In the s, Mahatma Gandhi survived 21 days on sips of water during a display of civil disobedience. But even in the chronicles of food and water deprivation, Skyllberg's recent day stint is an extreme case.
Stroud, who accompanied veteran British adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes across the Antarctic, said it was possible to survive 60 days without food. There are a number of factors that can influence a person's ability to survive, says Stroud, such as the way in which the body's metabolism slows down to conserve energy. That's where a heavier body would have more of an advantage. Stroud also says the amount of body fat a person has at the beginning of the ordeal may not count as much as one might imagine.
But it could still take up to 60 days for that to happen. Catherine Collins, spokeswoman for the British Dietetics Association explains that "the body can remodel during starvation to minimise the amount of calories it needs". When the body stops getting food, it has to live on the stored sugars. The liver and muscles store glucose - the primary fuel source - as glycogen. This glycogen can then be converted into glucose. When this runs out, fat is then converted into a secondary energy supply called ketone bodies.
For total starvation in healthy individuals receiving adequate hydration, reliable data on survival are hard to obtain. At the age of 74 and already slight of build, Mahatma Gandhi, the famous nonviolent campaigner for India's independence, survived 21 days of total starvation while only allowing himself sips of water.
In a article in the British Medical Journal, Michael Peel, senior medical examiner at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, cites well-documented studies reporting survivals of other hunger strikers for 28, 36, 38 and 40 days. Most other reports of long-term survival of total starvation, however, have been poorly substantiated. Unlike total starvation, near-total starvation with continued hydration has occurred frequently, both in history and in patients under medical supervision.
Survival for many months to years is common in concentration camps and during famines, but the unknown caloric intake during these times makes it impossible to predict survival. What is evident is that the body can moderate metabolism to conserve energy and that individual survival varies markedly.
The body's ability to alter its metabolism is poorly understood, but it occurs at least in part through changes in thyroid function. This may help explain the evolutionary persistence of genes causing diabetes, which in the past could have allowed individuals to survive periods of starvation by enabling more economical use of energy.
Medical practitioners encounter cases of near-total starvation in patients suffering from, among other conditions, anorexia nervosa and end-stage malignancies, as well as in those following so-called starvation diets. In anorexia, death from organ failure or myocardial infarction is fairly common up to 20 percent of cases end this way and tends to happen when body weight has fallen to between 60 and 80 pounds although it can occur at any time.
This weight typically corresponds to a body mass index BMI approximately half of normal, or about 12 to Normal BMI is Unless other causes intervene, a patient with end-stage cancer often dies after losing 35 to 45 percent of his body weight.
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