Dr Herbert Shelton was, in my personal opinion, a great doctor who understood the great and various effects and stages of fasting. He had fasted himself and practiced what he preached. A truly great man that people should read more on, especially his books on fasting. No blog nor website on health is complete without one of his many writings such as the following. Thank you for reading and please do not forget to visit my youtube chanel http://www.youtube.com/user/healthyliving2012.
CHAPTER VI
The word starvation is derived from the Old English steorfan,
meaning to die. Today it is used almost wholly to designate death
from lack of food. When we mention fasting to the average person and
even the average physician, he immediately pictures to himself, the
dire consequences that he thinks must inevitably result from going
for even a few days without food. To him to fast is to starve--that
is, die.
This fear of fasting is kept alive by the press, which, ever so
often carries the story of somebody dying while fasting, and
invariably death is attributed to starvation. These deaths are
presented as "horrible examples" of the "evils of fasting." How rare
are these deaths! But it would be enlightening if we could have all
the details of each of these deaths. No doubt, we would find that
most of them are not due to abstinence from food at all. Most of
these deaths have been due to irreparable damage to some vital organ
(organic disease), an occasional one may have been due to pushing
the period of abstinence beyond the fasting period, a few have been
due to injudicious breaking of the fast, some of them have been due
to drugs. But every day people die from unnecessary
and "unsuccessful" operations and the press keeps quiet. Everyday
people die from drugging and the editors and newsmen ignore such
deaths. Fasting is their target.
There is no sense in the panicky fear of missing a few meals that
is so prevalent in both lay and professional circles today. The fear
of starving, expressed on every hand, is a foolish fear. "I am not
going to starve to death," says Mr. Average Man, when advised to
fast. They warn others who are fasting that they will starve to
death. Although we oppose letting people "starve to death," we make
no decided stand against them stuffing themselves to death; instead,
we rather encourage it.
In popular opinion fasting means starving. Physicians,
physiologists and others of the "learned professions" habitually
employ the two terms--fasting and starvation--synonymously. "I am
not going to starve," says a long-suffering invalid, upon being
advised to fast. Those who employ fasting are commonly referred to
as "starve-to-death doctors."
The uninformed physician imagines that the blood and the vital or
functioning tissues of the body begin to break down the moment food
is withdrawn; that organic destruction sets in immediately and that
every day the fast is prolonged means a greater destruction of the
vital tissues. That this idea is false will become apparent
presently.
In previous chapters it was shown that the body, at all times,
has stored within itself reserves of food sufficient to last for
considerable time in the event of scarcity of food, or of sickness,
when food cannot be digested. We saw how the body feeds upon this
food reserve and how the vital tissues of the body feed off the
least essential, so that even if actual starvation occurs, there is
almost no damage to the vital organs.
So long as the body's food reserves last, the individual
abstaining from food is fasting. When this reserve has been consumed
to the point where it is no longer able to sustain the functions of
life, further abstinence becomes dangerous; starvation begins. It is
only after this point is reached that any real damage is sustained
by the vital organs and their functions. As a general rule, under
proper conditions of environment, one may fast for weeks, and even
months, before the starvation point is reached. "It is perfectly
true," says Sinclair, "that men have died of starvation in three or
four days; but the starvation existed in their minds--it was fright
that killed them."
Laboratory workers describe destructive changes in the pancreas,
supra-renal glands and other organs and glands of the body, as a
result of starvation. But these changes occur after the period of
fasting proper has been passed. The vital cells of the organs and
glands--those doing the actual physical and chemical work of these
organs--do not begin to break down until actual starvation begins.
Morgulis says: "Apart from the purely pathological phenomena
occurring in the terminal stages (the starvation period) of fasting,
it should be mentioned that the histological peculiarities appearing
in the very beginning of inanition are associated with changes in
the colloidal condition of the protoplasm and are not at all
degenerative in kind. The progressive atrophic changes coincident
with inanition are simply due to the gradual withdrawal of
metaplasmic inclusions which represent the nutritive reserves of the
cells. The atrophic diminution of both cells and nuclei does not,
therefore, present a pathological phenomenon either. Moreover, the
morphological processes in inanition are not invariably destructive,
cell proliferation going on even when the organism has been deprived
of nourishment for a long time."
