Everyone knows you need to eat to live and many even live to eat
food is the fuel that powers our bodies but could you go without it sure most people could go a few
hours or even a few days if they really wanted to but what would happen if you went a whole
month without eating don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an upload and let's jump in
according to health.gov the average woman needs between 1600 and 2400 calories a day and the
average man between two thousand to three thousand just to maintain their body weight this is
obviously just a rough guide and the actual amount depends on a handful of factors like age weight
height and activity levels but people regularly go with fewer or even no calories the most common
reason why people fast is for religious holidays like yom kippur for jews and ramadan for muslims
ramadan is actually 30 days but people don't fast for the whole time just during the day from dawn
till dusk that's still nearly 16 hours but what would happen to your body if you tried to go that
whole 30 days without eating well depending on your build you can actually fast for a really
long time the longest known fast began in 1971 when a 27 year old man survived for 382 days
on just vitamins electrolytes and zero calorie beverages like tea and water over those 13 months
he lost more than 250 pounds shrinking from 456 to 180 pounds but fasting can be very dangerous
in 1981 irish republican prisoners refused food for more than two months before dying if
you noticed the difference between 26as and 382 is pretty huge and the time you can go without eating
mostly comes down to your starting body profile and a few tricks you can do to last longer so for
the sake of our discussion what would happen to a healthy active 160 pound person if they
stopped eating for a month for the first six hours with no food everything would be perfectly normal
many people have gaps between meals of up to six hours on a typical day as you wait between meals
the glycogen in your body which is responsible for storing energy is broken down into glucose a
source of energy your cells can use you burn about one gram of glucose a minute just riding along
doing nothing that's because even when you think you're not doing anything your body is hard at
work regulating temperature taking in visual and auditory inputs and keeping your vital systems
like your brain and heart working healthily if you're moving around a bit you burn about two
grams a minute and at a race pace three your brain is crazy power hungry and uses a quarter of this
energy with the rest being absorbed by your muscle tissues red blood cells and various other parts of
your body your body keeps between 350 and 500 grams or about 2 000 calories worth of glycogen
if you're fully stocked up but not all of this is easily accessible and you don't actually fill your
glycogen stores to the brim every time you eat a meal this means in a typical person they'll start
to run out of glycogen as you get beyond six hours since the brain uses so much of this energy as you
start to run out the brain goes into a lower power mode and this can lead to some people getting
moody and irrational this might explain why some of your friends get angry when they haven't eaten
although these feelings don't last long and your body adjusts and enters what's known as ketosis
the state at which the body starts breaking down your excess fat and converting it to energy in
the form of ketones this works for a time but ultimately only three quarters of the brain's
energy requirements can come from ketones it still needs glucose and so after a day and a half
your cognitive function starts to decline after 72 hours things start to get tricky from this point
things can really depend on your body and how much fat and muscle you have but for a healthy person
generally after three days your brain decides it needs more than just ketones to survive
at this stage your body starts to break down the proteins in its muscles to form
the glucose it needs so your body effectively starts to eat its own muscle tissue to survive
and remember we're only three days in after a few more days the immune system will start to
struggle in the absence of important vitamins and minerals this will make you more susceptible to
even common and easily fightable diseases like the common cold the now in your weakened state
can potentially lead to death after a week with absolutely no food and the body eating away at fat
glucose reserves and muscle tissue your body reaches a critical stage
here your body begins to eat the delicate muscle tissue lining your organs most notably the heart
from here the risk of a heart attack due to severe heart damage rises exponentially hopefully by this
point you've still been drinking water as most humans won't have survived this long without it
that's because besides essential functions like regulating your temperature and removing waste
water is needed to break down the existing fat and muscle tissue in your body that's keeping you
going but one weird trend you'll notice at this point is that you'll start to pee more that's
because as you've been fasting your insulin a hormone that allows your body to make use
of glucose has dropped significantly since insulin also helps your body hold on to water this drop in
insulin signals your kidneys to release excess water this is why some people lose a lot of
weight in the first week of dieting or fasting only to eventually regain that water weight
when they start eating normally again and this is another situation where fasting can become deadly
as your body rids itself of excess water you also lose valuable electrolytes and since
you're not eating any food you're not getting any fresh electrolytes to replace your losses
and this lack of electrolytes can become deadly electrolytes are chemicals that form electrically
charged particles in your body these ions carry the electrical energy necessary for many functions
including muscle contractions and neuron function without enough electrolytes your muscles and brain
lose functionality and eventually would stop completely this is one reason the florida woman
couldn't go a month fasting while the scottish man went for more than a year he took electrolytes and
she didn't this is why people that fast for long periods of time often drink a small amount of salt
in their water or take electrolyte pills all to keep their bodies minimum functions running
20 days in and one of your main waste removal systems will have grinded to a near halt while
you'll still be peeing you won't be going number two very much towards the end of that year-long
record-setting fast the man was only pooping every 37 to 48 days at 30 days if you've survived that
long you'll be incredibly weak your body fat will have long been eaten up your muscle tissue
including those that surround your vital organs will have been withered away and your immune
system will be nearly non-existent you'll struggle from physical weakness and constant cravings
a healthy 160 pound man would have lost more than 50 pounds in this time
but now you've survived your month of no food and it's time to fill yourself with anything
you can get your hands on except this is the last and sneakiest way this fast could kill
at the end of world war ii some 60 000 prisoners of war were rescued in critical condition
close to starvation after being well fed and having survived the torment of war
some 14 000 would perish from what would later be known as refeeding syndrome
as the body had been deprived of food for so long the amount of glucose and electrolytes diminished
then as the body digests and metabolizes food again it starts to secrete insulin
this can cause a sudden shock to the body and a shift in the balance of electrolytes and fluids
and these shifts can cause severe and often fatal complications while it's physically possible to
survive for 30 days on nothing but water doing so can be incredibly life threatening but if
done correctly by taking electrolytes to replace lost ions and vitamins to boost your immune system
you can actually fast for much longer if you liked the video be sure to let us know in the
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