Nothing sweet about ‘cinnamon challenge’

In the clas­sic Christ­mas movie, “A Christ­mas Story,” you prob­a­bly remem­ber when Schwartz “triple-dog” dared Flick to put his tongue on the frozen flag pole in front of the school. The result: Flick’s tongue becomes stuck to the flag pole and Flick has to keep his tongue wrapped in a ban­dage for the rest of the day.

Kids have chal­lenged each other to do silly things for decades with lit­tle or no harm done, but there is a new craze alarm­ing health pro­fes­sion­als. The “cin­na­mon chal­lenge” is the lat­est video to go viral on the Inter­net web­site You Tube. The video shows a woman attempt­ing to swal­low a large amount of the pow­dered spice with­out drink­ing any water. The video has been viewed a reported 9.8 mil­lion times and has sparked an esti­mated 30,000 more videos of mostly teenagers tak­ing the chal­lenge. The videos show peo­ple tak­ing the chal­lenge result­ing in cough­ing, gag­ging and spit­ting out the spice. But those are not the only dangers.

Many doc­tors agree that swal­low­ing cin­na­mon with­out the aid of water is almost impos­si­ble because there is not enough saliva in the human mouth to help absorb it, which can cause peo­ple to gag almost imme­di­ately caus­ing the per­son to expel the pow­der. Once the pow­der is expelled into the air, it can get into the eyes which could cause dam­age to the eyes and can also get into the nose and air­way. Doc­tors warn once the spice gets into the air­way and lungs, it can cause severe cough­ing that can lead to vom­it­ing and pos­si­bly lung dam­age. In extreme cases the cough­ing can be so severe it causes the lungs to col­lapse. That is exactly what hap­pened to a teen in Michigan.

The high school fresh­man report­edly had taken the chal­lenge sev­eral times before and expe­ri­enced the usual gag­ging and cough­ing. The last time the teen took the chal­lenge, the fine pow­der got caught in her throat and she was not able to breathe caus­ing her to pass out. Her father said his daugh­ter was in and out of con­scious­ness as he rushed her to the hos­pi­tal. Doc­tors dis­cov­ered the young teen had a col­lapsed right lung. The teen has decided the chal­lenge is not all that fun any­more and has vowed never to take the chal­lenge again. Her father says he is thank­ful his daugh­ter is alive.

Kids will prob­a­bly always be chal­lenged by their peers. Par­ents need to talk to their kids about peer pres­sure and tell them that it is OK to tell their peers they do not want to do some­thing even if they are “triple-dog” dared. Talk to your teens about the risks of the cin­na­mon chal­lenge and help keep our kids safe.

Keep­ing Our Kids Safe is brought to by the Delaware Police Depart­ment and School Resource Offi­cer Rod Glazer.

Posted by Rod Glazer on Apr 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.