This means that, except during the actual starvation period, the
wasting of parts during a fast is the result of the using up of
those portions of the protoplasm of the cells containing the
products of their secretions and not of an actual destruction of the
cell proper. The metaplasm is slowly used as the fast progresses, so
that the size of the cells and, consequently, of the organ is
gradually reduced, but there is no actual deterioration in structure
of the cells, tissues and organ.
Dr. Morgulis makes the cautious, perhaps over-cautious, estimate
that a fast which involves a body loss of ten to fifteen per cent is
harmless and usually beneficial; and that the danger point in
fasting begins when from twenty-five to thirty per cent has been
lost. He has had animals recover normal health after a weight loss
of sixty per cent. We have seen the same thing in more than one man
and woman.
A number of people have died of serious organic "disease" while
fasting, and autopsies have been performed in many of these. In
every case there was still considerable subcutaneous fat, whereas,
this is always entirely absent where death has been caused by
starvation. Except in a case or two where the heart had never
sufficiently developed or where there was previous heart "disease,"
the heart was found to be normal in all cases; while in actual
starvation, the heart is always contracted or markedly atrophied.
The pancreas is little, if at all affected, in death during the
fast, whereas in death from starvation, this gland is almost
entirely absent. In these cases the blood was normal in amount with
no anemia present; while in starvation, the relative blood volume is
reduced and there is usually marked anemia.
In starvation the tongue remains coated, the breath offensive,
the pulse and temperature sub-normal and hunger may disappear for
days at a time.
Death may result at any time, feeding or fasting, due to the
failure of some particular vital organ, which is so far destroyed
that a fatal ending cannot be prevented by any means, but death from
abstinence from food cannot occur until all possible nutritive
material has been exhausted. "True starvation begins," says
Sinclair, "only when the body has been reduced to the skeleton and
the viscera."
Fortunately we are not left unprotected and unwarned in this
matter. Before the danger point is reached an imperious demand for
food will be made. We say, then, that so long as hunger is lacking,
the patient is fasting; but after hunger returns, if he continues to
abstain from food, he is starving. Besides the return of hunger,
there are other indications that the body is ready to take food, as
stated elsewhere.
Carrington has well summed up the matter in these words: "Fasting
is a scientific method of ridding the system of diseased tissue, and
morbid matter, and is invariably accompanied by beneficial results.
Starving is the deprivation of the tissues from nutriment which they
require, and is invariably accompanied by disastrous consequences.
The whole secret is this: fasting commences with the omission of the
first meal and ends with the return of natural hunger, while
starvation only begins with the return of natural hunger and
terminates in death. Where the one ends the other begins. Whereas
the latter process wastes the healthy tissues, emaciates the body,
and depletes the vitality; the former process merely expels corrupt
matter and useless fatty tissue, thereby elevating the energy, and
eventually restoring the organism that just balance we term health."
Prof. Morgulis divides what he calls starvation, or inanition,
into four periods--"each period comprising approximately one-fourth
of the total loss in weight sustained at the time of death."
The first of these periods of "every complete inanition,"
(by "complete inanition" is meant abstinence from all food until
death occurs) is a "transition from the condition of adequate
feeding to the basal metabolism of fasting"--"the organism is
readjusting itself from the prefasting metabolic level to the level
of the true physiological minimum characteristic for the particular
individual."
The division between the next two periods is not well marked or
defined. They constitute one period divided into "early and late
phases" and "are not very distinct but merge gradually one into the
other." During these "two periods," physiological activities are at
a minimum peculiar to this individual. The length of these two
periods will be determined by the size of the animal or man or the
surplus food reserves on hand.
The final or fourth stage of inanition "is characterized by the
predominance of pathological phenomena caused by the prolonged
stringency of nourishment and exhaustion of the tissues." This is
the true starvation period and sets in when the body's nutritive
stores are practically exhausted.
