Why you should avoid scammy diet pills

Saturday, February 13, 2016 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer
Tags: diet pills, death, injury

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(NaturalNews) A 25-year-old British man recently had to have part of his leg surgically removed, after dangerous online diet pills caused his body to heat up so much that it cooked his muscles.

Lewis Brown had been a bodybuilding fanatic since age 20, and had used steroids and intense workouts to bulk up from 140 to 217 pounds. Early last year, he decided to take banned, underground diet pill dinitrophenol (DNP). He hoped the pills would help him drop fat in favor of muscle.

After several months of taking three to four pills a day, one day he decided to take eight over the course of 12 hours.

"I took three in the morning and I didn't feel anything for a few hours, so stupidly I took another five," Brown said.

Doctors thought he had hours to live

DNP blocks the body's production of ATP, which cells use for energy. The body compensates for this by speeding up its metabolism in order to produce more energy. This increased metabolism can lead to weight loss.

But a consequence of blocking ATP is that the energy generated during respiration, instead of going to feed cells, instead gets "wasted" in the form of heat. This can cause body temperature to rise.

That's what happened to Brown, alarming him enough that he drove himself to the hospital. There he learned that his body temperature was 107 degrees Fahrenheit. He was ordered to drink a charcoal beverage to soak up as much of the still-active DNP in his system as possible.

"They said if I didn't drink it I could die," Brown explained. "I remember drinking it, but that's the last thing I remember.

"Apparently after that I started to get really confused and they called my family."

The doctors put Brown into an induced coma and used ice baths to try and keep his temperature down.

"My body was just heating up and cooking from the inside out," Brown said. "I was put in the coma I think to stop my body moving and doing anything that would cause heat. The doctors told my family I could have just two or three hours to live, and that I wouldn't make it through the night. They all thought that was it."

Pills cooked his leg

As reported by Opposing Views, Brown stayed in the induced coma for three days, followed by a week in intensive care. The muscle of one of his legs had been cooked so extensively that it had to be surgically removed.

It took Brown a further four months of recovery to return to his everyday life.

"I've got this leg now, but it's just something I have to deal with," he said. "Before I was a bit reclusive and everything annoyed me, and I didn't want to do anything. Now I'm getting back to my old self. My family are really relieved."

Brown believes he has grown from the experience. He now warns people about the dangers of DNP.

"I was so out of it about getting bigger that I thought I was unstoppable," Brown said. "I just wanted to be better than anyone else. I was a different person then -- everyone has said. All I was interested in was getting bigger and I just didn't know what I was doing.

"I remember seeing a story about DNP and people who died and just thinking they weren't taking them right," he said. "But I have done it myself now and I can tell you, you just get caught up in it so quickly.

"I'm going to go back to the gym because I like to keep fit, but I'm never touching pills or steroids ever again."

DNP is not approved for human consumption by any government.

Sources for this article include:

TheDoctorsTV.com

OpposingViews.com

DailyMail.co.uk