Hey Doctor Bernard here. Don’t do what this person did. The chemical he took, at least
in the bodybuilding and powerlifting circles I knew in Illinois 15 years ago, they did
generally avoid it. So medically, and personally, I’m telling you, don’t do it. This person’s
also a YouTuber and he talks about his whole case there too, check him out, link in the
description below.
A Man Had A Life Threatening Accident With A Fat Burning Chemical. This Is What Happened
To His Organs.
CE is a 22 year old man, presenting to the emergency room, unconscious.
His brother in law, tells the admitting nurse that he found CE naked in the shower, on the
floor while cold water was running all over him. When paramedics arrived, CE demanded
they go away, refusing to get in to the ambulance, and when he arrived to the emergency room,
flowing in and out of consciousness, he refused to tell doctors what exactly had happened.
CE was a college student who enjoyed fitness.
When he was in elementary school, in the early 2000s, he got bullied.
[Patient CE] Most of middle School, I was pretty much bullied relentlessly. I was kind
of on the shorter side. I was overweight, very nerdy. Didn’t have a lot of friends.
When he got to high school, he started lifting weights for football. He gained muscle. No
one was gonna bully him anymore.
[Patient CE] I came in to 9th grade, and no one recognized me. I looked radically different.
And I was started to really grow in to my body through weightlifting. And for me, weightlifting
saved me from bullying, It saved me from being an outcast.
One day, when CE was 17, his dad suddenly passed away.
[Patient CE] It was completely unexpected. One morning he’s fine. I go to school and
the next thing I know, I’m getting pulled out of school and my father’s gone. I really
blamed myself for the death of my father. His sudden passing threw me into this pain,
and loss and the second that happened, everything else didn’t really matter to me anymore.
The next thing that happened is that I started binge eating to try to fill that void.
Eventually, CE’s physical body responded to all of this. He saw it as a direct response
to coping with everything. He justified to himself that if he were to lose all the weight,
that it would be like redeeming himself.
He started by heavily restricting his food. He would go on hours long bike rides. He would
skip class to be at the gym for hours every day. And he did get results, no matter how
tough it was on his body.
Eventually CE plateaued and his body adapted to the conditions. Looking for ways to keep
going, he found a next step— he was going to have chemical assistance.
[Patient CE] It was never a gradual thing. It was an immediate jump in to that. And that’s
when I started kind of looking for ways to supplement that weight loss through supplements.
On a bodybuilding forum, CE read about stimulants and thyroid hormone as a way of increasing
the body’s metabolism. That’ll burn fat, they said. He was able to buy them online
and use them in combination, together. He got some results from them for a while. But
it wasn’t enough.
Back online, CE found about a chemical named 2,4-Dinitrophenol, DNP.
[Patient CE] So once again, I turned back to these bodybuilding forums. And at that
point I had heard of DNP. But it wasn’t really talked about. But someone had mentioned
it, and I started looking up DNP. You know, the stories that you hear are immediately
both extremes: you hear about people dying, but you also hear about people who lost 10
to 15 pounds in the course of like a week or 2. Looking at everything, in that place
of desperation, seeing 3 or 4 different YouTubers at the time, all these forum posts of people
being like “yeah, DNP is tough to be on, but like, I did it, it’s fine, you’ll
be fine” sort of thing, I decided to make the commitment and find a source for it.
To someone doing their own research online, this was the perfect compound to get the job
done. And CE started taking DNP.
Immediately after taking a dose of his new weight loss chemical, CE felt hot. He wouldn’t
stop sweating. It got to the point where it became socially unacceptable, because he would
just sweat everywhere in class and in front of his friends.
He would blast the air conditioning, fans blowing all on him, but his body temperature
only stayed high. Every time he took it, it put him in a world of pain.
The Internet forums told CE to be careful of the dose of DNP he was taking, but they
always came back and said, “don’t worry about it. You’ll be fine.” But one day,
8 months later, CE wasn’t fine.
