man doesn't eat/drink for 68 years

I'll_buy_that

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I'll_buy_that
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Prahlad Jani of AHMEDABAD, India says he has survived 68 years without eating, drinking or relieving himself, baffling doctors who are unable to prove him an imposter.

He said he has been blessed and heard his calling when he was eight years old.

What a strange calling. Why would god need to do parlour tricks like this if he is so powerful. What does this prove anyway?


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm.../od_afp/india_old_health_offbeat_031124112815

but, I'm glad there are practical applications...

He said he wanted the ascetic to undergo experiments at NASA, as Jani's supposed feat could come in handy for astronauts
 
Strange, there's another Indian man who claims the same thing that was discussed here, and he also said something about NASA. How did NASA get so popular with these starving men? Maybe because one got some good press with saying NASA, they all will now?

From Amazing Randi's commentary:
http://www.randi.org/jr/071103.html
 
>What does this prove anyway?


It's pretty good evidence that some people will believe any nonsense they hear, and that there will always be con men looking to take advantage of such people.
 
The above are quacks, but it is worthmentioning that the longest period one has gone without food and drink (other than water) is about a year. This is not scam.
 
There was an IRA activist who starved himself to death a while back. In a hospital setting, with fluids, it took just under 30 days, as I recall.
With no nutrient intake whatever, I suspect this would be pretty much the case; the body rapidly goes into a severly unbalanced chemical state, which becomes irreversible after a certain point.
 
El Greco said:
The above are quacks, but it is worthmentioning that the longest period one has gone without food and drink (other than water) is about a year. This is not scam.
Click to expand...
Reference?

Presumably he would've had to have had salt - as this New Scientist article points out regarding David Blaine, he'd have passed out before the 44 days if he hadn't had some kind of secret supply of at least salt.

It also mentions various examples of hunger-strike people, etc., but no-one lasting a year - I think the longest the article mentions is 66 days.

Disclaimer: I keep missing subtle humour/irony just lately, please tell me I haven't done it again
 
There is a simple way to test this.

Put him in a sealed room (under observation, of course). Keep him there for a couple of months. Do not give him anything to eat or drink. Do not provide him with waste facilities.


If he's still alive without eating or drinking anything, then he is the real deal.
 
There is a simple way to test this.

Put him in a sealed room (under observation, of course). Keep him there for a couple of months. Do not give him anything to eat or drink. Do not provide him with waste facilities.


If he's still alive without eating or drinking anything, then he is the real deal.
 
Nucular said:
Reference?

Presumably he would've had to have had salt - as this New Scientist article points out regarding David Blaine, he'd have passed out before the 44 days if he hadn't had some kind of secret supply of at least salt.

It also mentions various examples of hunger-strike people, etc., but no-one lasting a year - I think the longest the article mentions is 66 days.

Disclaimer: I keep missing subtle humour/irony just lately, please tell me I haven't done it again
Click to expand...

It was the Angus Barbieri case, lived for 382 days in a hospital on water and other virtually non-caloric drinks (soda, coffee, tea). Vitamins were given to him, but no food at all, solid or liquid. I think he's also mentioned in the Guinness book.
 
El Greco said:
It was the Angus Barbieri case, lived for 382 days in a hospital on water and other virtually non-caloric drinks (soda, coffee, tea). Vitamins were given to him, but no food at all, solid or liquid. I think he's also mentioned in the Guinness book.
Click to expand...
Er... Soda? The can on my desk says 140 calories and 50mg of sodium. I don't think that's quite the same thing as discussed by the others. :)
 
Aoidoi said:
Er... Soda? The can on my desk says 140 calories and 50mg of sodium. I don't think that's quite the same thing as discussed by the others. :)
Click to expand...

Check "club soda" here. Soda is zero calories. You must have a special kind of it.

It was an extreme case of survival on virtually zero calories. This is why it is in the Guinness book. A friend has a whole paper about it, I'll see if I can get it and post the link.
 
bikwer wrote: There was an IRA activist who starved himself to death a while back. In a hospital setting, with fluids, it took just under 30 days, as I recall.
With no nutrient intake whatever, I suspect this would be pretty much the case; the body rapidly goes into a severly unbalanced chemical state, which becomes irreversible after a certain point.
Click to expand...

That would be Bobby Sands. Sands died at age 27 after 66 days in Maze Prison, Northern Island following a hunger strike.
Sands spent the last days of his life on a water bed to protect his fragile bones.

He had been in a coma for 48 hours before being pronounced dead by medical staff.

Blaine claims to have lived only on water but it would have been impossible for him to have survived his ordeal without some of that water having some carefully dosed salt dissolved in it.
 
Regarding Angus Barbieri, a few calculations prove that it was not an impossible case and in fact I believe it can be easily reproduced, provided that someone is cuckoo enough to attempt it.

Angus was 214kg when started, 80kg when he died. During his fast he lost 134kg. 1kg of fat is 9000kcal, but because of inefficient conversion of fat to energy in the body (augmented by the fact that he was certainly in ketosis), we will assume that 1kg of fat gave 7000 kcal. This is a total of 938,000 kcal. Divided by 382 days, we have about 2450kcal per day, which is a completely logical number for the Basal Metabolic Rate of a completely inactive, fasting man with an average weight of 150kg.
 
Sorry about the delay, tried to mention this earlier and had some unforeseen technical difficulties. ;)

The numbers I gave were for a can of coke, which is what I had assumed you meant by "soda." My bad, regional dialect thing. :)

Assuming that he didn't die from lack of salt, scurvy, malnutrition, or anything else then the caloric calculation doesn't seem unreasonable (though I suspect the coversion of mass to energy is a bit high, perhaps someone else can comment).

214 kg? Are you sure the units are right on that? Cause if so, he was a very large man to begin with, and the weight at which he died wasn't too unreasonable...
 
Aoidoi said:
Sorry about the delay, tried to mention this earlier and had some unforeseen technical difficulties. ;)

The numbers I gave were for a can of coke, which is what I had assumed you meant by "soda." My bad, regional dialect thing. :)

Assuming that he didn't die from lack of salt, scurvy, malnutrition, or anything else then the caloric calculation doesn't seem unreasonable (though I suspect the coversion of mass to energy is a bit high, perhaps someone else can comment).

214 kg? Are you sure the units are right on that? Cause if so, he was a very large man to begin with, and the weight at which he died wasn't too unreasonable...
Click to expand...

If you google for the name you'll be able to confirm the weights.

Mass to energy conversion is also rather conservative. 7700 kcal per kg would be more accurate (see Lyle McDonald - The Ketogenic Diet).

Also conservative is the assumption that his BMR would be around 2450 kcal. Although for a healthy individual of 150kg the BMR would be around 2800-3000 kcal, extreme calorie reduction (> 1000 kcals below BMR) always results in an important decrease of BMR. We know that all this time he had being hospitalized, so it is logical to assume he had been completely sedentary. This (and lack of protein) would had inevitably led to muscle mass wasting, resulting in even further drop of the BMR.
 
My grandfather hasn't eaten or had anything to drink for 57 years! Of course he's been dead since 1946 but still, it does show a remarkable amount of will power.:D
 
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