DNP myths

Whenever the topic of DNP comes up, you can count on a few myths reappearing right along with it. Without being detailed to the point of tedium, let me just refer to a few of them.

1. "DNP is rat poison, man!" Well, no it's not. You'll also see DNP described as insecticide, pesticide, etc. The basis for the claim is that DNP does inhibit fungal growth so it has a use in agriculture to protect plants. And in high doses it, like most anything, can be fatal to an animal that ingests it. But it's not a very effective toxin (since it takes a high dose of something noxious) to have any such result, so it's no more useful as "rat poison" than claiming that salad dressing or window cleaner are "rat poison" because an animal consumed enough of it would die, of course. This hysteria is based on the idea that naming the scariest product that a substance is found in is the same as condemning the ingredient itself. But by that logic, beer could be impugned as "cadaver preservative" because they both contain alcohol. The fact that something scary contains an ingredient doesn't mean EVERY use of that ingredient is linked to that one cherry-picked scary example. Hell, beetle shells are used to make red food dye; does anyone go around screaming that popsicles are "mashed up bugs, man!"?

I will concede this point: most cheap DNP on the market is an industrial-grade powder. That means it was produced for the mining and agriculture industries, and is not made cleanly. This is where the quality of your source makes a difference. If you bargain-shop for the cheapest stuff out there, you'll get a basic industrial DNP powder scooped from barrels. A premium source will be able to provide lab-created crystalline DNP with a 99% assay...clean stuff. If you go buy the cheapest DNP you can find, you're going to get crap you'll wish you hadn't swallowed.

2. "DNP cooks you from the inside out!" No it doesn't. (I've even seen this word-for-word claim in a prominent bodybuilding magazine article in 2016!) As soon as someone says this, I know I'm dealing with a person who is simply repeating myths. DNP has a very minor effect on core temperature (like, 2 degrees in an EXTREME case), and most of the heat effect is at the skin surface level. The heat is caused by additional expenditure of muscle energy to accomplish work, which means that at its most intense DNP is causing your muscle cells to do what exercise does--and you get hot because of it. Nobody goes around worrying that weightlifting cooks you from the inside out because THAT muscle activity makes you hot! The heat is a normal effect of a normal body process: burning calories in muscle cells. The myth is about as stupid as saying that drinking water "drowns you from the inside out!" To be fair and honest, DNP *can* certainly overheat a person who takes an overdose; this happened a while back when a girl in England took 8 capsules at once (the suggested dose for a female is ONE capsule per day), and died. My refutation of the "cooks you from the inside" myth is, of course, based on a person using the proper amount, in which case the myth is ludicrous.

3. "I know a guy who DIED using that stuff!" I call bullshit on this. This is the "My great-grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee" trope of DNP falsehoods: a gazillion people repeat the claim, but you can usually roll your eyes when you hear it. Most fatalities from using DNP did indeed happen when it was used in the early 20th century as a fat loss agent, but it was because people were inventing the dosing protocol themselves using trial-and-error without encapsulation or digital scales. They were just making up their regimen on their own, using stuff obtained from the mining industry. In the 1990s, an unfortunate member of the Elite board did indeed die. In context, though, he was someone who had previously confessed to mixing DNP with street drugs, and then going out to binge drink all night at dance clubs. He had contradicted every single common sense protocol for safe use. There have been other deaths since then (*the girl who took 8 caps at once; a customer of a particular UK source, because that source used cheap Chinese DNP that was loaded with adulterants and caused toxic shock in several buyers--yeah, deaths happen. They're rare, and they're why you don't want to buy from the "cheap new source" you just found on the internet. Buy from someone with a long history and flawless record. Yours truly, perhaps.)

In reality, DNP is quite hard to die from, and here's why: it has a short life in the body (36 hours or so), and it takes 2-3 days for the full effect of a dose to accumulate. This means that people have plenty of time to assess their tolerance as they start with a low dose, and if they become uncomfortable with it they can simply realize it and reduce their use, and their body will respond quickly. It becomes a self-limiting experience: if you're on it and you feel like the potency is too tough, you simply take a break and your body adjusts rather quickly to the diminished dose. Nobody who's reached the peak of their tolerance is likely to keep gulping down more.

Also, the fatal dose for DNP is measured in grams per body weight. For an average male, the fatal dose is about 3.5-4 grams of DNP. Most DNP products are dosed at 200mg per capsule; mine are 250mg (more on that later). That means that a healthy guy would have to take about 15-20 capsules AT ONCE to reach this dosage. The average daily dose for proper DNP use is 1-3 caps per day. As you can see, it's not even close. So when guys swear that they "know a guy" or they "heard about this one guy" or their cousin "knows a guy" or their sister works at a hospital "where this guy came in" and died on the stuff, it's nonsense.

