When it comes to ancient, folk wisdom, it is important to use common sense, logic, and intelligence to do the right thing. Folk medicine consists of traditional healing methods used by our ancestors to cure diseases and promote emotional and physical well-being. These remedies have been handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth or written texts and can be the world’s best natural cures to treat common ailments. Some of them, however, should raise serious questions and be taken with a grain of salt.

Unfortunately, not everyone is as savvy to determine what’s right and what’s totally crazy. Some people blindly follow everything they are told, resulting in disaster. What if you were told to stick a live eel up your anus to treat constipation, would you do it without giving it any thought or research?

Probably you are justly frowning your brow by now at this crazy, out of the world idea. Nonetheless, one Chinese man in Guangzhou decided to follow this unbelievable advice when he was told that it is an old folk remedy that would cure his constipation.

Forcing an eel up the anus to fix constipation. How bizarre can it get?

After he had been told by his “friends” to try this weird folk remedy, the 49-year-old Chinese man had to undergo life-saving emergency surgery to remove the live eel that had begun wreaking havoc on his intestines. Before he was hospitalized, the man, named Liu from the Baiyun District in Guangzhou, the capital of South China’s Guangdong Province, was experiencing a sharp abdominal pain. According to a doctor, the man came in with a belly inflated like an air balloon.

Initially, he hid the fact that there was an eel in his body when he sought medical attention because the abdominal pain was no longer bearable. When Liu was rushed into emergency surgery, the doctors were shocked to pull out a live 20-inch long, 1.2-inch thick Asian swamp eel from his stomach.

“We opened up his stomach and saw the eel amongst his feces and food debris. He also suffered a punctured pancreas,” Dr. Zhao Zhirong told The Sun.

Asian swamp eels have pointed jaws, sharp teeth, and a slender body that moves in waves. This allows them to burrow efficiently through sand, mud, pebbles, and intestines. As reported by the South China Morning Post, the eel had a head as large as a ping-pong ball.

By the time Liu went to the hospital, the eel had created a blockage in his digestive system and had broken through the intestines, leaving a complete mess in its wake, which almost killed the man, the doctors explained.

When the doctors asked about the eel, he first told them it had swum up there by itself. Later, however, he admitted that he had put it there himself to treat his constipation. Bad joke from his so-called friends or just pure ignorance? Either way, it nearly killed this man.

As it seems, Liu is not the only Chinese who found himself in the hospital after a wild adventure with an eel. In 2013, another Chinese guy was rushed to the hospital after he inserted an eel into himself for sexual pleasure, and a woman was reportedly hospitalized for the same reason, earlier this year, reported the South China Morning Post.

By the way, if you’re having constipation problems, click here to discover five efficient ways to end constipation quickly. Try to watch your diet and go to a doctor if the issue persists. And please, if your friends are coming up with a crazy idea like this, use your brain and common sense or bear the horrific consequences.

Learn more about safe, natural cures at Remedies.com.

Sources include:

MensHealth.com

TheSun.co.uk

SCMP.com