A young Chinese woman recently ended up in the hospital with multiple broken ribs after a coughing fit caused by eating spicy food.

If you’ve ever eaten something spicy, you already know that it can cause a bit of coughing. What you probably didn’t know is that in extreme cases, spicy food-induced coughing can actually cause bone fractures. Case in point a Chinese woman from Shanghai, who, because of being too skinny and having poorly-developed musculature, broke no less than four ribs while coughing because of spicy food.

The woman, surnamed Huang, told doctors in her native city of Shanghai that she was eating spicy food which, at one point, caused her to start coughing. During a particularly strained cough, the young woman allegedly heard a sharp crack from her chest area, and immediately began to experience pain when breathing and trying to speak.

“At first, I thought it was a stroke or something, I didn’t expect it to hurt this badly,” Huang said. “I couldn’t even walk.”

Ms. Huang managed to get to a local hospital, where a CT scan revealed that she had four fractured ribs. After hearing the woman’s story about her coughing, doctors conducted a bone density test that came out normal. Upon examining the woman and conducting more tests, a thoracic surgeon concluded that the bone fractures had been caused by her poor musculature.

“Your ribs can be seen clearly under your skin. There is no muscle to support the bone, so it’s easy for your ribs to get fractured when coughing,” the doctor reportedly told Huang, adding that unless she does something about it, she is likely to suffer similar fractures in the future.

Photo: mohamed_hassan/Pixabay

The young woman said that she stands 171cm tall and weighs just 57kg, and admitted to having an extremely thin upper body. She now needs to rest and spend a month with a medicinal corset wrapped around her torso, but after that, she plans to put on some weight and increase her muscle mass.