Beware of The cinnamon Challenge, it can KILL YOU……
If you haven’t taken the cinnamon challenge…DON’T!! I know it may seem harmless and your friends may have tried it, but swallowing a tablespoon full of cinnamon without water can seriously DAMAGE your lungs!
Cinnamon is made from tree bark and contains cellulose fibers that don’t easily break down. Animal research suggests that when cinnamon gets into the lungs, it can cause scarring, said report co-author Dr. Steven E. Lipshultz, a pediatrics professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
If you’re not familiar with the cinnamon challenge, its a prank on YouTube that has gone viral, its done mostly by teens and stupid adults but what most of them don’t know is that it has led to many hospitalizations. In 2011, the American Association of Poison Control Center reported 51 calls about teens doing the prank and it drastically increased to 222 just last year.
A 16 year-old girl named Dejah Reed said she took the challenge four times – the fourth time was with a friend who didn’t want to try it alone and it almost cost her her life! Deja is now an advocate to stop the cinnamon challenge prank, who is seen below. Check out her thrilling story below….
“I was laughing very hard and I coughed it out and I inhaled it into my lungs,” she said. “I couldn’t breathe.”
Her father, Fred Reed, said he arrived home soon after to find Dejah “a pale bluish color. It was very terrifying. I threw her over my shoulder” and drove to a nearby emergency room.
Dejah was hospitalized for four days and went home with an inhaler and said she still has to use it when she gets short of breath from running or talking too fast. Her dad said she’d never had asthma or breathing problems before.
Dejah said she’d read about the challenge on Facebook and other social networking sites and “thought it would be cool” to try.
Now she knows “it’s not cool and it’s dangerous.”
“People with asthma or other respiratory conditions are at greater risk of having this result in shortness of breath and trouble breathing,” according to an alert posted on the association’s website.
Dr. Stephen Pont, a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics and an Austin, Texas pediatrician, said the report is “a call to arms to parents and doctors to be aware of things like the cinnamon challenge” and to pay attention to what their kids are viewing online.
An Ypsilanti, Mich., another teen who was hospitalized for a collapsed lung after trying the cinnamon challenge heartily supports the new advice and started her own website – _ telling teens to “just say no” to the fad.
