DNP
Portions of an interview with Dan Duchaine relative to DNP

You have done a lot of work with DNP. What is DNP? How does it work?
Dan: Forty percent of your energy expenditure in your body…40% of the calories that you consume everyday is burned up as non-essential heat. Sixty percent of the energy is needed for metabolic processes, and to keep the cells alive and the processes involved. Forty percent is futile heat energy: there is no work being done, there is no ATP being used or produced for work. In humans, that is controlled by uncoupling proteins in light fat and skeletal muscle. UCPs, 2's and 3's, mediated by mostly beta-4 receptors in skeletal muscles and light fat. Dinitrophenol is an industrial chemical that has direct action on the heat production action in the mitochondria without any kind of receptor… it bypasses any kind of receptor or uncoupling protein. It pretty much throws protons off fatty acids and it turns into heat rather than ATP. It was a very popular weight loss drug in the 40s in this country but in that very unregulated time there were a lot of mis-prescribing and misuse of it and a high incidence of cataracts in women. And so it was banned from interstate transport although a doctor in almost every state could still prescribe it as long as they made the DNP within the state.
What causes the cataracts? What other problems occur?
Dan: Depletion of antioxidants in the eyeball specifically glutathione and Vitamin C. I always suspected it was the Vitamin C because the early research pointed out there was a depletion of Vitamin C in the cells, especially in the eyeball. Just recently, a couple of weeks ago, most newspapers reported a study that suggested supplemental Vitamin C could help avoid most cataracts.
Not everybody stays on it forever because you feel so miserable on it. I think most of the people having trouble with DNP don't understand it. There was a misunderstanding of how DNP worked as opposed to other thermogenic agents in that we couldn't really rely on measured body temperature to adjust the dosage. The human body can withstand a moderate fever, the body temperature can go well over a hundred degrees and you are kind of uncomfortable but you live, but it is not insufferable high. Because DNP allows the dilation of skin cells so that a lot of the heat is being radiated off, your body temperature is very, very high even though the mouth thermometer is really not showing a tremendous rise in body temperature. A 30 percent rise above normal, and your body temperature is only about 99.2 degrees. The hazard is that just because you have been able to tolerate ephedrine or yohimbe or clenbuterol in the past, temperatures of like a hundred or so, you should not try to get you body temperature that high on DNP because once it is that high you are well over double the metabolic rate and many of your cells are depleted of the energy source and things can get dangerous at that point.

You have recommended the use of insulin to enhance the efficacy of DNP use in bodybuilders…
Dan: It is not so much my idea but a research scientist out of the 30s that recommended it. Protein synthesis stops on DNP. Luckily for most sedentary people the research has not really shown a loss of muscle mass although it would stop testosterone production out of the gonads and might interfere with the transference of testosterone in the cells. However, they did show a study where by supplementing the DNP with growth hormone and insulin, they re-established protein synthesis. However, I must tell you about half of the heat producing ability of DNP comes from glucose being burned as heat and the other is fatty acids; so, if you put more glucose in your cells with insulin, you will become more uncomfortable because there will be more heat put off. We've done it both ways… we've done DNP with no insulin and those with it, and they were better off with it. We didn't need much, maybe once a day with short-acting stuff.

Do you think DNP, ipriflavone, and insulin are possible alternatives to steroids?
Dan: A few women have used DNP. I'm afraid to say that a lot of women did suffer on DNP because they were using too much more than necessary. I say that because they get in shape in such a fast time, they're ready 3 or 4 weeks before the contest and they really suffer to get there because their body temperature is so elevated. Now looking back, we could have used ½ maybe 1/3 the dosage and took our time so that we peaked right on time rather than way ahead of time.
Ipriflavone from Italy, the other from Hungary…As much as I begged people to get it in the country, it has never shown up. I've never seen one box of that stuff being used. I don't know why. Usually, I have a pretty good track record of recommending something and suddenly it shows up here, but that never made it over here.