On September 24, 2012, Sarah Houston, a 23-year-old British university student, stared at the large number of pills poured from the medicine jar and hesitated for a moment, then took it in her mouth.
It didn't take long for her stomach toss and turn, and her vomiting spurted like a waterfall.
Her headache was pounding, her body was sweating, and her body temperature was pushing to the limit of what she could bear.
Eventually, her body temperature reached a staggering 43 degrees Celsius, which was enough to kill her.
Houston failed to take the blow and set her life on forever at 23 — she was out of breath when her roommate found her.
Sarah Houston
Until then, probably because of the academic pressure, Houston would relieve the stress by eating.
And this caused her to eventually overweight and deform her body — she developed binge eating disorder.
In order to lose weight, Houston bought a "diet pill" online from a Spanish businessman , 2,4-dinitrophenol.
A slimming capsule with an active ingredient of 2,4-dinitrophenol
What is 2,4-Dinitrophenol?
Speaking of it, in fact, human beings are not strangers!
In the 15th century, it was used as a dye, and later made into pesticides, preservatives, etc., for wood antiseptics and inhibiting mold growth.
During World War I, the French also used it as an active ingredient in gunpowder.
From the above statement, you can know that this thing is not like a good thing.
Indeed, it is toxic!
Miraculously – this ingredient that can be formulated with pesticides – someone will actually study eating it into the stomach!
Chemical formula of 2,4-Dinitrophenol
Molecular structure of 2,4-Dinitrophenol
In 1933, two researchers from Stanford University (Katyn and Professor Tante) used it for animal experiments.
After feeding the mice a quantitative amount of 2,4-dinitrophenol for a period of time, they were surprised to find that the mice lost a lot of weight and fat.
In that era, the advent of new drugs was a great support for previous drug research.
Therefore, when its weight-loss effect is revealed, drug dealers are very eager for it to "serve human beings".
Based on animal experiments, Tante said that humans who take 2,4-dinitrophenol at a daily dose of 100 mg will not be life-threatening.
That is to say, swallowing it will not lead to direct poisoning and death, on the contrary, there is a very significant lipid-lowering effect.
Drug research was not as rigorous then as it is today, with no ethical scrutiny.
Drugs may simply be tested on animals to be approved for use in humans.
Therefore, the drug dealers who smell the business opportunities immediately coax them into a "miracle drug" for weight loss.
But don't say, this thing really works!
Sure enough, after people ate it, their weight dropped rapidly, and their body fat also decreased a lot.
As a result, the news that this drug can lose weight spread everywhere, and the public rushed to buy this weight loss capsule.
For example, the drug has only been on the market for a year, and it has already sold 1.2 million capsules in the United States.
However, 2,4-Dinitrophenol is toxic!
Obviously, the Stanford study was not rigorous enough, and they grossly underestimated its toxic side effects.
2,4-Dinitrophenol is able to lose weight because it "consumes" intracellular ATP (adenosine triphosphate).
Simply put, ATP is like the "gasoline" flowing in the human body.
Cells need it to provide the main energy for various biochemical reactions.
Therefore, it is the basic substance that maintains the energy of normal human activities every day.
What's amazing about 2,4-dinitrophenol is that it can interfere with the process of atp bioavailability.
DNP interferes with the complex mechanisms of mitochondrial ATP metabolism
It can cause atp to be burned "like waste wood" within cells and not used to synthesize sugars and fats — which are directly consumed and converted into heat energy.
Therefore, it is conceivable that the form of energy from food that should be stored will be wasted inexorably.
However, in order to maintain the daily expenses of the body's cells, the original stored energy substances (such as sugar, fat, etc.) are forced to participate in metabolic processes.
So, people start to lose weight quickly!
This weight loss mechanism of 2,4-dinitrophenol, although "extremely efficient", but the side effects are also obvious.
Because when it is overdose, it is likely to cause atp failure in local tissue cells, and finally cell necrosis.
For example, when 2,4-dinitrophenol comes to the liver, the body's metabolic plant, it may lead to the death of hepatocytes in pieces, which in turn leads to acute liver failure.
In addition, because 2,4-dinitrophenol can lead to atp water to explain exothermic energy.
Excess 2,4-dinitrophenol can cause cells to release too much heat energy, eventually causing hyperthermia (usually 43.1 degrees Celsius before death).
Based on the exaggerated harm of this drug, only five years later, reports of various related drug side effects came: cataracts, fatal high body temperature, acute liver and kidney failure, etc.
Soon, this diet pill was banned.