Gym-obsessed man given hours to live after cooking his insides with diet pills

A father-of-one who wanted a perfect ‘beach body’ was given hours to live after he overdosed on controversial diet pills – which “cooked” his body from the inside, says The Sun.

Lewis Brown, 25, started going to the gym to get fit but quickly became obsessed with working out and started taking steroids to gain a 95kg frame.

The lab worker made the activity of hitting gym his daily routine. In July 2015, he turned to controversial diet pills DNP to help him loose extra fat so he could add more muscle.

The father-of-one however overdosed when he took eight of the ‘fat burners’ in a day and the poisonous chemicals increased his body temperature to almost 42 degrees.

Worried medics were forced to put Lewis in a coma while they covered him with ice. When his muscles started to die, his devastated family were called to say goodbye.

Miraculously Lewis, from Haverhill, Suffolk, pulled through – but not before medics were forced to cut out a leg muscle which had died.

Now Mr Brown is warning of the dangers of the illegal pills which can easily be bought for just 3p (Ksh450) each online.

Lewis said: “I was so out of it about getting bigger that I thought I was unstoppable.  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.”

Lewis, who lives with partner Tara Watterson, 25, started going to the gym when he was aged 20 and weighed a healthy 64kgs.

But around two years ago he started using steroids he bought online and from pals to bulk up, and reached around 95kgs.

Lewis splashed around £100 (Ksh15, 000) a month for the medicines, which he would inject or take orally two or three times a week.

Despite noticing he was becoming aggressive and obsessive, the gym fanatic continued to work out.

DNP causes the body to run out of energy, accelerates metabolism to a dangerously fast level and causes the body’s temperature to rise.

He had taken three or four of the controversial tablets a day for a couple of weeks in early 2015, but on July 23 he took eight in 12 hours – his first day of re-taking the tablets, adds the website.

“I was hoping the steroids would keep the muscles, but the tablets would strip the fat. I took three in the morning and I didn’t feel anything for a few hours, so stupidly I took another five,” he said.

After realising his mistake when his insides began to ‘burn’, Lewis drove himself to the accident and emergency section at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.

His temperature soared to a staggering 39.8 degrees, and doctors put him in an induced coma and gave him ice baths, while warning his family to prepare for the worst.

“They said if I didn’t drink it I could die. I remember drinking it, but that’s the last thing I remember. 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,” Lewis told The Sun.

He spent three days in a coma and a week in intensive care, before doctors were forced to perform three operations to cut out his entire muscle at the front of his left leg.

It had been killed off when it was “cooked” by the drugs, and it took Lewis four months to recover and get back to work.

Lewis, who had previously never revealed the full extent of his obsession to his family before, has spoken out to raise awareness of the dangers of steroids and diet pills.

“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.”

According to a study in the Journal of Medical Toxicity more than 60 deaths have been attributed to DNP.