In the morning, he took his dose, which should have been it for the day. But then he took
a nap, and woke up confused, and took a second dose thinking it was his first again. And
that was the last thing he’d remember for the next several days.
In the afternoon, CE’s brother in law walked in to the house. He heard that the shower
was on. Bathroom Door was open. He found CE on the floor, naked and groaning as cold water
was running all over him.
[Patient CE] My brother in law walks by and immediately knows something is wrong. And
all I would get out is “Get me Coca-cola and a milkshake from Steak and Shake.” Cause
at this point, my body’s ravaging every store of energy I have. And he went out and
got it. And by the time he came back, I had lost responsiveness. And so he calls the paramedics.
I was under the assumption that possession of DNP was illegal. I was also very stubborn
so to admit that I was in any kind of danger was very difficult. And also, I didn’t really
want to incur the financial cost of an ambulance ride. And so I sent them away. But once again,
I lost consciousness and once again my brother in law finds me, and he calls the paramedics
a second time.
The brother in law asks what’s wrong but he couldn’t get a coherent response as he
calls for 911, and CE’s brought to the emergency room, where we are now.
At examination, CE is sweaty, confused and trembling. He’s in respiratory failure but
his measured body temperature is normal. And a blood test finds that his kidneys and his
liver are shutting down.
CE drifts in and out of consciousness. He has periods where he can be responsive, but
he won’t tell doctors exactly what he had taken because he was scared he’d get in
trouble. CE thought it was illegal to take DNP, but in the United States, it’s unlawful
to manufacture, market and sell for human consumption, so he wouldn’t probably wouldn’t
have gotten in trouble, but the people who sold it to him, could.
Usually in a previously healthy 22 year old man with no past medical history, who’s
sweaty, in respiratory failure, with a fast heart beat, the first thing doctors think
of is stimulant use. Being the end of summer, this is especially dangerous because stimulant
substance deaths have a higher incidence on days when it’s hot outside, because that
increased ambient temperature makes it harder for one to dissipate heat caused by the intake
of a stimulant. But CE’s urine screen returned nothing.
As the hours pass, CE’s body temperature starts to rise. He’s transferred in to the
intensive care unit because his organ shut down was getting worse. All of this happening
while he was intermittently combative with medical staff. They sedate him and stick a
tube down his throat so that a machine could breathe for him. This medically induced coma
could help the medical team somewhat, but with his body temperature quickly rising,
his proteins start to deform. Basic bodily functions no longer happen. It’s like his
body is cooking itself alive. And this is life threatening, if nothing is done about
it immediately.
Doctors still have no idea what CE had taken. His brother in law also had no idea either.
Problems like his kidneys and liver shutting down, and high body temperature usually correct
when the underlying problem is fixed. But without knowing what CE had taken, there’s
no way for doctors to fix that underlying problem. If they knew, they could give an
antidote, or they could give something to reverse and counteract everything that is
happening. But they didn’t know.
In the intensive care unit, doctors place cooling pads on CE to try to lower his body
temperature. They hydrate him with chilled IV fluids to push water in to his kidneys.
Both of these help his fever and kidney failure directly, but they don’t fix the underlying
problem. And finally, CE’s brother breaks the silence and tells the doctors about the
DNP that CE had been taking for weight loss for at least the last 8 months. This was in
addition to other fat loss substances including thyroid hormone, ephedrine, and clenbuterol.
And this explains to doctors exactly what is happening.
DNP is 2,4 Di Nitro Phenol. People know the word Nitro and associate it with explosives.
Like Nitro-glycerin, the thing that goes boom in dynamite. Or a Nitro Engine in a car. Di
NITRO Phenol can also be explosive. And if nitroglycerin is used today to treat chest
pain and heart problems, then di nitro phenol could have biological activity too, right?
Explosions are a quick release of heat. And CE’s body is hot and doctors can’t cool
him down fast enough. DNP isn’t exploding in his body, but it is doing something.
The mitochondria, powerhouse of the cell, produces energy for the body. To produce energy,
means creation of heat. But how exactly, is that energy made?
