24-year-old Cara Reynolds dies after overdose of raspberry ketone weight-loss pills
OHMYGOSSIP — A 24-year-old British woman died of a heart attack after taking diet pills she bought on the Internet. Cara Reynolds had bought the raspberry ketone weight-loss pills, which are promoted as fat burners, although her family didn’t think she was overweight. “She was 5’4″ and a size 10,” her dad Michael Reynolds told the Daily Mail. “She wasn’t overweight at all.”
Still, the family wanted to support their daughter, and they were reassured when she told them the pills were made from natural ingredients. “We didn’t think they were anything to worry about,” he said. However, she complained of heart palpitations after taking only two pills, her dad said, and she said she wasn’t going to take any more.
One month later, however, after a breakup with her fiance, she took an overdose of the ketone tablets. The Daily Mail estimated that she took enough tablets to equal as much caffeine as 225 cans of the energy drink Red Bull.
She shortly began to have seizures and quit breathing. After 44 attempts by paramedics to resuscitate her, she died from cardiovascular collapse.
A report into her death published in the British Medical Journal stated: ”Many slimming products have concentrations of up to 250mg of caffeine per tablet. This is equivalent to more than four cans of Red Bull or seven cans of Coca Cola.”
“If the ketones had not been so readily available, Cara might still be here today,” her father Michael said, and called on retailers to stop selling the diet pills.