74 Centimeters of Self-Deception: The "Strongest" Man Who Couldn't Lift an Extra Pound Dies in Brazil (4 photos)
In Brazil, the story of Arlindo de Souza, the man who vividly demonstrated the gulf between "seeming" and "being," has come to an end. 
The man with 74-centimeter biceps died in the hospital after his organs went on strike. It all started with kidney problems on Christmas Day and ended with fluid in his lungs and complete system failure. 
Look closer. The bar isn't hung with standard weight plates, but with old car brake discs. They look imposing and rusty, conjuring up the image of a "tough ghetto muscleman," but they're actually hollow inside and weigh a fraction of the weight of real iron discs.
Arlindo was a living monument to human stubbornness. He didn't "forge" his gigantic arms in the gym; he literally inflated them with a syringe. He used a homemade cocktail of mineral oil and alcohol. Doctors begged him to stop for years, warning him that the oil in his muscles was a ticking time bomb that would lead to amputation or death. But the "Brazilian Popeye" preferred to ignore reality for the sake of the shocked looks of passersby. 
If you just inject butter and lie on the couch, you're a freak. If you inject butter and take pictures with rusty truck rims, you're an "athlete with a unique method."
Why were these 74-centimeter giants useless? The fact is, Arlindo didn't train his muscles; he literally inflated them with oil. There were no contractile fibers inside his arms; they were filled with a mixture of mineral oil and alcohol, which had been destroying living tissue for years. Under the pressure of the synthol, his muscles atrophied and turned into dead fibrosis. His arms resembled balloons filled with heavy gel: they weighed heavily, but they couldn't perform their primary function—contract. The "Brazilian Popeye" carried dozens of kilograms of ballast, which ultimately killed him, refusing to process all that chemical waste. 
The outcome was predictable and tragic: his enormous arms proved useless against the internal chemicals. Arlindo's body couldn't cope with the intoxication, leaving the world with only archived photos of a man whose muscles outweighed his common sense. Another reminder: in the battle between synthol and biology, the morgue always wins.
