Bride-to-be dies after taking weight loss drugs bought online

Many dream of being thin. And some have turned to weight-loss drugs found online to achieve this goal. A string of recent incidents in China has revealed the dangers of products that promise instant results.

She was preparing to be a bride, but now she'll never see her wedding day.

"She fainted after coming out of the shower. I didn't know how to help. So I called the ambulance," Victim's mother said.

"When we arrived at her home, she was lying on the bed. Her lips appeared purple-ish. Her heart had already stopped beating and her breathings had also stopped before I could do anything," A Changzhou Emergency physician said.

Doctors say the woman's death, at the age of just 28, was a result of taking diet pills purchased from an online store. And while her case is an extreme example of the possible consequences of consuming internet-bought drugs, she's not the only victim.

"By the second day of taking the pills, I started to have difficulties sleeping. When I asked the online vendor, they said it was normal. So I continued with the pills, until one day I had a serious headache, and I couldn't breathe. My family called the ambulance. When I arrived at the hospital, I was in very critical condition," A online diet pill customer said.

Both women took different types of weight loss pills, but both got them from the internet. Every day, thousands of bottles of this kind of product are sold online, where there's little oversight over the vendors' claims or their products' quality. Even drugs with labels that say t'hey're 100 percent natural or made from herbs, may in fact contain dangerous chemicals. And batch lot numbers and health permits can be fake.

"Legal weight reduction products may not produce instant results, that's why some producers add illegal chemicals into their formulas," Lu Chenqian with Chinese Center For Disease Prevention said.

But still, the appeal remains. According to a national health report in 2012, 240 million Chinese over 18 years age are overweight, and over 70 million are considered obese.

"Obesity can lead to a series of chronic diseases. The health administration has approved some legal weight-loss drugs, but taking them still needs the advice of doctors. Every medicine has side effects," Chen Junshi with Chinese Academy Of Engineering said.

Experts say the best and safest way to lose weight is to adopt a healthy diet and exercise regularly, instead of buying unproven and potentially risky drugs from the internet.