Many people eat wild berries and mushrooms. In this case, poisoning often develops, since there are a lot of poisonous plants. According to statistics, about 4% of all cases of food intoxication are poisoned by poisonous mushrooms. Moreover, the patient’s condition is especially severe and difficult to cure. Some remain disabled due to damage to the liver, kidneys and other important organs.
Fatalities are also frequent, especially with improper or untimely first aid. Therefore, when collecting mushrooms, it is necessary to know well which of them are edible. It is also important to have an idea of what to do when poisoning with poisonous mushrooms in the first place.
Types of mushrooms
In total, there are about 3,000 species of mushrooms. But you can only eat no more than 400. Moreover, many of them are similar in appearance to inedible, therefore it is recommended to pick mushrooms only to those who are well versed in them. There are only a few varieties that are widespread and completely safe. These are mushrooms, boletus, boletus, mushrooms, mushrooms, raincoats, oily and some others. With proper collection and preparation, they do not cause malaise.
Edible mushrooms are also popular among mushroom pickers. They are characterized by the fact that they contain burning milky juice, which can cause poisoning. Therefore, they must be soaked for a long time before use, then boiled in several waters. These are breasts, trawls, russula and some other species.
But most often poisoning with poisonous mushrooms. These are those that contain toxins and are not suitable for human consumption. They can not be neutralized in any way, and often even a small piece can cause serious malaise or even lead to death. This is a pale grebe, fly agaric, biliary, satanic, false mushrooms, false foxes, lines.
Poisoning by poisonous mushrooms and plants
Most often this happens due to inexperience, when a person begins to collect wild berries or mushrooms, which are not very versed. A child can also be poisoned by tasting them. Moreover, in children, intoxication develops faster and they tolerate it hard. Therefore, children under 8 years old are not recommended to eat mushrooms, because it is indigestible food. Their cell membranes are composed of chitin, which breaks down for a long time. Therefore, it is not recommended to eat them for people with diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, pregnant women and the elderly. They may develop intoxication even with the use of edible mushrooms.
In addition, poisoning with poisonous mushrooms and plants in such people and children is always more difficult. They often develop serious complications. About 20% of children after such a pathology become disabled, and in 2-3% of cases death occurs. In addition to mushrooms, poisoning can cause poisonous plants. In our country, these are belladonna, tsikuta, datura, hemlock, henbane, lily of the valley, digitalis, wolf berries, nightshade and others. Moreover, children are often poisoned with poisonous berries.
Mushroom poisoning can occur when a child tastes them raw, which is rare. Basically, this condition develops in the whole family after eating improperly harvested or cooked mushrooms. At the same time, adults can easily tolerate intoxication, and for a child everything will end in disrepair. Therefore, the prevention of poisoning by poisonous mushrooms and plants is especially important in families with small children. It is necessary to carefully check everything that the child eats, while walking through the woods, make sure that he does not take anything in his mouth, does not pluck unfamiliar plants.
Causes of poisoning
Malaise and dangerous symptoms after eating certain plants and mushrooms most often appear in those who do not understand them. Basically poisoned are inexperienced mushroom pickers who collect all the mushrooms, at least a little like edible ones. But the reasons for this situation can also be improper cooking. Even edible mushrooms can cause poisoning if they are not cooked properly.
This can happen with insufficient heat treatment of conditionally edible mushrooms. You can fry only some types at once, for example, mushrooms, mushrooms, raincoats. The rest must be boiled first, some in several waters. In addition, poisoning can develop when picking mushrooms near roads, factories, within the city. Moreover, even the most edible of them can become poisonous, because they can accumulate heavy metals.
You can also not eat old, wormy mushrooms or those that were collected a few days ago. Intoxication can occur due to spoiled cooked mushrooms, even edible. If they were improperly prepared, not salted enough, bacteria will be released, which will become a source of poisoning.
And with insufficient processing of canned mushrooms, botulism can develop. The infection enters the body with poorly washed, boiled or salted mushrooms, if the rules for preserving or storing prepared mushrooms are not observed.
Common symptoms
Most often, the first signs of poisoning by poisonous mushrooms appear within 1-2 hours after their use. Sometimes symptoms begin to manifest later, even after a day or more. It depends on what toxins or poisons are in the pulp. Some immediately affect the mucosa of the gastrointestinal tract, others enter the bloodstream and spread throughout the body. In this case, the liver and kidneys are most often affected, fungi can also affect the central nervous system, disrupt the functioning of the heart.
Therefore, symptoms of intoxication can be different depending on what mushrooms were eaten and in what quantity. In addition, it depends on the age of the patient, his body weight, state of health and other individual characteristics.
