ZAMBOANGA DEL NORTE – A young beauty contestant in southern Philippines had died after taking an overdose of slimming pills she bought over the Internet.
The 19-year old Mary Antoinette Acedo, a native of Zamboanga del Norte’s Roxas town, died in the hospital after she was rushed due to severe vomiting and stomach pains, and other symptoms related damage in her internal organs.
Acedo was reported to have taken at least 4 capsules a day of the slimming pills in preparation to the finals of the beauty contest that she joined in Dapitan City. Acedo, who weighed just less than 50 kilos, wanted to stay slim and took a large dose of the pills.
Laboratory tests in the hospital showed that Acedo suffered from liver damage, among others, that may had been cause by the pills she took. Most of the diet pills sold online contain Dinitrophenol, an ingredient used in explosives and pesticide and, and had been banned after it was found to be poisonous and potentially carcinogenic.
Health authorities have repeatedly issued warning to the public anew to refrain from buying and taking drugs or food supplements that have not passed legitimate government laboratory tests after a wide array of these and other products have flooded on the Internet and online resellers on social media such as Facebook.
The Food and Drug Administration or FDA has previously seized and ban more than two dozen slimming or anti-obesity products, which contained amphetamine, sibutramine, and steroids. It said these products were being marketed as oral capsules or as a coffee drinks.
FDA said that amphetamine causes irregular heartbeat, confusion, urine retention and painful urination, hyperthermia, hyperreflexia, muscle pain, severe agitation, rapid breathing, and tremor. It said that large overdose of these chemicals may produce symptoms such as psychosis, anuria, cardiogenic shock, cerebral hemorrhage, circulatory collapse, extreme fever, pulmonary hypertension, renal failure, rapid muscle breakdown, serotonin syndrome, and stereotypy. Fatal amphetamine poisoning, it said, usually involves convulsion and coma.
It further said that Sibutramine increases the risk of serious heart events, including non-fatal heart attack or non-fatal stroke and death.
Some of the FDA-banned products were Ballet Dancer Fat Reducing, Bio-Lissom Fat Reducing, Brazilian Slimming Coffee, Cell Life Slimming Coffee, Elegant Shape Fat Reducing, Goodliness Fat Reducing, Happyslim, Leisure 18 Slimming Coffee, Lightness Fat Reducing, Maggie Fitness Essence, Mei Shen Ting Anti-Obesity, Modeling Fat-Reducing, New Original Lightness Fat-Reducing, Pearl White Slimming, Perfect Figure Slimming, Perfect Slim Fat Reduction Cosmetic, Perfect Slim Purely Natural Fat Reduction Cosmetic , Pill for Weight Reduction, Pretty Model, Qiaomei Fat Binder, Qi Xian Nu, Seven Days Miracle, Shaping Body Fat Loss, Slim and Beauty Slimming, Slim Up Extra Whitening and Reducing, and Xianzimei Fat Reduction.
The FDA advised consumers to use only (FDA) approved slimming pills or anti-obesity drugs under the supervision of doctors. (Mindanao Examiner)
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