Switch on your television and watch a programme like Fat Club or The Biggest Loser and you might get the impression that losing weight was entertaining or a game. For those who are struggling without any support nothing could be further from the truth. The desire to lose weight can, for many, become so overwhelming that they fall into deep depressions and become too ashamed to leave their own homes.
One such woman was Selena Walrond. Selena was 26, 5 foot 3 inches tall and weighed 15 stone. Her weight had been something with which she had struggled for many years until eventually she became so ashamed about her size that she would not leave her home in South London. Selena became so desperate that she decided to search the Internet for slimming tablets. It was a decision, which would, sadly, cost her her life.
Selena died after taking an overdose of unlicensed slimming tablets, which it is thought she bought from a website selling Chinese medicines, five days before she met her death last August. The drug, which is known as DNP or dinitrophenol, has never been licensed in the UK and was banned in the United States in 1938 due to its potentially lethal side effects.
Bodybuilders and athletes who want to lose weight quickly use the drug. It increases the metabolic rate, which in turn burns calories. Selena took five times the recommended daily dose, which resulted in a racing heart rate and a soaring temperature. She was discovered lying in a cold bath desperately trying to cool down by her mother. She was taken to hospital but suffered a fatal cardiac arrest eight hours later. The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death and said that he “did not for a moment think Selena intended to die. She intended to lose weight.”
Selena Walrond’s desperation about her weight led her to buy unlicensed pills on the Internet, which killed her. It is vital that anyone wanting to obtain and take slimming tablets only does so after a consultation with a GMC registered doctor and that the pills are dispensed from a pharmacy based in the UK to insure their authenticity. Only then can you be sure that the prescribed medication has been properly tested, is licensed and is the right drug for you to take: not something knocked up in a makeshift laboratory which may endanger your life.