They’re both edible, green and delicious in dips and spreads — but that’s where their similarities end.
That’s why it’s so hard to fathom how one 60-year-old woman could mistake the mellow, creamy taste of avocado with the sweat-inducing spice of wasabi, reported The British Medical Journal (BMJ) in a recent case study.
While attending a wedding in Israel, the anonymous women had gobbled down a mouthful of wasabi — mistaking it for avocado. This unfortunate swap landed her in the hospital with a diagnosis of takotsubo cardiomyopathy, better known as “broken heart syndrome.”
In the BMJ report, authors describe broken heart syndrome as a “left ventricular dysfunction that typically occurs in older women after sudden intense emotional or physical stress.” Researchers believe it’s the first case of the condition resulting from wasabi.
“A few minutes after she ate the wasabi, she felt a sudden pressure in her chest radiating to her arms, which lasted [a] few hours,” the report read. “She decided not to leave the wedding and the pain started to subside. On the following day, she felt weakness and general discomfort, prompting her to seek medical evaluation.”
The woman is now in recovery after treatment and rehab at a cardiac center. A month following her diagnosis she was back in good health.
Aside from having a healthy respect for its powerful, sinus-clearing spice, there’s no reason to fear wasabi — in reasonable amounts, at least. The doctors noted in the report that some studies even point to the health benefits of the lime green paste, such as curbing cancer.
Rather, they believe the woman developed the condition because of the extraordinary serving she managed to eat, causing physically stressful side effects.
“In our case report, the amount of wasabi our patient consumed was unusually large, about a size of a teaspoon,” they wrote.
They also added that the underlying causes of takotsubo cardiomyopathy is “still a mystery.”