Prof. Morgulis refers to the whole period, from the omission of
the first meal until death finally ends the scene, as starvation and
as fasting. He uses the two words synonymously and does not
distinguish between fasting and starvation as we do. It will be
noted that all pathological phenomena, of which we are so frequently
warned, belong to the fourth stage of inanition; or, to the period
of starvation proper, as distinct from fasting, as we employ these
terms.
Morgulis points out that "the morphological changes observable in
advanced starvation are practically identical with those generally
found in every pathological condition and present nothing peculiar"
and suggests that perhaps all "pathological changes of tissues are
primarily inanition effects."
Further applying his division of "starvation" into four periods,
Prof. Morgulis says: "All the scientifically studied fasts of men
have been of relatively short duration. In the longest fast of this
kind lasting 40 days Succi lost only 25 per cent of his original
weight. Judging by the loss of weight, therefore, the experiments on
inanition with human subjects have not extended far beyond what may
be regarded as the second stage of inanition and, regardless of the
length of time of the abstinence, had no deleterious effect whatever
upon the subjects because the fasts were invariably discontinued
long before the exhaustion stage had been reached."
Taking up the study of Levanzin's fast for 31 days, undergone at
Carnegie Institute, Morgulis says that this fast extended over the
first two inanition periods. The first of these periods, lasting
fifteen days saw a loss of ten per cent of Levanzin's weight and
represents "the transition from the metabolism of the well nourished
condition to that of the fasting condition."
By the end of his 31 days' fast, Levanzin lost about 20 per cent
of his weight. "Assuming the maximum loss he could possibly have
survived 40 per cent," says Morgulis, "it is clear that the fast
could have extended another month before a fatal termination. In
other words, the fast was broken at a relatively early stage." If we
take into consideration the fact that the second 20 per cent of
Levanzin's weight would not have been lost nearly so rapidly as the
first 20 per cent, it is very certain that he could have fasted much
more than another month before a fatal termination.
The rule that man or animal can sustain a loss of 40 per cent of
his or its body weight before death results must not be taken too
seriously in practice. Obviously an emaciated man or woman weighing
only 90 or 100 pounds cannot afford to lose 40 per cent of his or
her weight. On the other hand a man who ought to weigh about 150
pounds, but who actually weighs 350 pounds, can afford to lose much
over 50 per cent of his weight. Exhibition fasters have survived a
reduction of body weight of thirty per cent without anything like a
total collapse of vital vigor.
Within recent years physiologists have tried to determine how
long man can live without food by figuring on a basis of the period
of time required for animals, particularly mammals, to starve to
death. Their experiments indicate that the period in which death
from starvation ensues is proportionate to the cube root of the body
weight.
A mouse weighing 18.0 grams dies after five or six days without
food. The corresponding "starvation period" in man would be 15.6
times as long or 96.5 to 109 days. A dog weighing twenty kilograms
dies in sixty days; the corresponding period for man is eighty-nine
days. A cat weighing twenty-one kilograms can live eighteen days
without food; the corresponding period for man would be fifty-five
days. A rabbit weighing 24.22 kilograms dies after twenty-six days;
the corresponding period in man would be seventy-nine days.
From these figures, Dr. A. Putter, a German physician, who has
made a study of fasting, concludes that there is nothing in
comparative physiology to show that man cannot live from ninety to a
hundred days without food, if he were kept under proper conditions
of warmth, rest, fresh air, water and emotional poise.
Sylvester Graham denied that the fat man lives longer on
prolonged abstinence from food than does a thin one. He says, "If
the it be designed for the nourishment of the body during protracted
fasts, etc., then if a very fat man, in the enjoyment of what is
ordinarily considered good health, and a lean man in good health, be
shut up together, and condemned to die of starvation, the fat man
ought to diminish in weight much more slowly, and to live
considerably longer than the lean man; but directly the contrary to
this is true. The lean man will lose in weight much more slowly, and
live several days longer than the fat man, in spite of all the
nourishment which the latter may derive from his adipose deposits."--
Science of Human Life, pp. 193-194.
