow. The next time you're tempted to indulge in bubble tea, remember—as always, moderation is key. Being more mindful about what you consume, and how it affects your body would help understand what works for you. Otherwise you might find a bitter dose of reali-tea… Wouldn’t that really suck? If you’d like to find out how one woman invented boba tea by complete accident, and how it became a worldwide sensation despite

its deadly history, click the video on your screen!