But there are general signs of poisoning by poisonous mushrooms:
- abdominal pain, sometimes burning or pain;
- severe nausea;
- indomitable vomiting, and it does not bring relief to the patient;
- loose stools, very frequent;
- cold extremities, blanching of the skin, fever;
- sometimes stomach bleeding begins;
- often blood pressure drops, weakness, drowsiness, headache develops;
- hallucinations, delusions, nervous agitation, or loss of consciousness may occur.
Such manifestations of intoxication usually take place in three stages. The first develops within a day after eating mushrooms. It is characterized by signs of damage to the organs of the gastrointestinal tract. Then within 1-3 days an improvement in the patient's condition can be observed, usually he feels only weakness. Some patients believe that they had common food poisoning. Poisoning with poisonous mushrooms is much more dangerous, as toxins affect the internal organs or central nervous system.
It becomes noticeable sometimes immediately, and sometimes after 72 hours. Therefore, if after eating mushroom dishes nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea appear, it is necessary to consult a doctor. But these symptoms should appear within the first one and a half days. If they are not at this time, poisoning can no longer be afraid.
Pale Toad Poisoning
Different mushrooms affect the body in different ways. It depends on the individual characteristics and age of the person, but many symptoms are characteristic of a certain type of mushroom. Especially serious poisoning is a pale toadstool. Up to 95% of cases of eating a small piece of this fungus are fatal. And even in time, the first aid provided for poisoning with poisonous mushrooms from this species does not always contribute to recovery.
The venom of a pale toadstool quickly penetrates the liver and kidneys, disrupting their work. Death occurs due to severe renal and hepatic insufficiency. Often also heart failure develops, and the accumulation of fluid in the body can lead to pulmonary edema.
It is difficult to recognize poisoning with a pale toadstool. At first, the usual symptoms develop: abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea. Muscles and headaches also appear, and body temperature decreases. After some time, signs of gastric bleeding appear, severe weakness, shortness of breath, yellowing of the skin, and a violation of the outflow of urine develop. Medical care for the patient is required during the first days after eating pale toadstool, then it will be impossible to save.
Features of poisoning by other types of mushrooms
When poisoning with other poisonous mushrooms, various signs appear. You need to know at what symptoms you should consult a doctor as soon as possible:
- If there is increased salivation, tearing and sweating, it can be poisoning with fly agarics or talkers. At the same time, blood pressure decreases, pupils narrow, the pulse quickens, shortness of breath appears. The patient may begin hallucinations, delirium, other signs of mental disturbance.
- Deadly poison is also an eagle. It is contained in a mountain cobweb, a fleshy-reddish umbrella, lepiotas. These are little-known mushrooms, they are very rarely eaten. The danger is that intoxication symptoms do not develop immediately after the poison enters the body. It may take some time for the patient to notice signs of renal failure.
- The use of morels and lines is also dangerous. They contain gyromethrin poison, which causes the breakdown of red blood cells in human blood. In addition to signs of disruption of the gastrointestinal tract, convulsions appear, liver failure develops, the patient may fall into a coma.
- Hallucinogenic mushrooms are rarely eaten, but poisoning with them is also possible. This is psilocybe - they cause a state of intoxication, hallucinations. A person develops psychosis, depression.
- With the use of weakly poisonous mushrooms, most often false openings, bile or satanic, rows, pigs, some russula, mainly signs of damage to the gastrointestinal tract develop. This is severe nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain. Weakened people, children and the elderly may experience cramps, impaired functioning of the nervous system.
First aid for poisoning with poisonous mushrooms
If after eating a mushroom dish it becomes bad, the first thing to do is consult a doctor. It is impossible to eliminate the effects of exposure to poisons and toxins on your own, medical attention is needed. In case of poisoning with poisonous mushrooms, it is very important to provide it as early as possible, sometimes the clock goes by. Hazardous effects develop especially rapidly in children, the elderly and people with chronic diseases. Therefore, when the first signs of intoxication appear, you should consult a doctor as soon as possible. It is best to call an ambulance. Before the arrival of the doctor, you need to remove tight clothing from the patient and provide him with an influx of fresh air.
First aid for poisoning with poisonous mushrooms consists in washing the patient’s stomach. This is necessary to eliminate as many toxins that have entered the body. To do this, drink at least 5 glasses of water, you can use a weak solution of potassium permanganate or a solution of activated carbon. Then cause vomiting. This should be done several times until the vomit ceases to contain food residues. If in the first few hours after the poisoning the patient does not have diarrhea, you need to give him a laxative. It can be castor, olive oil or magnesium sulfate, as well as a cleansing enema. But if symptoms appeared only a day after eating poisonous food, this should not be done.
