Martina Adams has made the TV talk show rounds for her extreme plastic surgery results with appearances on Botched, The Maury Show, ITV’S This Morning and most recently The Doctors. In the past, when the German native appeared on television, she held the distinction of having the largest pair of breast implants in all of Europe. But now, she’s trying to make a name for herself with another body modification that is raising eyebrows. In an effort to alter her ethnicity, the former model says she has altered her skin tone to make herself darker using melanotan-II injections, an illegal drug that poses harmful risks to your liver and kidneys.
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Melanotan-II, sometimes referred to as the “Barbie drug,” has been responsible for multiple deaths and a higher risk of potential moles and lesions turning into skin cancer. Once popular with bodybuilders and eventually banned in the U.S., Canada and Europe, the tanning accelerator can still be obtained online. Users of the drug purchase vials on the internet and inject the drug daily over the course of several weeks in order to produce a change in skin color.
Adams, also known as “Matina Big,” says she has injects herself daily and follows up with a session in a tanning bed. On its own, the “Barbie Drug” can cause potential long-term damage, and the doctors on the show are quick to point out that Adams is doubling the risks to her health in her attempts to change the color of her skin.
“It’s a protein that’s been synthesized to mimic the hormone in your body that stimulates your cells to lay down pigment. So, this is actually a true tan, she’s actually creating that melanin in her skin. It is incredibly dangerous, this is not a safe thing to do,” says The Doctors expert dermatologist Sonia Batra, MD. “If you look at that transformation, it’s not just injecting this hormone which is illegal, she’s lying on a tanning bed, on a sunbed, every single day.”
According to Mokena, IL dermatologist Donna Stockton, MD, Melanotan-II became illegal once it was found to darken skin moles which could interfere with the detection of melanoma. “The drug is illegal due to the suspension of studies once it was discovered Melatonin-2 causes uneven pigmentation and an increase in the number and size of moles on the skin,” she says. In the case of Martina Big, Dr. Stockton says her overuse of the drug could cause her severe side effects. “Among the many risks associated with the drug, overdose by injection can lead to muscle breakdown and kidney damage.”
