Viral TikTok star “Brazilian Hulk” who rose to fame on the fame for his cartoonish 23-inch biceps has died.
Born Valdir Segato, the bodybuilder was pronounced dead on his 55th birthday. According to his landlords nearby, Segato had complained that he was experiencing shortness of breath around 6am.
“He came crawling through the back house and came to the front,” Moisés da Conceição da Silva told Globo, “Then he knocked on my mother’s window, knocked, knocked, then she woke up and he said, ‘Help me, help me because I’m dying.”’ He was subsequently rushed to hospital where his condition only worsened on arrival.
“They put him in the car and then the neighbour went to the UPA. He arrived at the UPA, [and] he fell at the reception, having a heart attack. I think he had a heart attack,” he added.
The neighbour told the Globo that this wasn’t Segato’s first health scar, explaning that the TikTok sensation had experienced similar symptoms months earlier. “He had already felt sick again, I had already helped him. He just didn’t die because I ran very fast, I took the car, I went very fast until I got to the hospital,” Moisés recalled. “[He] said that if it wasn’t for me, he would have died that day. This time, my mother said that he said he was going to die, that he would not escape.”
Segato was known to use injections shape or enhance muscles.. Although his cause of death is officially unknown, his use of the site enhancement oil known as synthol - a highly dangerous liquid that he had been administering to himself for years to bulk up - likely contributed to his death.
He injected the mixture - made of sesame oil, lidocaine, and alcohol - frequently, often posting photos of his growth on TikTok. Although it made him look stronger, it didn’t actually help build any muscle. On top of that, the cosmetic cocktail poses the risk of amputation, stroke, infection, and death.
Synthol is 85 percent medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil, 7.5 percent lidocaine, and 7.5 percent alcohol. This oil’s constituents often enable the substance’s abuse in bodybuilders to achieve a bulky look. lidocaine is an anesthetic that helps deal with the pain associated with Synthol injection in the muscles. Meanwhile, the alcohol content seemingly helps to disinfect the area and prevent infections. However, they may still occur as the usage of alcohol is not an assured way to ward off infections.
Glorifying his unorthodox health routine online, the bodybuilder would brag about his daily run in with death. He also shared a number of videos showing his workout regime, which included bicep curls and bench presses.
In one post, he wrote: “I bathe with cinthol soap (a brand particularly popular in India) and inject synthol into my body.” Eventually the oil injections ballooned Segato’s biceps to a preposterous 23 inches, despite not improving his strength.
In the years leading up to his passing, Segato didn’t deny these claims and even said he’d been warned against using the injections, saying: “The doctors tell me to stop it, the advice they give me is to stop using. It’s my decision to use it because I want to… because I like to.”
Before his rise to fame on TikTok, Segato worked in construction and had struggled with drug addiction. At the time of his death, he had over a million followers on TikTok.
