[bluedevil2k]

DNP is a common drug used by bodybuilders to drop fat extremely quickly. Like 20 pounds in 2 weeks quickly. It basically turns your metabolism up to 125% of normal. They describe themselves as being hot and sweaty at all times…though they do also say it destroys their appetite. Fun fact…it was originally developed as an explosive in WW1 and it was observed the workers in the munitions factories were losing tons of weight (and dying). Turns out DNP is a poison. Who would have guessed.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dnp-the-deadly-internet-diet-d...

[altgeek]

For the body hackers reading this, DNP is not something to be trifled with. Cataracts are a common side effect, and overdose is uniformly fatal.

But, you'll die a ripped corpse ;) Flex!

[atdrummond]

I would never suggest anyone use DNP but my understanding is that the cataract side effect is predominantly limited to women. I know dozens of men who have used it for years (from my time in the strength and bodybuilding sports) and not a single one had accelerated cataract development. Of the 5 women I knew who used it, 4 have developed cataracts before 50!

I am looking for the paper on this but there’s a preprint I reviewed when I was a referee for a journal that was a meta-analysis on DNP side effects papers. The authors never resubmitted it but a lot of the data was solid. If I can find it I’ll share.

[WaxProlix]

That's wild, but it sounds incredibly dangerous. Even if it were possible to safely dose something like this, getting pure and well-measured quantities has to be really, really hard, right? We're talking tens or hundreds of milligrams between 'safe' doses and unsafe ones. (200-300 seems to be 'recommended' starting dose; 350 is the lowest recorded fatal dose)

I'd love to be beautiful as much as the next guy but man, seems risky.

[texasbigdata]

David Sinclair at Harvard is working on making this molecule safe. Back in the day it was FDA approved it was wildly popular, but the "idiot takes 10x the dosage and cooks their insides" is too much of a risk for a 2020+ general population especially given the extremely slow half time.

[esyir]

I wish that we'd care less about said edge cases. It's one thing to have an obscure, nonobvious death sentence, but "don't overdose on meds" should be common sense enough to avoid tiptoeing about it.

[texasbigdata]

It's a weird double ... I wish someone had a nice word for this.

In modern America, with allopathic medicine being the norm, its difficult to obtain some things that are likely safe at a 3 sigma confidence interval. Yet conversely, and reminder we share healthcare costs partially as a society through Medicare and Medicaid, you're free to pour McDonalds into yourself and add $X00k of cost onto the healthcare system, and "infringing on that right" and heaven forbid enacting a tax on sugar products is somehow unacceptable.

I can shorten my life expectancy by 15 years in so many ways. But to buy XYZ drug without a giant multi-day process which on average is positive, and even at ABC confidence level is not negative, nahhhh we don't trust you as a society to do that.

Super frustrating in a borderline libertarian rant.

[sva_]

> getting pure and well-measured quantities has to be really, really hard, right?

Accurate scales are very affordable nowadays. A $50 Gemini-20 can accurately measure in the milligram range with very little tolerance. The danger is probably more of people not keeping to the right dosages.