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Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

The human brain is 60 percent fat

Woah, did not know that. So can true 'fat burners' like DNP give you brain damage, or is that something the blood brain barrier protects against?

DNP doesn't actually target fat that I am aware of. It messes with ATP and makes it incredibly inefficient, so your cells burn basically everything including fat to try and keep up with energy demands. This also can kill you due to the heat produced.

It's also an explosive.

I took a standard DNP fat loss dose, the effects (weight loss and others) are vastly overstated. You'd have to take well in excess of any recommended dose to get to the point where the waste heat production would become dangerous. You're more likely to develop a cataract as a deleterious effect.

I'd wager most of my weight loss came from the fact that I just wasn't eating because I felt awful.

According to wikipedia, the actual tolerance of the dose varies widely. Because of this I would strongly discount individual accounts of safe experiences.

Sure, although I guess to be clear I wouldn't recommend DNP to anyone because it's absolutely not the miracle weight loss drug it seems to be when you read about it on the internet.

were you training at the same time? any noticeable effects if so?

I tried, but DNP basically gave me a perpetual fever (aka pyrexia) so I didn't train. I assume it would have had a pretty noticeable effect though.

what else did you expect to happen? The only place I can see it wouldn't be a problem would be in the arctic or antarctic. Air temperature is so low you might not have any issues.

Ooof, messing with ATP to "burn basically everything" sounds like a ticket to cancer or accelerated aging.

Another fun fact: the brain being majority made of fat is why ultra low fat diets can cause depression!

It is also why it is recommended babies consume dietary fats, low fat diets are terrible for brain development.

Want a healthy baby? Add some organ meat (check levels so as to not OD on certain vitamins) and (low/no mercury) fish skins to their diet!

It's not fat tissue (that is, fat cells.)

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