Chinese Man's Skin Turns Green After Eating Too Many Snails: ‘Escargot, Anyone?’
A man in China has turned green, in more ways than one, and landed in the hospitals after eating too many river snails. Although this might sound crazy, the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) has confirmed the case.
Although He Yong, 24, had suffered from constant abdominal pain for two months, he didn’t seek medical attention until his skin and the white of his eyes began to change color. Even then, it took multiple trips to different hospitals in his home province of Zhejiang before doctors at the nearby Guizhou Aerospace Hospital diagnosed his condition in July.
"I was scared of my own reflection, I looked like The Incredible Hulk," Yong recounted to the Guiyang Evening News.
The cause of his Hulk-like transformation? Liver flukes.
Liver flukes are common parasites found in riverbeds. Snails are typically filled with the infectious various types of flukes, but the infectious critters enjoy living inside of mammalian livers when the opportunity presents itself. Such was the case for Yong, who was consuming river fluke everyday.
"Usually I like to eat fried river snails, especially in the past few months, where I've been eating one plate every night," Yong told local Chinese reporters. Thoroughly cooking snails can eliminate the flukes.
Symptoms of the liver parasite include listlessness, poor appetite, abdominal pain, and cholestasis, which is a condition where bile cannot flow from the liver to the intestines. This latter complication is what causes the skin to turn green. Inflammation of the gallbladder can occur, as well as liver cancer from chronic damage if left untreated.
Yong was successfully treated and released from the hospital, and the CCDC has kept four specimens of the flukes, each nearly 0.5-inch long, as human cases of liver flukes are rare.