There are other first aid measures for poisoning with poisonous mushrooms. A sick person needs to be covered, sometimes it is required to put a warm heating pad on his feet. You can’t put it on your stomach, as the cause of the ailment can be not poisoning, but acute inflammation, which will only worsen under the influence of heat. With frequent vomiting and diarrhea, it is necessary to replenish fluid stores. For this, the patient is given salted water. It needs to be drunk a little, in small sips. You can also drink strong sweet tea or milk, activated charcoal, Smecta, Enterosgel, or other sorbents. They will slow down the absorption of toxins.
It is impossible to give the patient any medicine before the doctor arrives, it is also undesirable to eat anything, as this will aggravate the symptoms of the gastrointestinal tract malfunction. It is especially harmful to consume alcoholic beverages, since alcohol promotes faster absorption of toxins and poisons. It is undesirable to artificially induce vomiting or give a laxative to a patient whose blood pressure drops, convulsions or loss of consciousness are observed.
Dangerous effects of poisoning
Without timely medical attention, symptoms progress. Only in rare cases does this condition go away on its own in a couple of days, usually if the mushrooms were conditionally edible or simply old. Usually poisoning with poisonous mushrooms leads to liver damage and to the development of renal failure. Often a fatal outcome also develops due to severe dehydration. It is impossible to determine the cause of the ailment independently and it is impossible to choose a treatment, therefore, the only salvation for the patient will be to see a doctor for examination. The presence of toxins in the body can often be detected only by blood tests.
Not everyone knows the danger of poisoning with poisonous mushrooms. And when after a malfunction of the digestive tract comes a slight improvement, they believe that everything is behind. But toxins and fungal poisons continue to be absorbed into the bloodstream and spread throughout the body. It is impossible to get rid of them yourself. They penetrate the liver, disrupt the functioning of the kidneys, nervous system. Often after 2-3 days the consequences of poisoning with poisonous mushrooms become irreversible.
The most common serious complications are dehydration, which develops due to frequent vomiting and diarrhea. The liver is also affected. It increases, pains appear in the right side, jaundice develops. Damage to the kidneys is expressed in violation of urination, the appearance of edema. Often also heart failure develops. In this case, shortness of breath, a violation of the heart rhythm, blood pressure drops.
When some poisons get into the body, mental disorders develop: neurosis, delirium, hallucinations, suicide attempts. Often also the patient develops cramps, loss of consciousness, he falls into a coma. Some toxins destroy red blood cells, leading to anemia and other pathologies.
Treatment technique
It is very important to preserve the remains of the mushroom dish and show them to medical professionals. This will help to more accurately choose the treatment method, since different types of mushrooms can negatively affect different organs. The treatment of such poisoning is necessarily carried out in a hospital. The patient is put in a toxicology department. There, first of all, the stomach is washed to him in order to permanently remove all poisons and toxins from the digestive tract. Then the patient is given a laxative so that the toxins are not absorbed in the intestine.
Assistance in poisoning with poisonous mushrooms in the hospital also consists in the introduction of various solutions intravenously. These can be rehydration medications, glucose, drugs to support the kidneys and cleanse the liver. Only for some fungi there are specific antidotes, for example, when poisoning with fly agaric, the patient is administered "Atropine". Sometimes blood transfusion or hemobsorption, that is, its purification, is required.
Prevention
To avoid poisoning, you must be very careful about the choice of mushrooms. This is especially true for those who buy them in the market. It is not recommended to purchase homemade canned mushrooms, caviar, dried mushrooms. The prevention of poisonous mushroom poisoning includes the careful selection of what is eaten. It is necessary to know the signs of edible and inedible mushrooms well. The mistake of many mushroom pickers is that they believe that the poisonous mushroom will smell bad. But it's not always the case. In addition, the rim under the hat and the color change of the pulp during the cut is also not always a sign of toxicity.
Fans of a quiet hunt should know the basic measures for the prevention of poisoning by poisonous mushrooms.The main rule - if the mushroom is suspicious, it is better not to take it. After all, you can poison yourself even if you collect only edible mushrooms. It is dangerous if they are old, wormy or overgrown. In this case, bacteria are formed in them, which can lead to serious intoxication. When collecting it is impossible to put mushrooms in packages, since there they quickly deteriorate. It is advisable to process them on the same day when they were collected, while thoroughly cleaning and rinsing.
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You can not be guided by such advice. Fans of a quiet hunt, it is important to remember that you can only collect those mushrooms in which they are fully confident. Only then can you enjoy mushroom dishes and avoid poisoning.