A doctor in China who prescribed drinking Coca-Cola soft drink as a treatment for a man with a large gastric stone has been celebrated on mainland social media.

The patient, surnamed Li, from southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, was surprised after following the doctor’s recommendation that he drink cola for seven days to find the gastric stone was gone, Star Video reported.

Li had been experiencing abdominal pain for several days when he went to a local hospital for help. After a medical examination, he was informed he had a goose egg-sized stone in his stomach.

The doctor asked Li about his dietary habits and believed it was the persimmons Li liked to eat that had caused the stone to develop.

The doctor recommended he drink cola soft drinks as a treatment. Despite being confused by this unorthodox advice, Li followed the suggestion and has been drinking 100ml of iced Coca-Cola every day.

He was dubious of the feasibility of the prescription, while the degree of pain in him decreased. He went back to the hospital for a re-examination one week later.

In a video of the check-up, Li is seen lying on a bed as his doctor performs a gastroscopy examination. Beside him can be seen two big bottles of cola the doctor had prepared for him.

To Li’s surprise, the gastroscopy revealed the gastric stone had disappeared.

The doctor said that although cola drinks can dissolve gastric stones, it is on a case-by-case basis and patients should consult their doctors before using cola drinks as a treatment.

While some studies have shown drinking cola can be effective in some cases, the treatment can cause other complications and health problems. Many papers commenting on this unusual approach say further research is needed before it is adopted as a safe treatment for gastric stones.

Hong Kong family doctor Amy Wang said: “The so-called ‘gastric stones’ are actually gastric phytobezoars, which are masses of undigestible materials that can get stuck in the stomach.”

“Normally, to help break down and dissolve these bezoars, using coke or any cellulase that is dissolved in water can also have the same effect. We can also give another type of drug called metoclopramide, which would also stimulate the movement of the bezoars through the stomach to help with digestion.”

Wang added: “There is actually a systematic review done which showed that the use of coke can be effective in gastric phytobezoar dissolution in half of the cases. But of course, for those with obstruction or moderate to severe symptoms, then we advise treating it with endoscopy as the more standard treatment.”

The story has generated significant interest on mainland social media, at the time of writing, a post on Weibo with the video had attracted 13.55 million views.

One commenter said: “The doctor takes the right measure. That’s how a good doctor works.”

Another said: “That’s very kind of the doctor. They didn’t prescribe a pile of expensive drugs or propose to perform surgery.”

“Cola was manufactured as a drug and sold in pharmacies before becoming a soft drink,” another said.

“The traditional Chinese medicine research in the Compendium of Materia Medica says all things in the universe could be medicines, so taking cola as a therapy makes sense,” another commenter wrote.

A similar story also happened in February this year. Some doctors in Shanghai recommended a four-year-old girl with 4cm long gastric stones drink a can of cola to help break them down.

South China Morning Post