A young woman was left fighting for her life after she consumed a popular energy drink while working out and then went into cardiac arrest.
Jazmin Garza had a few sips of the beverage, used as a pre-workout, before she began lifting weights with her boyfriend, Isaac Ayala, in November.
But moments later the 20-year-old, from the US state of Texas, collapsed on the floor, her body convulsing and her nose bleeding.
Her 21-year-old boyfriend rushed over to find she wasn’t breathing, so he performed CPR until emergency services arrived and rushed Garza to a nearby hospital.
“As soon as the paramedics got there, they took over and gave her CPR for several minutes and were finally able to get her heart pumping again after using a defibrillator to jump-start her heart,” Mr Ayala wrote on a GoFundMe page raising money to help cover medical costs.
“The doctors told us she was going to need a miracle to come back to us (and be the same Jazmin we knew).”
In total, the young gymgoer had four cardiac arrests with doctors placing Garza on life support after her stomach and kidneys also “stopped working”, he said.
“Her lungs and heart were in really bad shape. She had to overcome three different life supports (ECMO machine for her blood circulation, dialysis to clean out her kidneys, and a machine to control her oxygen levels) at the hospital and multiple procedures.”
Thankfully, Garza has made a “miraculous recovery”, and after two weeks in hospital she was allowed home – but the couple are now saddled with expensive hospital bills.
“We are now overwhelmed with medical bills and the doctors still haven’t found out what the main cause of the cardiac arrest was,” Ayala explained.
“We also lost our jobs due to the amount of absences we had to take because of this incident.”
Garza said she had been doing deadlifts when “all of a sudden” she felt unwell.
“I don’t usually drink caffeinated drinks at all. I hadn’t been to the gym for a while and wanted to have a really good workout so had a third of an energy drink,” she told Mail Online.
“After working out, I sat myself down and really didn’t feel well. I felt light-headed. Isaac said I looked really pale.
“Then Isaac told me afterwards that I started having a seizure. I’d never had one before. I had no idea what was happening to me.”
It’s not known if the energy drink contributed to the 20-year-old’s sudden health condition.
Studies have shown excessive consumption of energy drinks has been associated with cardiovascular events such as tachycardia, myocardial infarction, and death.
