14 DAY TRIAL // In April this year, the case of a 21-year-old student, who died “burning from the inside” after taking 4 times the lethal dose of diet pills she’d bought online, made headlines around the world.
The industry of over-the-counter / online diet pills is one of many billions annually, but few people realize the risks they’re taking when they start using them, believing promos telling them that they would get their dream body in almost no time.
Natalie Penney from Great Manchester also did that, she reveals in an interview with the Daily Mail. She’s been left with cardiac issues and anxiety to remind her of her huge, very costly mistake.
How diet pills nearly killed Natalie
The 24-year-old tells the publication that she bought the diet pills from a private vendor on Amazon, not for a second thinking they might pose a health risk to her. Her focus was on losing weight in the laziest manner possible: she’d gained some weight on problem areas because of her lifestyle, but she didn’t want to have to change it.
In other words, she’d gained weight because she was partying too much and eating mostly takeout. She wanted to shift the extra pounds, but still be able to enjoy fast food and late-night snacks, so the diet pills seemed like the “perfect” solution for getting the body she wanted and not have to change a thing about the lifestyle she enjoyed so much.
She went online and bought her fill for 2 months. Not even the low price tag or the fact that the pills came in an unlabeled bottle made her think twice before taking them.
She says she started right away, replacing breakfast with one pill, and in a very short while, she started seeing the results. By the time she’d gotten the figure she’d wanted and she stopped taking the pills, she had already started feeling ill: she was experiencing profuse sweating and accelerated heart beats, and would have something that resembled panic attacks.
Some time after she stopped taking the pills, she woke up on the floor of her house after passing out. The following visit to the hospital revealed to her the extent of the damage she’d done to her body with the pills, as well as what was in them.
A lesson learned the hard way
When the tests came back, Natalie found out that the pills she’d been taking included as main ingredients caffeine, aspirin and ephedrine, which is a natural compound that is used as a decongestant, concentration aid and stimulant, but also as an appetite suppressant.
It is illegal in the UK and it’s very dangerous in high doses. The pills she’d been taking had enough of it in them to cause permanent cardiac issues.
For 2 years, Natalie had to wear a heart monitor. She is still seeing a specialist on a regular basis and has sworn to a healthy lifestyle that includes healthy foods and plenty of exercise, and no stimulant, like alcohol.
“I was ashamed and horrified about what I might have done to myself, as a result of wanting to be a bit thinner,” she tells the Mail. She can’t believe she could take those pills and not even wonder what was in them, or how irresponsible she was for wanting the easy way out, instead of working harder towards the figure she wanted to have.
Her story is a cautionary one, and she wants it known.