‘I nearly died soon after taking pills meant to burn fat’
Lisa was found blue, being sick and having seizures in her room
A WOMAN has claimed she nearly died after taking fatburning tablets.
Lisa Farrant, from Hinckley, said she often goes to the gym twice a day, five days a week.
It was while working out she first heard someone mention a product that could help to burn fat.
The product, Shreddable Untamed, by Project AD, sells online for about £40.
But a few days after taking her first pill, Lisa claims she collapsed on her bedroom floor. She was found hours later by a colleague from the Barber Shop after she did not turn up to work.
“I heard about the pills in the gym and people were saying they help you lose weight because they’re a thermogenic,” she said.
“So I bought them online from America in July.
“Then that week I started taking them. That was the Tuesday and I was found on the Thursday.
“That was only the third time that I had taken it.
“It says don’t take more than three a day but I only took one every day for three days.”
Thermogenic supplements claim to help increase a person’s internal core temperature through a metabolic reaction, causing an increase in sweat production and in turn helping people lose weight.
The 35-year-old said she had seen people use the fat burners before and they had not seemed to have caused any harm.
But on August 1, three days after her first capsule, she said she was taken to hospital.
“I can’t remember anything. The night before my friend came round and I can’t remember that,” she said.
“I didn’t turn up for work so one of the girls said ‘go and check on her.’ She found me in my bedroom: blue, being sick and having seizures.
“I would have gotten up at 5.30am to go to the gym and they didn’t find me until 2pm.”
She said that when she was found she was so blue her tattoos could barely be seen.
After her friend called an ambulance she was taken to the high-dependency ward at Leicester Royal Infirmary.
Lisa said she was diagnosed with pancreatitis, kidney failure and blood poisoning.
Polycystic kidneys is a condition that runs in Ms Farrant’s family. However, she said she had been screened last year and was clear.
She claims doctors advised her the diet pills she had taken had an adverse effect on her health, an effect that almost took her life.
“I don’t know how I’m still alive,” she said. “The doctors said my core temperature was the same as frozen peas but I was sweating.
“This has mentally traumatised me.
“Imagine if this was a 15-year-old girl?”
It was also found that she had a benign tumour on her liver and she said the thermogenic supplement had been “burning her up from inside”.
Lisa said she has tried to contact the company that produces the supplement but has had no reply.
In 2017 the same product was pulled from a store in Canada. Health Canada warned the product may have adverse effects on people’s health, especially those with high blood pressure or heart, kidney or liver disease.
Lisa advised those thinking of taking supplements to lose weight not to. “Don’t do it, get to the gym and eat healthily.
You can’t get obsessed, it’s not worth it.”
Project AD, the producer of the fat burner supplement Shreddable Untamed, were contacted for a comment but it did not respond in time for publication.