This brings us to a concept called a gradient. Protons, also known as Hydrogens, or acid,
get pumped out from the mitochondrial matrix. This is a place where important chemical reactions
happen.
Human bodies are many of millions of chemicals.
When protons get pumped out of the matrix, they accumulate in this inter membrane space.
This creates tension. Nature prefers a relaxed state. To be relaxed means to be perfectly
balanced, as all things should be. But if more protons are sitting on one side, then
that means a gradient exists. Those protons will want to spread out and be less crowded,
so they’ll want to move back in to the matrix. Back to the side with less protons. But, something’s
wrong. In living systems, most chemicals that have a charge, positive or negative, can’t
just cross through a membrane on their own. Cells don’t let charged chemicals in. Protons
have a positive charge, so they can’t just cross back in to the matrix. And the mitochondria
is smart. It allows those protons back in to the matrix, but only if they go through
a specific pore. And in going through this pore, those protons are exploited and used
to create Adenosine Triphosphate, ATP, which is the energy created by the powerhouse of
the cell.
But what happens, if a chemical like DNP, isn’t charged at first, so it can cross
freely through cells to bring protons in to the matrix? And then it leaves somehow but
then comes back with more protons? And it keeps doing this until there is no more gradient.
Then, protons don’t want to move, because things are already balanced and relaxed. Then
the mitochondria can’t exploit them anymore to create energy. This could be what happens.
I explain more on my second channel Heme Review why I have some questions about this idea,
add it to your Watch Next queue if it’s in your recommended or check the link in the
description below.
If the mitochondria is short circuited by DNP, and it can’t exploit protons to make
ATP, then it needs to do other things to compensate for this loss in energy production. Sugars
are a good source of energy, so break them down faster to keep up. One reason why we
have fat tissue in our body is to have stored energy. And if the mitochondria is desperate
to keep up energy production, then it needs to start burning those stores because cells
start to panic. Dinitrophenol has stopped the normal process. All of this creating heat.
And because CE took multiple doses accidentally, this process is amplified, creating even more
heat, as his body starts cooking itself, alive.
The Internet forum was right. DNP burns fat. It burns sugar in the muscles. It blows up
the process to make energy. The energy expenditure, dissipates as heat. At some doses, it’s
uncomfortable, socially unacceptable sweating. At high doses, it’s hyperthermia. Hyper
meaning high and thermia referring to heat or temperature of the body. High body temperature
to the point of denaturing enzymes and proteins and shutting down the organs. But this isn’t
the only thing raising CE’s body temperature.
His brother told doctors that CE had also been taking thyroid hormone. This increases
the body’s metabolism, gets used in some circles to help boost weight loss.
Ephedrine also raises body temperature and clenbuterol is a chemical used that moves
the body towards fight or flight mode, which would cause it to be more active to burn more
energy, and thus result in, higher body temperature.
So you can see a common theme here. The idea of using a chemical to boost metabolism to
help lose weight isn’t new. The simplified version is if you can expend more energy per
day than you put IN to your body, then over time, you will start to dig in to the energy
stores of your body— the fat tissue— and then start to lose weight. It’s more complicated
than that, but lets keep it there for now for simplicity’s sake
You can put IN less energy to your body daily, we call that dieting. And you can expend more
energy, we call that exercising and being more active. The problem is that people often
jump right in to it and suddenly drop their calories from whatever thousands per day,
to lets say 400 calories a day. They go super hard in the exercising on day one. They don’t
even ease themselves in to it, and they’ll get good results for a few weeks. But then
they plateau, and they stop making progress. There’s no more room to make changes, and
if they even try to exercise harder, they could get physically sick. At this point,
after just a few weeks, the worst part is they may not have even actually burned off
fat tissue, just the sugars stored in the liver and the muscle, that’s tied to water,
which if one checks the scale every day, and I would suggest checking less frequently,
that’s where they’ll see their progress, in numbers alone. And being burned out means
they’ll start relaxing, or they may quit altogether, and then rebound, and then they
say that it never worked. When you diet, start easy. Give yourself many options to change
and tighten as time goes on. It can be as simple as removing a sauce you normally eat
at lunch time, or just removing 1/4th of your dinner, running it for a week and then reassess
afterwards.
