Father who wanted a beach body nearly killed by diet pills
A FATHER who wanted a perfect ‘beach body’ came within hours of dying after he overdosed on illegal diet pills which ‘cooked’ his body from the inside.
Lewis Brown, 25, began working out at the gym when he was 20 to boost his 10st frame, beginning to take steroids two years ago to reach more than 15st.
Then last year the laboratory worker also turned to diet pills containing the highly toxic industrial chemical DNP – dinitrophenol – to help him lose extra fat by the summer.
The pills, which have been linked to a number of deaths in the UK, speed up the metabolism resulting in rapid weight loss, but also cause the body’s temperature to rise. Two can be a lethal dose and their sale for human consumption is illegal in Britain, although they can be bought easily online.
Mr Brown, a father of one, bought his on the internet for £30 a packet, taking three or four a day for a couple of weeks in early 2015.
He turned to them again on July 23 when he took eight in 12 hours – the same number that proved fatal for student Eloise Parry, 21, from Shrewsbury, who died in hospital on April 12. As Mr Brown, from Haverhill, Suffolk, began to feel hotter and hotter he drove himself to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge where his body temperature reached 41.8C, compared to a typical level of 37C.
Doctors put him in a coma while they covered him in ice, but when his muscles started to die his family were called to say goodbye to him as he was not expected to survive the night. He defied expectations, however, although he spent a week in intensive care and doctors had to cut muscle from his left leg where it died when it was ‘cooked’ by the DNP.
It took him four months to recover and get back to work and he is now warning of the dangers of DNP pills and steroids.
‘I’m just lucky that I’m still alive,’ said Mr Brown, who lives with his partner Tara Watterson. ‘My body was just heating up and cooking from the inside out. I remember seeing a story about DNP and people who died and just thinking they weren’t taking them right. 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.’