Trall took a similar view, as does Carrington, who says of
Graham's statement: "I may say that this has been my own experience,
precisely." The explanation offered is that, while the fat person
has a large store of fat on his frame, he is deficient in other food
requisites. Fatty tissue, these men think, is invariably diseased
and deficient tissue. Trall said, "Feed a dog on butter, starch, or
sugar alone, and you will save in him the consumption of fat, but
the dog will die of starvation. He will be plump, round, embonpoint,
and yet die of inanition."--Alcoholic Controversy, pp. 148-149. This
seems to be what they thought will take place in the fasting fat man.
This is an a priori conclusion, since the experiment has never
been made, and it is not borne out by animal experimentation. There
is, as I have emphasized elsewhere, a vast difference between a fast
and a very deficient diet, such as the diets described by Trall. The
ultimate results of the two types of nutrition are very different.
Nevertheless, there may be cases of fat individuals who would
actually starve to death before a thinner person would do so, for
the reason that the nutritive reserves in the fat person may be so
unbalanced that he cannot go long without food. I have, myself,
cared for fat men and women who did not fast well and who did not
hold up under fasting as well as do many who are actually skinny.
But I have never been sure that in these patients, the trouble was
not largely if not wholly mental. In view of the fat person's love
of food and his worrying and fretting when deprived of it, he may
actually kill himself while the thin man is still philosophizing
about life and death.
If there can be such a thing as unbalanced reserves, and I
presume that such may exist, there is as much reason why the thin
man, eating the same type of diet as that eaten by the fat man, may
have an unbalanced reserve as there is that the fat man may have
this. The greatest losses in the fast, however, are in those very
nutritive factors that are most abundant in the diet of most people,
while the body clings to the factors that are commonly lacking. The
tendency is for nutritive balance to be restored. The fact that the
fat man who does not fast well, loses all of the difficulties that
appear to have come from fasting, as soon as he gets his first half-
a-glass of fruit juice, indicates that his troubles are mental.
Graham's statement that the fat man will lose weight much faster
than the thin one is literally true, but what he overlooked is that
this rapid loss of weight is not continued. Indeed, we often see fat
women who undertake to fast to reduce, lose twenty to twenty-five
pounds the first two weeks, but six pounds the third week and two
pounds the fourth week. The rapid rate of loss does not continue. It
should be observed at this point, also, that some thin people lose
rapidly the first few days of their fast.
A fast of a hundred days or more can be survived even under the
most favorable conditions, only by the individual who possesses
sufficient food reserves to sustain his vital organs and vital
functions for this period of time. The smaller the amount of food
stores one has in reserve, all things else being equal, the earlier
is the starvation period reached.
What Morgulis classes as the first three stages of starvation, we
class as the period of fasting; while his fourth period of
starvation is classed by us as the starvation period. Fasting begins
with the omission of the first meal and ends with the return of
natural hunger. Starvation begins with the return of hunger and
terminates in death. Fasting is distinctly beneficial; starvation is
distinctly harmful. It is precisely because the average medical man
does not distinguish between these two major phases of abstinence
from food, and because he imagines that the pathology developed
during the starvation period belongs, also, to the fasting period,
that he offers his false objections to fasting.
It was conclusively demonstrated in the laboratory, by Lasarev,
that the changes in the various organs of the body are definitely
related to particular stages of fasting and starvation. Vital organs
do not begin to break down as soon as the first meal is omitted.
Fasting belongs to that period during which there are ample food
reserves to maintain vital integrity. The fasting period is,
therefore, determined by the amount of reserves the body has on
hand. Starvation sets in after the reserve stores have been
sufficiently exhausted that they are no longer adequate to maintain
functional and structural integrity.
