Dean Wharmby, a bodybuilder from Rochdale, England, has died following years of steroid abuse and gorging on 10,000 calories a day. Wharmby was believed to be obsessed with gaining weight and keeping fit, and so took to eating burgers, pizzas and bacon sandwiches and downing up to eight cans of energy drinks a day. The father of one was also a regular steroid user, a trait common to bodybuilders.
Wharmby was diagnosed with liver cancer last year, and friends and family had to watch his gradual half year long deterioration from the huge man he once was into a shadow of his former self. He was eventually moved into a hospice where he died shortly afterwards.
At the inquest into his death coroner Lisa Hashmi said that Wharmby’s excessive use of steroids to maintain his physique was a direct cause of his death. She said that it should serve as a direct lesson to other bodybuilders of the dangers of anabolic steroid abuse.
“To my mind, there is a direct, casual link with Dean’s death,” Ms. Hashmi said. “Dean’s death and the precious loss of such a young life in such circumstances ought to send out a very clear message to all those involved in the body building and fitness industries. Use of anabolic steroids, which is apparently rife throughout, is not without inherent risk. I would urge all those using and abusing such drugs to reconsider their position and ask whether it is really worth it given the life-threatening risks.”
As his condition deteriorated, Wharmby turned to alternative medicine in an attempt to beat his condition in the last few weeks of his life. Sadly, it was not to be. He left behind a five-year-old daughter, Scarlett, and his partner of eight years, Charlotte Rigby.
“I am heartbroken but it was such a release and I felt shortly after that he was no longer in the room,” Charlotte told reporters shortly after Wharmby’s death. “I know that where he is now, he is free, he is amazed, he has shook off all his illness and pain and is pure and perfect and will live forever.”