Usually when you get a hickey your biggest concern is what scarf you’re going to pull off or how you can get away with rockin’ a turtleneck sweater even in the summer, but now you have something to seriously freak out about when it comes to the love bites.
A 17 year old boy in Mexico City just lost his life from a stroke caused by what doctors believe was a blood clot, reports Medical Daily. Doctors believe the blood clot was created when Julio Macias Gonzalez’s 24 year old girlfriend was sucking on his neck earlier that day. When Gonzalez sat down to have dinner with his family that night, doctors say the blood clot traveled to his brain and that led to the stroke.
This isn’t the first time we’re hearing about a bizarre event led on by a hickey, though. In 2011, Fox News reported a New Zealand woman was rushed to the hospital for symptoms that usually lead to a stroke, like not being able to move her left arm. When doctors found a blood clot in an artery in her neck right below a hickey, they too believed the sucking on the neck caused a blood clot to form. It then traveled from her neck to her heart, causing a minor stroke. Fortunately for her, she survived after being treated with a blood thinner.
It’s been known for a while that not only are hickeys unsightly, but there’s really no positive benefit to them. They can pass the oral herpes virus, leave scars, and now they can kill you. So listen up ladies and gents, ditch sucking the neck (especially with the intention to create a hickey) and move onto something else… if you catch my drift! Always, always, always take precautions in everything that you do, particularly in the bedroom. Love bites, but it doesn’t have to in this way!