According to 19-year-old Tang, her friend and her carried out the challenge earlier this month during a video call which lasted for about three hours.

A few days later, the two young women were taken to the hospital and diagnosed with a potentially fatal condition caused by muscle injury, with Tang ending up in the Emergency Intensive Care Unit.

According to Chongqing Evening News, Tang is a university student in Chongqing while her best friend lives in the Guangdong province.

Tang told the reporter that she and her friend were doing a video call on July 10 and they wanted to see which one of them had better stamina.

She said they decided to take it in turns to do squats to find out who could do 1,000.

Tang admitted that she did not have the habit of working out and the goal of the exercise was set spontaneously.

It is understood that both of them completed the challenge.

The university student said that she felt fine the first two days after the intense physical session, but on the third day, she fell ill.

”I didn’t feel right as soon as I woke up. First of all, my legs felt achy and sore. What’s more? I couldn’t bend them,’ she told the newspaper.

”Afterwards, I went to the toilet and saw my urine was as dark as tea,” she added.

Tang went to a local hospital accompanied by her boyfriend. She claimed that her legs ached so much she could not even be carried by her boyfriend.

At last, she had to move slowly on her own to the hospital and was found to have a serious syndrome caused by muscle injury, known as rhabdomyolysis.

Rhabdomyolysis is a potentially fatal condition that occurs when muscles are injured and they release their contents, including a muscle enzyme, into the bloodstream.

Tang was then transferred to Chongqing Emergency Medical Centre.

She was treated at the ER before being taken to the Emergency Intensive Care Unit.

Doctor Li Ning described Tang’s condition: ‘The patient’s level of myoglobin was so high it exceeded the highest reading on the medical device.’

Dr. Li said a normal person’s reading of myoglobin – a protein found in the muscle cells – should be between 70 and 80 while Tang’s figure was higher than 3,833.

The medic added that Tang’s level of creatine kinase – an enzyme found in the heart muscle, brain tissue, skeletal muscle and other tissues – was more than 11,300 times higher than a normal person’s.

Tang said that her best friend was also hospitalised on July 14. She had the same symptoms and was diagnosed with the same condition.

Dr. Li has warned the public not to exercise excessively, especially when one suffers from a cold or virus infection.

It is said that Tang has largely recovered after being hospitalised for 10 days.

Dailymail