24 year old beauty dies from taking slimming pills

The father of a woman who died from a heart attack after overdosing on slimming tablets is demanding a ban on the pills.

Michael Reynolds, 55, said he held dying Cara in his arms as she told him she took the raspberry ketones “in a moment of madness” after splitting with her fiance and “didn’t want to die”.

The 24-year-old was found unconscious in her bedroom with an empty bottle of the slimming pills nearby.

Doctors battled for five hours to keep her alive but she later died from cardiovascular collapse because of the fatal dose of caffeine, according to a British Medical Journal report.

Michael, from Edinburgh said she suffered heart palpitations after taking two of the tablets and had vowed not to take more.

He said 5ft 4in size 10 Cara, a support nurse, paid less than £20 for the ketones from Amazon.

He said: “If the ketones had not been so readily available, Cara might still be here today. These killer pills need to be taken off the shelves to stop this happening again.”

Cara, a support nurse, told her parents she planned to take the pills to help her lose weight while working out at the gym.

Michael said: “She was five feet four and a size ten wasn’t overweight at all but we wanted to be supportive of her.

“She told us the slimming pills were made from natural ingredients, so we didn’t think they were anything to worry about.”

After taking two pills, Cara went to her father complaining of heart palpitations.

He said: “She’d only taken the recommended amount of pills but was scared because her heart was going ten to the dozen. That’s when she said she wasn’t going to take them for weight loss any more, it had really worried her.”

But a month she had a seizure and admitted she had taken most of the slimming pills before falling unconscious.

Michael said: “I held my only daughter in my arms and before she became unresponsive she kept telling me she had made a mistake and that she didn’t want to die.

“She’d broken up with her fiance of one year and was left devastated by the rocky relationship.

“In a moment of madness, she’d taken an overdose because she had the ketones to hand. It was the most heartbreaking moment of my life, and one I will never forget.”

A British Medical Journal (BMJ) case report found she had ingested 18,000mg of caffeine and 18,000mg of raspberry ketones.

“Many slimming products have concentrations of up to 250mg of caffeine per tablet which is equivalent to more than four cans of Red Bull or seven cans of Coca Cola.

“Raspberry ketones are the naturally occurring chemical compounds that give raspberries their scent. They are promoted as ‘fat burners’ although there is little evidence for this.

“In Cara’s case, the cause of death was caffeine toxicity with a blood level of 103 mg of caffeine per litre which is within the fatal range.”