Thousands of fasts, ranging from a few days to three months in
duration, in men, old and young and both sexes, in all conditions of
life, have demonstrated not only that man can go for long periods
without food and not be harmed thereby, but also, that he will
receive great benefit from a rationally conducted fast. To starve is
to die; to fast is to live.
Fasting Is Not Starving by Dr. Herbert Shelton
CHAPTER VI
The word starvation is derived from the Old English steorfan,
meaning to die. Today it is used almost wholly to designate death
from lack of food. When we mention fasting to the average person and
even the average physician, he immediately pictures to himself, the
dire consequences that he thinks must inevitably result from going
for even a few days without food. To him to fast is to starve--that
is, die.
This fear of fasting is kept alive by the press, which, ever so
often carries the story of somebody dying while fasting, and
invariably death is attributed to starvation. These deaths are
presented as "horrible examples" of the "evils of fasting." How rare
are these deaths! But it would be enlightening if we could have all
the details of each of these deaths. No doubt, we would find that
most of them are not due to abstinence from food at all. Most of
these deaths have been due to irreparable damage to some vital organ
(organic disease), an occasional one may have been due to pushing
the period of abstinence beyond the fasting period, a few have been
due to injudicious breaking of the fast, some of them have been due
to drugs. But every day people die from unnecessary
and "unsuccessful" operations and the press keeps quiet. Everyday
people die from drugging and the editors and newsmen ignore such
deaths. Fasting is their target.
There is no sense in the panicky fear of missing a few meals that
is so prevalent in both lay and professional circles today. The fear
of starving, expressed on every hand, is a foolish fear. "I am not
going to starve to death," says Mr. Average Man, when advised to
fast. They warn others who are fasting that they will starve to
death. Although we oppose letting people "starve to death," we make
no decided stand against them stuffing themselves to death; instead,
we rather encourage it.
In popular opinion fasting means starving. Physicians,
physiologists and others of the "learned professions" habitually
employ the two terms--fasting and starvation--synonymously. "I am
not going to starve," says a long-suffering invalid, upon being
advised to fast. Those who employ fasting are commonly referred to
as "starve-to-death doctors."
The uninformed physician imagines that the blood and the vital or
functioning tissues of the body begin to break down the moment food
is withdrawn; that organic destruction sets in immediately and that
every day the fast is prolonged means a greater destruction of the
vital tissues. That this idea is false will become apparent
presently.
In previous chapters it was shown that the body, at all times,
has stored within itself reserves of food sufficient to last for
considerable time in the event of scarcity of food, or of sickness,
when food cannot be digested. We saw how the body feeds upon this
food reserve and how the vital tissues of the body feed off the
least essential, so that even if actual starvation occurs, there is
almost no damage to the vital organs.
So long as the body's food reserves last, the individual
abstaining from food is fasting. When this reserve has been consumed
to the point where it is no longer able to sustain the functions of
life, further abstinence becomes dangerous; starvation begins. It is
only after this point is reached that any real damage is sustained
by the vital organs and their functions. As a general rule, under
proper conditions of environment, one may fast for weeks, and even
months, before the starvation point is reached. "It is perfectly
true," says Sinclair, "that men have died of starvation in three or
four days; but the starvation existed in their minds--it was fright
that killed them."
Laboratory workers describe destructive changes in the pancreas,
supra-renal glands and other organs and glands of the body, as a
result of starvation. But these changes occur after the period of
fasting proper has been passed. The vital cells of the organs and
glands--those doing the actual physical and chemical work of these
organs--do not begin to break down until actual starvation begins.
Morgulis says: "Apart from the purely pathological phenomena
occurring in the terminal stages (the starvation period) of fasting,
it should be mentioned that the histological peculiarities appearing
in the very beginning of inanition are associated with changes in
the colloidal condition of the protoplasm and are not at all
degenerative in kind. The progressive atrophic changes coincident
with inanition are simply due to the gradual withdrawal of
metaplasmic inclusions which represent the nutritive reserves of the
cells. The atrophic diminution of both cells and nuclei does not,
therefore, present a pathological phenomenon either. Moreover, the
morphological processes in inanition are not invariably destructive,
cell proliferation going on even when the organism has been deprived
of nourishment for a long time."
