Can Eating a Sandwich Stop Your Heart?
A little over a year ago, a 25-year-old woman visited University Hospital Birmingham in England complaining of frequent 10-second bouts of nausea and lightheadedness, which was sometimes so intense it caused her to pass out.
"She was very thin, she was pale, a very sensible young woman," says Una Martin, a clinical pharmacologist at the hospital assigned to the case shortly after the woman's first visit. She had no history of smoking, heavy drinking or psychiatric disorders. Strangely, her fainting episodes coincided with eating sandwiches and drinking fizzy beverages.
By the time Martin saw her, the woman had been bounced from one physician to the next and hospitalized twice, once in 2001 and once in 2007—but her condition remained a mystery.
