Water and food consumption is essential for our body to function. They are the basic source of energy and nutrients and without having them for days can result in paralysis and death. This is the very reason why a lot of people, especially in poorer countries, are dying out of hunger. Luckily for us, food is not something difficult to have. There are a lot of innovations that allow us to eat healthy foods in an instant. Frozen foods, instant foods, emergency foods, and many more.
But how long can our body able to function without food? While we cannot survive a week without water, we may survive a few weeks without food. Here are the things you need to know.
When a person’s food and water intake is limited for a certain amount of time, that is called starvation, and depending on the intervention, starvation would eventually lead to death. There is no actual research done those studies human starvation as it has been considered unethical to study human starvation with real individuals. Despite this, there are still old researches that can be used as a reference and new studies that observe real-life situations that depict hunger and starvation in different places.
The following are some observations about hunger and starvation according to some studies:
What makes us able to withstand starvation for several days is our body’s ability to adjust to the changes that they are experiencing. This is the very thing that allows certain people in religious communities and other individuals who limit their food intake to survive starvation until senior years without having negative consequences to their body and brain. On the other hand, individuals who do not practice fasting may experience adverse effects of starvation in just a couple of days, which include irritability, energy loss, and others.
The body needs up to eight hours before it can adjust its ways to the changes that it experiences. And then on, it will continually use any source of energy in the body, from glucose, glycogen, amino acids, to fats. But when all of these have depleted, this is where the body begins to have life-threatening symptoms and will eventually lead to death.
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