This elderly women was diagnosed that morning with cancer. No doubt a rough way to start your day. The horror experienced by the family had to have been considerable. One family member decides to act. She read that apricots kill cancer cells. So she ground up a bunch of apricot seeds and gave them to her mother. Later that evening I get involved when the mother is being treated in a hospital emergency department for headache, confusion and agitation. The patient while fascinating from a tox aspect, is also fascinating from a moral view. What if the daughter decided it was best to give her mother the apricots to ease her pain and end her life. It is also well know that apricot seeds are poison.
Under normal circumstances there is no risk of cyanide poisoning from accidentally eating an apricot pit. The small amount of cyanide is bound within a hard shell. Normally the seed or pit passes through you intact. But what happens when it is ground up in a blender? The safety capsule God put around the poison is now gone. The cyanide, through still in small quantities, becomes available. So how about if you you grind up a bunch of pits in a blender? The potential to become ill becomes much higher.
The initial signs of cyanide toxicity are confusion, agitation, headache, nausea and vomiting. Cyanide prevents your cells from utilizing oxygen and producing energy. The tissues that need oxygen to work, your brain and heart, eventually stop. Thankfully there is a treatment. Sometimes when there is a small exposure to cyanide just giving fluids and oxygen does the trick. For the majority of patients a more invasive antidote is given. The antidote, hydroxocobalamine, binds the cyanide you have in your body then you can get rid of it.
Apricots as a cancer treatment. Is it the cure we have all been waiting for? Unfortunately the data tells us no. Can it cause bad adverse effects, even death? Unfortunately, yes. Thankfully, our patient had a good outcome.
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