More On: Brazilian Hulk
A bodybuilder known as the 'Brazilian Hulk' who injected oil into his muscles died at age 55
On his 55th birthday, a Brazilian bodybuilder who injected himself with oil to get bigger muscles died.
Valdir Segato had been giving himself dangerous Synthol injections for years, risking strokes and infections in order to get big biceps, pecs, and back muscles.
Segato used to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger and fictional characters like the Hulk gave him ideas for his body.
"People always call me Hulk, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and He-Man, which I like. "My biceps are twice as big as they were, but I still want to be bigger," he told the Daily Mail in 2016.
Six years ago, the man from So Paulo was told that if he kept getting the injections, he could lose a limb or at least have nerve damage and disfigurement.
After he started giving himself shots, his biceps grew to be 23 inches long. On the streets, people called him "the monster," which he was proud of.
He showed people on social media how his body changed, and on Instagram he called himself "Valdir Synthol."
Even though the bodybuilder had 1.7 million followers on TikTok, local news outlets said he didn't have many friends or visitors.
Moisés da Conceico da Silva told Brazil's Globo news that Segato rented a property built behind his family's house. On the day he died, he was complaining about being short of breath.
"It was somewhere around 6 a.m. He came to the front of the house by crawling through the back. Then he knocked, knocked, knocked on my mother's window. When she woke up, he said, "Help me, help me, I'm dying," da Silva told the newspaper.
Segato was taken to a hospital, but he fell at the front desk and looked like he was having a heart attack.
The TikTok star used to be a skinny teen, but when he was offered Synthol at the gym, he started abusing it.
Synthol is usually a mix of oil, benzyl alcohol, and lidocaine. According to Europe PubMed Central, it can cause "nerve damage, oil embolic of the pulmonary, occlusion of the pulmonary artery, myocardial infarction, cerebral stroke, and infections."
The drug didn't make Segato stronger; all it did was make him look better.
“It’s the risk he takes,” Segato’s friend Fernando Carvalho da Silva has previously said. “He wants to look good and wants to be famous.”