3.5: "Crystalline DNP is 25% weaker than regular DNP." I hear this about once a month. By weight, there is truth to this because the addition of a salt to the molecule means that, milligram-to-milligram, crystalline DNP does contain a slightly smaller quantity of the pure DNP chemical itself. But here's the thing: someone years ago casually wrote that it was 25%, and since then people have repeated their calculators as if it's gospel, to conclude that a 250mg capsule of crystal "only has 187.5 milligrams of DNP in it!" [*facepalm!*] Someone took the "25%" offhanded comment and ran with it; these are the same guys who think "my college textbooks weigh a ton" is an accurate description of a 2,000-pound reading list. And more to the point, would it even matter? I mean, we're talking a few grains of powder in a dosage measured in hundreds of milligrams. I do dose my capsules at 250mg instead of 200 to offset this--it's only fair to buyers to give them a proper product--but that's not confirmation that crystal DNP is "weaker." Its actually premium-quality stuff, but the nerds with calculators miss the point.

In reality, the actual correlation is 89%, not 75%. As one expert wrote, "There are a lot of myths about how the two forms [crystal vs. powder] differ...In reality, they are going to act very much the same. The primary difference is that crystal DNP...contains a sodium molecule. When the sodium is cleaved, you're left with the same DNP base that you get when you take DNP powder. Both forms are highly bioavailable, which is not surprising considering DNP is a small molecule that can even permeate skin. It's often been said that crystal DNP is 75% as strong as powder DNP, but based on the chemical structures and molar masses, it looks like crystal DNP is about 89% as strong as powder DNP (molar mass of 184.106 for powder vs 206.088 for crystal). So 250mg of crystal DNP is equivalent to 222mg of powder."

4. "DNP makes you go blind." Again, no it doesn't. There is an increased risk for cataracts, but here's the thing: it only happens in women, not men, and only in 1-2% of female users. And if a female use takes a quercetin supplement (which is as cheap as dirt; I found it for under $10 on Amazon), it even eliminates THAT tiny rate of risk. If you're not a female, then the risk is zero anyway, so this criticism is nonsense.

5. "DNP causes cancer." This one is so wrong it proves that the critic just makes shit up to say it. DNP not only does not cause cancer, it actually INHIBITS cancer cell growth while protecting surrounding healthy cells. That's right! While it's true that some phenols are carcinogenic, DNP isn't one of them. DNP attacks tumors and helps eradicate cancer cells. And it does this while protecting DNA and RNA strands. This isn't some apocryphal bullshit claim on my part; it's one of the more prominent qualities of DNP in medical applications and you can find multiple articles on pubmed that sustain it (or check my pastebin for the entry on DNP and medical research). DNP also has antioxidant properties, but I still advice users to supplement with other antioxidants too.

6. "DNP is toxic." This one is true. It is legally classified as a toxin. But wait: WHY is it classified as a toxin? Because when ingested by animals, it can cause sweating and weight loss! Shazam! In other words, the whole point of using it IS the basis for its classification. Meanwhile, DNP has no adverse effects on organ systems, reproductive health (that is, offspring born to parents using DNP at conception are not shown to be harmed), liver, brain, kidneys, etc. Its function as a mitochondrial uncoupler isn't even bizarre (lots of substances do that); DNP simply causes a far more dramatic process of uncoupling than other known uncouplers also do. Example: Fish oil is a mitochondrial uncoupler. Uncoupling isn't defiance of nature; DNP just makes it happen more than normal. DNP kills antibiotic-resistant bacteria, it attacks cancer cells, it protects healthy cells, it combats tumors, and it has no damaging effects on organs, EXCEPT when consumed at "overdose" quantity.

7. "DNP is a drug." It's not. It's not a drug, or a scheduled substance. It doesn't show up on drug tests. It's a chemical, and hopefully everyone here knows that while all drugs are chemicals, not all chemicals are drugs. DNP is regulated by law to prohibit misuse, improper disposal, improper transit, and because in its raw form it is very combustible (so it's not something you want to buy from a source using paypal from your gmail/AOL/yahoo/hotmail account sent from your iphone). It's still something a good source has to be very careful with: access to a lab who can provide it discreetly, and privacy while transacting. But it's not drug use or drug dealing.