What Happened To Jon Brower Minnoch, The World's Heaviest Human?

According to Guinness World Records, who certified him shortly after his journey by boat to the hospital, Minnoch was born in 1941. His struggle with obesity began in childhood and never abated. At age 21 he weighed 392 pounds. Even at his height — he was over six feet tall — this weight made his day-to-day life difficult. Worse, the rate of his weight gain seemed to increase. At 24 he weighed 700 pounds. At 37 he peaked, but only through medical intervention; it’s impossible to know, and sad to imagine, what might have happened otherwise.

The real question is why Minnoch kept growing. The Seattle endocrinologist who examined him diagnosed an unusual, generalized edema, or an increasing in extracellular fluid, according to the South Coast Herald. This condition, sometimes called anasarca, typically causes swelling and water retention (via Healthline). Guinness World Records notes that hundreds of pounds of Minnoch’s weight was from fluid, which his body had retained beyond use.

ncG1vNJzZmhqZGy7psPSmqmorZ6Zwamx1qippZxemLyue82erqxnp52utXnHmqepnZ6asW7AzmahqKZdl7%2Bww8SrZKahnqO8pLSMrZ%2BeZaekv62w0mafnpmmnrK0wIyhrKaZnmQ%3D