A 14-year-old girl from China was sent to the hospital after suffering from a bad case of constipation that lasted for five days.
The teenager, who is from Zhejiang province, complained of being unable to eat or move her bowels, and suffered from stomachaches before her parents decided to take her to the hospital, according to Chinese media via AsiaOne.
At first, doctors were unable to pinpoint the exact cause of her constipation but after ordering a CT scan to be performed on her, they discovered unusual, shadowy spherical objects inside her abdomen.
Physicians then concluded that these objects were in fact undigested boba tea pearls. When asked if she drank boba tea before having constipation, the girl reluctantly but eventually admitted that she only had one cup of the sweet drink five days before it happened.
Doctor Zhang Louzhen, however, was not convinced that she only had one cup of boba tea as it would have taken a significant amount over an extended period for her condition to become this severe. She was then prescribed a laxative to help relieve her constipation.
Meanwhile, another doctor warned folks that pearls in bubble tea, which are often made of starch, can also contain additives such as thickeners and preservatives which are hard for the body to digest. Continuous consumption of the drink and the pearls could lead to gastrointestinal dysfunction, said the doctor according to The Paper.