This means that, except during the actual starvation period, the
wasting of parts during a fast is the result of the using up of
those portions of the protoplasm of the cells containing the
products of their secretions and not of an actual destruction of the
cell proper. The metaplasm is slowly used as the fast progresses, so
that the size of the cells and, consequently, of the organ is
gradually reduced, but there is no actual deterioration in structure
of the cells, tissues and organ.
Dr. Morgulis makes the cautious, perhaps over-cautious, estimate
that a fast which involves a body loss of ten to fifteen per cent is
harmless and usually beneficial; and that the danger point in
fasting begins when from twenty-five to thirty per cent has been
lost. He has had animals recover normal health after a weight loss
of sixty per cent. We have seen the same thing in more than one man
and woman.
A number of people have died of serious organic "disease" while
fasting, and autopsies have been performed in many of these. In
every case there was still considerable subcutaneous fat, whereas,
this is always entirely absent where death has been caused by
starvation. Except in a case or two where the heart had never
sufficiently developed or where there was previous heart "disease,"
the heart was found to be normal in all cases; while in actual
starvation, the heart is always contracted or markedly atrophied.
The pancreas is little, if at all affected, in death during the
fast, whereas in death from starvation, this gland is almost
entirely absent. In these cases the blood was normal in amount with
no anemia present; while in starvation, the relative blood volume is
reduced and there is usually marked anemia.
In starvation the tongue remains coated, the breath offensive,
the pulse and temperature sub-normal and hunger may disappear for
days at a time.
Death may result at any time, feeding or fasting, due to the
failure of some particular vital organ, which is so far destroyed
that a fatal ending cannot be prevented by any means, but death from
abstinence from food cannot occur until all possible nutritive
material has been exhausted. "True starvation begins," says
Sinclair, "only when the body has been reduced to the skeleton and
the viscera."
Fortunately we are not left unprotected and unwarned in this
matter. Before the danger point is reached an imperious demand for
food will be made. We say, then, that so long as hunger is lacking,
the patient is fasting; but after hunger returns, if he continues to
abstain from food, he is starving. Besides the return of hunger,
there are other indications that the body is ready to take food, as
stated elsewhere.
Carrington has well summed up the matter in these words: "Fasting
is a scientific method of ridding the system of diseased tissue, and
morbid matter, and is invariably accompanied by beneficial results.
Starving is the deprivation of the tissues from nutriment which they
require, and is invariably accompanied by disastrous consequences.
The whole secret is this: fasting commences with the omission of the
first meal and ends with the return of natural hunger, while
starvation only begins with the return of natural hunger and
terminates in death. Where the one ends the other begins. Whereas
the latter process wastes the healthy tissues, emaciates the body,
and depletes the vitality; the former process merely expels corrupt
matter and useless fatty tissue, thereby elevating the energy, and
eventually restoring the organism that just balance we term health."
Prof. Morgulis divides what he calls starvation, or inanition,
into four periods--"each period comprising approximately one-fourth
of the total loss in weight sustained at the time of death."
The first of these periods of "every complete inanition,"
(by "complete inanition" is meant abstinence from all food until
death occurs) is a "transition from the condition of adequate
feeding to the basal metabolism of fasting"--"the organism is
readjusting itself from the prefasting metabolic level to the level
of the true physiological minimum characteristic for the particular
individual."
The division between the next two periods is not well marked or
defined. They constitute one period divided into "early and late
phases" and "are not very distinct but merge gradually one into the
other." During these "two periods," physiological activities are at
a minimum peculiar to this individual. The length of these two
periods will be determined by the size of the animal or man or the
surplus food reserves on hand.
The final or fourth stage of inanition "is characterized by the
predominance of pathological phenomena caused by the prolonged
stringency of nourishment and exhaustion of the tissues." This is
the true starvation period and sets in when the body's nutritive
stores are practically exhausted.
