How Long Can You Go Without Food?

How Long Can You Go Without Food?
Hunger strikes 101.
By Brendan I. Koerner
Posted Thursday, June 10, 2004, at 5:31 PM ET

Despondent over the injuries he allegedly caused his stepdaughter while
setting his estranged wife’s house ablaze, Charles Robert McNabb is on a
hunger strike at the Spokane County Jail. He has lasted 123 days so far,
subsisting on water and the occasional cup of coffee. How long can a
hunger striker expect to survive?

Sixty days, give or take, is the rule of thumb, though results vary
depending on the faster’s body fat and striking strategy. Physiologists
generally agree that no human being can survive losing more than 40
percent of his body mass—a threshold that McNabb, stunningly, may
already have crossed, if reports of his starting (180 pounds to 185
pounds) and current (around 100 pounds) weights are to be believed.

Fasting becomes dangerous after just three to five days, at which point
the body begins breaking down fat in order to produce energy. When the
liver is reduced to breaking down fat (in lieu of the usual glucose), it
produces ketone bodies, a toxic byproduct. These can be excreted through
the urine, and a particular variety known as acetone can be expelled
through the lungs. (Acetone makes a person’s breath smell like pears.)
Ketone bodies can also be oxidized by the brain in order to make the
fuel it needs. But when ketone bodies become too numerous in the
bloodstream, they can cause ketoacidosis, a potentially lethal condition
that afflicts some diabetics.

It’s all downhill after Week 3, or whenever weight loss exceeds 18
percent of the starting weight. The body tries to compensate by slowing
down its metabolism, entering “starvation mode.” Still, once fat stores
are entirely depleted, the body has no choice but to mine the muscles
and vital organs for energy. The striker simply wastes away as his body,
quite literally, consumes itself.

The 60-day figure that is commonly quoted as the absolute limit assumes
that the striker is a healthy adult with approximately 24 pounds of fat
on his or her frame. Someone with a higher fat content might be able to
last longer, since that person’s body could delay turning to the vital
organs for fuel.

Perhaps more important, there are certain tactics that hunger strikers
can use to prolong their protests—and their agony. The Irish
republicans who fasted near Belfast in 1981, including the famous Bobby
Sands, supplemented their all-fluid diets with occasional spoonfuls of
salt. If they hadn’t, their bodies would have become too depleted of
this essential nutrient, and their blood pressures would have become
dangerously low at an early stage. (One of 10 prisoners who perished
during the hunger strike, Sands lasted 66 days.)

The most innovative hunger strikers so far, however, have been Turkish
Marxists protesting their country’s shift from dormitory-style prisons
to Western-style cells. Their fasts, which claimed an inmate’s life this
past February, are designed to keep the striker alive as long as
possible; some of the strikers have lasted longer than 300 days. Their
secret is to ingest salt, unrefined sugar, and vitamins, which limit
weight loss to just a few ounces per day.

According to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, McNabb did briefly interrupt
his hunger strike when he was sent to a hospital for a mental
evaluation; there, for three days, he did eat some food. Still, by any
objective measure, his 123-day fast is astonishingly long. Gandhi,
perhaps history’s most famous hunger striker, never fasted for more than
21 days.

Next question?

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for
the New York Times and Gizmodo. His first book, about a 1940s murder
case, will be published by Penguin Press in 2008.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2102228/

Copyright 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Hat tip to Selmo for providing the article

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