A dad was given just hours to live after overdosing on diet pills which ‘cooked’ him from the inside, in the pursuit to get the perfect ‘beach body’.
Lewis Brown, 25, was placed into a coma and covered in ice as his body temperature rose to a dangerous 42 degrees after he took eight ‘fat burning’ pills in just one day.
Lewis’ family were even warned to say their goodbyes as his muscles began dying, but against all the odds he fought back and managed to recover.
The father-of-one from Haverhill, Suffolk started going to the gym to get fit but became quickly obsessed with bulking up and started taking steroids to gain more muscle.
He turned to the controversial diet pills DNP this summer to help him lose extra fat so he could add more muscle, but he overdosed after taking eight in one day. The poisonous chemicals then made his body’s temperature sky rocket to 42 degrees.
Medics were forced to put the lad in a coma while they covered him in ice, but when his muscles started to die his distraught family were called in to say goodbye.
But miraculously he pulled through, but not before surgeons were forced to cut out a leg muscle which had died.
Lewis is now warning of the dangers of the illegal pills, which can be bought for just 3p each online.
Speaking to The Mirror, 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. I’m just lucky that I’m still alive. 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.
Lewis, who lives with partner Tara Watterson, 25, started going to the gym when he was 20 and weighed just ten stone. But two years ago he started using steroids to bulk up, managing to reach 15-and-a-half stone.
He had taken three or four of the tablets a day for a fortnight in early 2015, but one day in the summer he took eight in 12 hours and as soon as he realised his mistake and was getting hotter and hotter he drove himself to A & E at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.
Medics ordered him to neck a charcoal drink to ‘soak up’ the chemicals, but the toxic chemicals were already attacking his body. He was then put in an induced coma and gave him ice baths but doctors were fearing the worst.
Lewis continued: “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.”
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. Lewis took four months to recover before getting back to work.
He added:
Before I was a bit reclusive and everything annoyed me, and I didn’t want to do anything. Now I’m getting back to my old self. My family are really relieved. The doctors have said I’m very lucky to be alive.
Lewis said he will be going back to the gym to keep fit, but will be staying well clear of diet pills and steroids that’s for sure.