Prof. Morgulis refers to the whole period, from the omission of
the first meal until death finally ends the scene, as starvation and
as fasting. He uses the two words synonymously and does not
distinguish between fasting and starvation as we do. It will be
noted that all pathological phenomena, of which we are so frequently
warned, belong to the fourth stage of inanition; or, to the period
of starvation proper, as distinct from fasting, as we employ these
terms.
Morgulis points out that "the morphological changes observable in
advanced starvation are practically identical with those generally
found in every pathological condition and present nothing peculiar"
and suggests that perhaps all "pathological changes of tissues are
primarily inanition effects."
Further applying his division of "starvation" into four periods,
Prof. Morgulis says: "All the scientifically studied fasts of men
have been of relatively short duration. In the longest fast of this
kind lasting 40 days Succi lost only 25 per cent of his original
weight. Judging by the loss of weight, therefore, the experiments on
inanition with human subjects have not extended far beyond what may
be regarded as the second stage of inanition and, regardless of the
length of time of the abstinence, had no deleterious effect whatever
upon the subjects because the fasts were invariably discontinued
long before the exhaustion stage had been reached."
Taking up the study of Levanzin's fast for 31 days, undergone at
Carnegie Institute, Morgulis says that this fast extended over the
first two inanition periods. The first of these periods, lasting
fifteen days saw a loss of ten per cent of Levanzin's weight and
represents "the transition from the metabolism of the well nourished
condition to that of the fasting condition."
By the end of his 31 days' fast, Levanzin lost about 20 per cent
of his weight. "Assuming the maximum loss he could possibly have
survived 40 per cent," says Morgulis, "it is clear that the fast
could have extended another month before a fatal termination. In
other words, the fast was broken at a relatively early stage." If we
take into consideration the fact that the second 20 per cent of
Levanzin's weight would not have been lost nearly so rapidly as the
first 20 per cent, it is very certain that he could have fasted much
more than another month before a fatal termination.
The rule that man or animal can sustain a loss of 40 per cent of
his or its body weight before death results must not be taken too
seriously in practice. Obviously an emaciated man or woman weighing
only 90 or 100 pounds cannot afford to lose 40 per cent of his or
her weight. On the other hand a man who ought to weigh about 150
pounds, but who actually weighs 350 pounds, can afford to lose much
over 50 per cent of his weight. Exhibition fasters have survived a
reduction of body weight of thirty per cent without anything like a
total collapse of vital vigor.
Within recent years physiologists have tried to determine how
long man can live without food by figuring on a basis of the period
of time required for animals, particularly mammals, to starve to
death. Their experiments indicate that the period in which death
from starvation ensues is proportionate to the cube root of the body
weight.
A mouse weighing 18.0 grams dies after five or six days without
food. The corresponding "starvation period" in man would be 15.6
times as long or 96.5 to 109 days. A dog weighing twenty kilograms
dies in sixty days; the corresponding period for man is eighty-nine
days. A cat weighing twenty-one kilograms can live eighteen days
without food; the corresponding period for man would be fifty-five
days. A rabbit weighing 24.22 kilograms dies after twenty-six days;
the corresponding period in man would be seventy-nine days.
From these figures, Dr. A. Putter, a German physician, who has
made a study of fasting, concludes that there is nothing in
comparative physiology to show that man cannot live from ninety to a
hundred days without food, if he were kept under proper conditions
of warmth, rest, fresh air, water and emotional poise.
Sylvester Graham denied that the fat man lives longer on
prolonged abstinence from food than does a thin one. He says, "If
the it be designed for the nourishment of the body during protracted
fasts, etc., then if a very fat man, in the enjoyment of what is
ordinarily considered good health, and a lean man in good health, be
shut up together, and condemned to die of starvation, the fat man
ought to diminish in weight much more slowly, and to live
considerably longer than the lean man; but directly the contrary to
this is true. The lean man will lose in weight much more slowly, and
live several days longer than the fat man, in spite of all the
nourishment which the latter may derive from his adipose deposits."--
Science of Human Life, pp. 193-194.
