Sarah Houston was beautiful, young, and had a promising career. Unfortunately, one unfortunate decision and reaching for an illegal slimming drug cost her her life. Every year dozens of people die, ready to take a drug that was used as a herbicide in the Vietnam War in the 60s.
Sara was found dead last October in her rented condominium. The direct cause of death, as established during the investigation, was cardiac arrest caused by taking a combination of antidepressants and the illegal fat-burning agent – DNP. It turns out that it is used more and more often not only by bodybuilders who are eager for immediate effects, but also by people who naively believe that they will manage to lose unnecessary kilograms easily. As reported by foreign media, in Great Britain alone, dozens of victims of unsuccessful treatments are counted every year.
Sarmad Alladin, who died on the university campus in front of his colleagues, lost his life in almost the same circumstances. All of the victims were young and were unaware of the risks associated with such dramatic weight loss.
Unaware of the dangers
The tragically deceased XNUMX-year-old was to be the fifth person in the family to become a doctor. She was approaching the final stage of her medical studies at the University of Leeds, where she excelled in commitment and good grades. Although some people knew that this cheerful girl was taking antidepressants every day to help her fight unhealed bulimia, Sarah was secretly buying another drug.
DNP, or actually 2,4-Dinitrophenol, has been on the list of substances prohibited for human use for many years. Discovered in 1920 at Stanford University, it initially served as the most effective medication known for overweight. Unfortunately, it was quickly found that using DNP without a restrictive diet caused many undesirable side effects – including an increased risk of cataracts, heart palpitations, increased body temperature, and in extreme cases – death. Therefore, the specificity was banned in the USA as early as 1938 and this provision is in force in the world to this day, and it is used sporadically, e.g. in agriculture. Nevertheless, 2,4-Dinitrophenol tablets can be purchased online from illegal importers. It is also not difficult to find reviews praising them as an incredibly fast way to increase metabolism.
According to the assurances of many forums, “reasonable use” of DNP can result in a loss of up to three kilograms a week. No wonder that more and more people, unaware of the dangers, have started to circumvent the regulations when buying dinitropehenol. This trend quickly translated into dismal statistics, according to which the UK health service counted 2012 deaths related to the use of an illegal substance in 62 alone. As stated in an interview with the Daily Tribiune, the family of the deceased Sarah: “After what happened to our daughter, we are motivated and we will do our best to ensure that no one else will suffer the same way.”
Too easily accessible
Despite repeated warnings from the Food Standard Agency, a British organization that monitors, inter alia, The effects of drugs, the risks associated with taking any form of radically lowering body weight supplements are still little known or simply ignored. The bans also do not mean that, with a bit of research, it is easy to find websites on which, among others, DNP by pretending that the trade in a given product itself – if it is not induced to use it – is not a punishable act.
“We hope to make people understand how dangerous it can be to share such toxic substances without any restrictions. Perhaps only in such a radical way as the death of a young student will it be possible to appeal to the common sense of some people, ”Geoff Houston, Sarah’s father, confides in an interview.
From the age of fifteen, the girl struggled with a food digestion disorder and for the last three years she had been seeing a psychiatrist regularly, trying to fight her problem. According to the therapist, Sarah has been doing better and better, trying to understand her situation also from the medical point of view. The more surprising for the family was the information about an overdose of the drug, which was supposed to help in the weight loss of an already thin person.
Just a few days before her death, Sarah’s roommate began to worry about the strange behavior of her friend. «One evening I noticed that her eyes turned yellowish and she had to take two cold showers to cool her body temperature. I wanted to call an ambulance, but she said it was a normal symptom of this treatment and everything would be back to normal soon, “a colleague from college reports for« The Telegraph ». The shock resulting from the regular use of DNP turned out to be so great that even a young heart could not stand the frenetic pace of blood circulation. Overheating of the body is a natural effect of dinitrophenol, which, in short, hinders the synthesis of ATP, which is responsible for energy transport. When the body cannot obtain the nutrient it needs, it burns much more glucose and fats, and therefore heats up dramatically.
At the site, emergency services found 62 out of 100 DNP capsules in the package. As it was later established in the course of the investigation, such a large amount of the dangerous agent was purchased by Sara from a company that imported the goods from Spain, pointing out, however, that it was not intended for humans. «If that’s the case, why are they selling this stuff in pill form? It will be a long process, but we will do everything to make DNP and similar measures completely illegal, ”announces the father of the deceased.
What doesn’t kill us …
Unfortunately, situations such as this do not deter Polish amateurs of easy weight loss, who are willing to pay any price for quick results. It is enough to visit native internet forums to find out that for many, apparently uninformed people, dinitropehenol is simply quite risky, but still a “tool to take care of your weight”. One user of the forum for bodybuilding writes: “From experience, I will say that doses of 3,5 mg per kilogram are not so terrible, although after a few days of use the temperature actually rises quite strongly”. Another hiding under the nickname “Kingkong” reassures that DNP is admittedly “dangerous, but by following certain rules nothing should happen. A week of torment and after fat ». «You can lose as much as you want, depending on how long you take and what dose. Besides, what will not kill us… »adds, as he writes about himself, a young bodybuilder. Fortunately, these are isolated voices and many people openly write that even small doses, with individual tolerance of each organism, can turn out to be very dangerous to health.
– DNP strongly accelerates the metabolism in fat cells. It raises the body temperature, causes severe sweating and heart failure, which leads to death. Despite what some “experts” write on Internet forums, the use of DNP under control (ie according to a weight loss plan developed by another “expert”) cannot be safe, among other things, because this agent accumulates in the body – explains Justyna Bytnar, Ph.D. pharmacy.
Perhaps, instead of the exhortations and opinions of doctors, the very history and chemical structure of the substance, which some in ignorance treat as an extreme way to lose weight, appeal more to the imagination. 2,4 Dinitrophenol, after being withdrawn from circulation, was then used as… a phytotoxic agent during the Vietnam War, which was designed to destroy rice crops, pastures and forest growth. Even if the temptation to lose a few kilos in a week seems tempting to us, let’s think carefully if something used as a herbicide might not hurt us? Numerous situations similar to Sarah’s death prove that when it comes to health, it is never worth taking a shortcut.
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