While enjoying a meal at the wedding, the woman began to feel a painful pressure in her chest that then spread to her arms. The sensation persisted for several hours, although the pain subsided enough that she opted to remain at the reception. The next day, chest pain, discomfort and general feelings of weakness prompted her to seek medical care.
What happened next: Emergency room physicians performed an ultrasound and detected abnormal activity in the patient’s left ventricle, the part of the heart that performs most of the organ’s pumping action. Some segments of the heart muscle were not contracting at all, and other segments had reduced contractions. The disruption was “moderate to severe,” doctors wrote in a report of the case.
The diagnosis: Doctors determined the woman was experiencing a condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as “broken heart syndrome,” which produces symptoms that mimic a heart attack, such as chest pain and difficulty breathing. “Takotsubo” refers to a type of Japanese jar used to trap octopuses; the condition distorts the muscles of the left ventricle, making it look like a narrow-necked octopus-catching jar.
Treatment: The woman was given steroids and medications to lower blood pressure, including ACE inhibitors, which relax arteries and veins, and beta-blockers, which block the effects of stress hormones on the heart. Doctors sent her to a cardiac rehabilitation center. After a month, an echocardiogram showed that the patient’s heart activity had returned to normal.
What makes the case unique: Prior to this case, scientific studies had linked takotsubo cardiomyopathy to drug use, neurological illness, physical or emotional stress, and allergic reactions to certain foods. But this case had a cause that had never been recorded before: Minutes before symptoms developed, the woman had mistook wasabi for avocado and swallowed a teaspoon-sized dose.
This is the first example of broken heart syndrome linked to wasabi consumption. Although some of the compounds in wasabi may be beneficial to health, such as cancer-fighting compounds, ingesting an unusually large amount of wasabi may trigger an extreme stress response in the patient, which may interfere with normal heart function.