Trall took a similar view, as does Carrington, who says of
Graham's statement: "I may say that this has been my own experience,
precisely." The explanation offered is that, while the fat person
has a large store of fat on his frame, he is deficient in other food
requisites. Fatty tissue, these men think, is invariably diseased
and deficient tissue. Trall said, "Feed a dog on butter, starch, or
sugar alone, and you will save in him the consumption of fat, but
the dog will die of starvation. He will be plump, round, embonpoint,
and yet die of inanition."--Alcoholic Controversy, pp. 148-149. This
seems to be what they thought will take place in the fasting fat man.
This is an a priori conclusion, since the experiment has never
been made, and it is not borne out by animal experimentation. There
is, as I have emphasized elsewhere, a vast difference between a fast
and a very deficient diet, such as the diets described by Trall. The
ultimate results of the two types of nutrition are very different.
Nevertheless, there may be cases of fat individuals who would
actually starve to death before a thinner person would do so, for
the reason that the nutritive reserves in the fat person may be so
unbalanced that he cannot go long without food. I have, myself,
cared for fat men and women who did not fast well and who did not
hold up under fasting as well as do many who are actually skinny.
But I have never been sure that in these patients, the trouble was
not largely if not wholly mental. In view of the fat person's love
of food and his worrying and fretting when deprived of it, he may
actually kill himself while the thin man is still philosophizing
about life and death.
If there can be such a thing as unbalanced reserves, and I
presume that such may exist, there is as much reason why the thin
man, eating the same type of diet as that eaten by the fat man, may
have an unbalanced reserve as there is that the fat man may have
this. The greatest losses in the fast, however, are in those very
nutritive factors that are most abundant in the diet of most people,
while the body clings to the factors that are commonly lacking. The
tendency is for nutritive balance to be restored. The fact that the
fat man who does not fast well, loses all of the difficulties that
appear to have come from fasting, as soon as he gets his first half-
a-glass of fruit juice, indicates that his troubles are mental.
Graham's statement that the fat man will lose weight much faster
than the thin one is literally true, but what he overlooked is that
this rapid loss of weight is not continued. Indeed, we often see fat
women who undertake to fast to reduce, lose twenty to twenty-five
pounds the first two weeks, but six pounds the third week and two
pounds the fourth week. The rapid rate of loss does not continue. It
should be observed at this point, also, that some thin people lose
rapidly the first few days of their fast.
A fast of a hundred days or more can be survived even under the
most favorable conditions, only by the individual who possesses
sufficient food reserves to sustain his vital organs and vital
functions for this period of time. The smaller the amount of food
stores one has in reserve, all things else being equal, the earlier
is the starvation period reached.
What Morgulis classes as the first three stages of starvation, we
class as the period of fasting; while his fourth period of
starvation is classed by us as the starvation period. Fasting begins
with the omission of the first meal and ends with the return of
natural hunger. Starvation begins with the return of hunger and
terminates in death. Fasting is distinctly beneficial; starvation is
distinctly harmful. It is precisely because the average medical man
does not distinguish between these two major phases of abstinence
from food, and because he imagines that the pathology developed
during the starvation period belongs, also, to the fasting period,
that he offers his false objections to fasting.
It was conclusively demonstrated in the laboratory, by Lasarev,
that the changes in the various organs of the body are definitely
related to particular stages of fasting and starvation. Vital organs
do not begin to break down as soon as the first meal is omitted.
Fasting belongs to that period during which there are ample food
reserves to maintain vital integrity. The fasting period is,
therefore, determined by the amount of reserves the body has on
hand. Starvation sets in after the reserve stores have been
sufficiently exhausted that they are no longer adequate to maintain
functional and structural integrity.
Thousands of fasts, ranging from a few days to three months in
duration, in men, old and young and both sexes, in all conditions of
life, have demonstrated not only that man can go for long periods
without food and not be harmed thereby, but also, that he will
receive great benefit from a rationally conducted fast. To starve is
to die; to fast is to live.
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