Night Listening | This is a common summer fruit. Be careful of "poisoning" if you eat too much, which can be fatal in severe cases!

It is the season for eating lychees again. As the saying goes, "If I can eat 300 lychees a day, I will be willing to live in Lingnan forever." The deliciousness of lychees is not only praised by Su Dongpo in his poems, but also introduced to the world by Yang Guifei with the words "A horse gallops through the red dust, and the concubine smiles. No one knows that it is the lychees that are coming."

But don't really eat 300 lychees a day as Su Dongpo said. After all, every summer there are people who go to the hospital because of eating too many lychees.

Image source: Tuchong Creative (unauthorized reproduction)

What is litchi disease

I am not trying to scare you. Once litchi disease occurs, it will cause hypoglycemia in the human body and may even cause hypoglycemic encephalopathy .

People with mild symptoms may experience dizziness, sweating, pale complexion, fatigue, and palpitations. Severe cases may experience cold limbs, low blood pressure, and even convulsions, coma, and even shock and death.

Therefore, although litchi disease is not so easy to occur, we should never underestimate it.

As for why there is litchi disease, there is no accurate conclusion in medicine at present. However, through summarizing a large number of disease processes, eating a large number of litchis on an empty stomach is the key to litchi disease. Therefore, litchi can be eaten, but it is necessary to avoid eating it on an empty stomach, and do not eat too much, and stop when you have enough .

Image source: Tuchong Creative (unauthorized reproduction)

And because lychees contain more glucose, sucrose and fructose, eating too much at one time will stimulate the body to produce a large amount of insulin in a short period of time, lowering blood sugar concentration. Children, in particular, have insufficient self-regulation ability in their bodies and poor ability to inactivate insulin, making them more prone to hypoglycemia , so they should pay special attention.

How to avoid the occurrence of "litchi disease"?

First of all, we can eat some carbohydrate-containing foods before and after eating lychees to fill our stomachs and avoid being hungry .

Secondly, the amount should be controlled. An average adult should eat 200 grams a day, which is about 10 ordinary lychees . If you count the popular lychee king in the past two years, 4 to 5 are enough. For children, it is best not to eat more than 5 ordinary-sized lychees a day.

Finally, it must be emphasized that when eating lychees, you must choose fully ripe ones . Lychees that are slightly raw have a higher risk of causing lychee disease and also have a bad taste.

Image source: Tuchong Creative (unauthorized reproduction)

That’s all for today. See you next time.

Reviewer | Chen Ran, Associate Research Librarian (Science Communication) / Senior Engineer, COFCO Nutrition and Health Research Institute