Poisoning with cassava: Symptoms and treatment

The improper use of cassava in general invisible causes us to be poisoned by cassava. However, you can prevent and overcome it if you are fully equipped with knowledge related to this problem.

So what are the symptoms of cassava poisoning and how to handle it? Please follow the content in the following article for specific answers.

Why can eating cassava cause poisoning?

Cassava is a food with very high nutritional value. The main components of cassava are starch and other nutrients such as fiber, fat, and protein. However, the amount of toxins in cassava is also very high. The toxin in cassava is cyanhydric acid (HCN), a substance that can be deadly.

Eating cassava improperly can lead to poisoning

Symptoms of cassava poisoning

Depending on the extent of poisoning , the symptoms of the disease will vary:

Poisoning at a mild level

For patients with mild cassava poisoning, patients often have symptoms such as headache, nausea, body fatigue, dry nose and throat, dizziness. If in this situation, you lie down for a few minutes and then mix a cup of hot sugar water, the body will return to normal.

Acute poisoning, severe poisoning

For patients with acute poisoning, the body will experience symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, headache, accompanied by convulsions, neurological disorders, dilated pupils, muscles pale body, slow breathing.

• Symptoms of digestive disorders: Nausea, abdominal pain, diarrhea.
• Manifestations of neurological disorders: Dizziness, headache, in more severe cases, the patient will have dilated pupils , convulsions and coma.
• Symptoms of respiratory disorders: Asphyxiation, the body is cyanosis, if acute respiratory failure is very likely to lead to death.

Poisoning cassava can cause acute respiratory failure

In case if you encounter the above symptoms without taking the patient to the emergency room in time, the patient will die within 30 minutes. However, if treated early, the patient's health will return to normal and cause no sequelae.

In order to promptly handle cassava poisoning, the patient should be induced to vomit and drink a cup of hot sugar water or drink more sugarcane juice. After that, the patient needs to be taken to the intensive care unit or anti-toxic for further treatment.

Folk tips to deal with cassava poisoning

In addition to having to take the patient to the hospital, when suffering from cassava poisoning, some tips can be applied as follows:

• Take a handful of water spinach to pound or squeeze the juice to drink.
• Take a piece of about 20 to 30cm white pulp of a porcelain banana and then pound the juice to drink.
• Let the person with poisoning drink sugarcane juice, eat sugarcane or drink sugar water.
• Take a handful of purslane to get the juice to drink.
• Take 10 crabs and pound them to get water and then dissolve with a little salt to drink.
• Take a handful of leafy vegetables to squeeze out the drink.
• Use the peel of pineapple and 1 handful of gotu kola and then crush it and mix it with a little salt to drink.

How to prevent cassava poisoning?

The dose of poison in cassava often depends on the variety of cassava, where it is grown. The toxic amount of cyanhydric acid in cassava roots lies mainly in three parts: cassava fiber, two heads of cassava roots, the most special is the cassava peel.

The cases of cassava poisoning are caused by eating baked cassava, uncooked boiled cassava, eating raw cassava or eating cassava skin, eating a lot and eating cassava when hungry, especially when not soaking and boiling cassava thoroughly. Therefore, to remove toxins from cassava, you should pay attention to how to process cassava as follows:

After buying cassava, you need to wash the sandy soil and then peel off the pink skin of cassava. You soak in clean water for at least a few hours, soak as long as possible and change the water constantly. In addition, you can use rice water to soak cassava, this is also a way to remove toxins. When cooking cassava, boiling or steaming, it is necessary to open the lid of the pot to let the poison fly out.

When using cassava, you should dip it with honey or sugar to neutralize the poison. If the cassava has a bitter taste, it should be discarded because the more bitter the cassava, the more cyanhydric acid will be.

To prevent poisoning, cassava needs to be handled with care

You should also note that on an empty stomach, you should not eat much cassava and should not eat cassava in the evening. Because if poisoned, the victim is asleep at that time, so it is difficult to detect. Children should also not eat cassava because it is very easy to be poisoned and the symptoms of poisoning will be more severe than that of adults.

Above is information related to the problem of cassava poisoning . We need to pay attention to how to process and use cassava properly to prevent the risk of unfortunate poisoning that may occur.