Posted on 10/21/2016 11:24:39 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Most people can survive without food for at least a few weeks, maybe a bit longer. Eventually, however, starvation kills.
Yet the limits on how long people can go without eating are complicated; without water people are unlikely to last a week, but the amount of time starvation takes can vary drastically.
Take the story of Angus Barbieri. For 382 days, ending July 11, 1966, the then-27-year-old Scotsman ate nothing.
There's limited documentation of Barbieri's fast: there are a few old newspaper stories recounting his ordeal and more convincingly, there's a case report describing the experience that his doctors published in the Postgraduate Medical Journal in 1973.
According to that report, Barbieri had walked into the University Department of Medicine at the Royal Infirmary of Dundee, Scotland, more than a year before, looking for help. He was "grossly obese" at the time, according to his doctors, weighing 456 pounds. The doctors put him on a short fast, thinking it would help him lose some weight, though they didn't expect him to keep it off.
But as days without food turned into weeks, Barbieri felt eager to continue the program. Absurd and risky as his goal sounded — fasts over 40 days were and still are considered dangerous — he wanted to reach his "ideal weight," 180 pounds. So he kept going.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I don’t believe this nick
don’t believe it either....there is such a thing as malnutrition and electrolyte imbalance and obese people an suffer from both..
Of course, it also can kill you.
Humans don’t hibernate.
I don’t either.
When your weight loss is the result of starvation, or some other unsustainable sort of diet regimen, one runs the risk of a Boomerang Affect, where all the weight lost comes back, plus a little bit more. I know this from experience.
Once still needs to eat sensibly, practice good breathing and move around some, but it’s often best to accept the natural weight your body seems to ‘want to’ settle at.
I do and , in fact have recommended exactly this when asked by obese people for help. They have not been enthusiastic but a couple have agreed and lost the weight.
I remember distinctly the moment I realized this really is the answer when studying for a Biochem Final in Med School. Arguably, there never has been a day in my life when I had a better grasp of the meterial. Fasting does no harm. You may want to consider some B vitamin supplement. Some potassium if you get muscle cramps. A few urinalysis and basic metabolic profile along the way to make certain the kidneys are OK.
Not recommended if one has a history of MI or arrhythmia, but with that history what IS recommended?
Certainly safer than continuing to have a BMI over 40.
That said, I perfectly understand better than anyone else that we don’t know everything. The advice we give is in most cases correct but in individual circumstances can be wrong for reasons we don’t understand. I had a guy I used to see twice a year when I worked for the Army. He was a retired E-6 who weighed 450 lbs. I used to give him the standard lecture every visit thinking I just had to “get through to him”. The years went on. His cholesterol numbers and EVERYTHING was as good as mine. Every year I would harangue him and warn him they wouldn’t stay that way. Year after year. I finally realized the only thing I was accomplishing was making the poor guy feel terrible FOR NOTHING. His numbers were fine and stayed that way. He never showed the least indication of insulin resistance, his triglycerides were as good as mine. The MI I fully expected never happened. The worst thing he did to himself was trash his hips and knees but I would not even bet on that. The last couple years I just thanked him for teaching me something I should have known better and apologized for my prior behavior. He was still going when I left.
If it’s true that would help explain how he did it. A person that didn’t have his extra fat would likely have died within 90 days.
I thought it was not possible to go more than 40 days without food.
Something about the body reaching a tipping point, a point of no return where even if you ate, you would not survive.
I tried finding information about it on the internet and could not find it.
I read, a long time ago, that if you did not poop for several weeks, your bunghole would fuse shut. Prolly not true though .....
“I read, a long time ago, that if you did not poop for several weeks, your bunghole would fuse shut. Prolly not true though .....”
That’s what farts are for, to “keep the road open.”
Some of the guys in the Japanese POW camps my grandfather was in apparently died like that. I think quite a few of them struggled onward driven by the desire to taste freedom again before they died but it coincided with being able to eat “normally” for the first time in years. Granddad was around 84 pounds at liberation.
Well, he wasn’t really fasting, he “ate” 276 lbs of his own fat. As for malnutrition, it does say he took vitamins and minerals. Totally plausible.
God love your grandfather.
It is well known that after 3 or 4 days of fasting (totally - only water), you lose your appetite and all desire to eat.
The roughest part is the first 3 or 4 days.
Did 2 - 2 week fasts many years ago.......about a year apart......
I’ve been saying for a while now that Americans aren’t fat; we’re famine prepared. We are the best in the world at prepping for potential famines, and getting better every day.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.