It’s at the plateau point some people will seek outside help if they don’t quit. They
go to online forums, or they ask people in their gym. Some will get supplements you can
buy at the store, which I would be careful with. And some others will get in to the hard
core stuff, bringing us back to CE.
In the intensive care unit, doctors have no antidote for DNP. There’s no way to suck
it out of his mitochondria. Whatever he took, his body will need to pass it on its own.
While that is happening, doctors can treat the symptoms, but there isn’t much else
they can do.
Except, maybe there is one thing. Doctors use a medicine called dantrolene, which can
be used in the setting of hyperthermia. This medicine, supposedly prevents calcium from
getting released into muscle cells. Calcium causes the muscle to commit to a contraction,
which by itself, would create heat. Calcium also sends signals inside cells, which in
this case, could help lower heat production there. Every little bit here can help. It
doesn’t always help, but maybe it’s in the cards for CE.
Five hours after the first dose of dantrolene, CE’s hyperthermia resolved, and it never
came back. Over the next 36 hours, 4 more doses were given. On the fourth day after
presenting to the emergency room, the tube that was down his throat was pulled out by
him as he regained consciousness.
The thing about admission in to the intensive care unit is that for several days, you’re
not really moving. You’re sedated and a machine is breathing for you. You’re fed
nutrients intravenously, and it’s the bare minimum to keep you live. As a result, even
though CE is muscular and was fit, he's going to need physical therapy for at least the
next several months, because of muscle breakdown that happened in his body, not because of
the DNP alone, but because of how tough it was to keep him alive in the ICU.
I don’t recommend anyone take any of this stuff, from a medical standpoint that I’ve
seen, and from a personal standpoint, having been in this world earlier in my life. And
I know someone is going to say that this is no more dangerous than taking aspirin. They
could be right, except the incentive for taking aspirin is to relieve pain. Once the pain
is gone, you don’t want to take more. But the incentive for DNP is that you take it
to lose weight. And there’s no telling where that bottom is, so even if the weight is gone,
one could just keep taking and taking, because the fundamental reason is different than aspirin.
Someone making that argument might not agree, but I know someone who can speak from their
own experience.
[Patient CE] I just really want to highlight how I shouldn’t be alive today. Had I lived
alone, I would’ve been dead. Had my brother in law just left me alone in the shower, I
would have been dead. Had I just gone up to my room instead of going in to the shower,
I wouldn’t be here. You know, so many people die from this chemical and don’t have the
opportunity to tell this story. Sure, there’s a lot of people who take it safely and have
good experiences with it. But it’s such a gamble. And it’s such a risk. The second
you take DNP, you’re strapping yourself in for an experience that has to run its course.
When you go to the ER for a a knife wound, gun shot wound, all those medical professionals
know what they’re dealing with- they know how to save your life. You go in and you won’t
tell the doctors you’re on DNP, they’ve never even heard of DNP before. You’re putting
yourself at a significant disadvantage of getting medical care. Yes, DNP is this super,
tempting idea of radical weight loss. But it’s interesting because if you are the
kind of person that struggles to lose weight in other ways, there’s the extreme hunger
you’ll experience with DNP. There’s the misery you’ll experience with DNP .So it’s
not nearly the promised miracle chemical that you’re believing it to be. I strongly advocate
to create healthy relationships with your body. Create healthy relationships with your
mind. Explore weight loss in terms of changing things for the better and that’s what will
lead to sustainable and healthy change in your body.
After an ICU admission. A lesson learned about messing with fat loss chemicals. And a continuing
journey of self improvement, CE made a full recovery, and you can see him on his YouTube
channel. Link in the description below.
The full interview with CE is on my Heme Review channel. Thanks so much for watching. Take
care of yourself, and be well.