How to Survive Without Food and Water

How many days can you survive without food?

How much longer can it be?

Consuming food and water is necessary for maintaining human life. To function correctly, your body requires both hydrations from water and energy from dietary sources, with such a diversified diet and enough water consumed each day, the different systems in your body function at their best.

However, our bodies can also go for days without water. Due to changes in our metabolism needs, we might go days or even weeks without eating.

Why the duration differs

Starvation is often referred to as the prolonged deprivation of food and drink. After a day or two without food or drink, your body may start to starve. At that point, the body begins to change its functioning to consume less energy. Starvation eventually results in death.

How long you can go without food is not something that can be determined with absolute certainty. Because it is currently thought to be immoral to investigate starvation in human patients, there is a dearth of scientific research on the subject.

Several studies look at both more recent instances of famine in the real world and older surveys on the subject. These events include hunger strikes, fasts observed for religious reasons, and others.

These investigations have produced the following conclusions regarding starvation:

1. According to a study published in Archiv Fur Kriminologie, the body can go 8 to 21 days without food or water, and up to two months if it has access to enough water to drink.
2. Hunger strikes in the modern era have shed light on starvation. In research published in the British Medical Journal, some hunger strikes that lasted between 21 and 40 days were mentioned. Due to the individuals' severe, perhaps fatal symptoms, these hunger strikes were called off.
3. Your body mass index (BMI) scale appears to have a "minimum" value for survival. Men with a BMI of less than 13 and women with a BMI of less than 11 are unable to sustain life, claims the journal Nutrition.
4. According to a British Medical Journal article reliable Source, people who are of average weight will lose more of their body weight and muscle mass during the first three days of starvation than people who are obese.
5. Women can endure fasting longer due to their physical composition, claims the journal Nutrition.

How is that even possible?

Many of us find it hard to imagine being able to go days or weeks without food or drink. After all, many of us get irritated and lethargic after a daylong fast or simply a few hours without food or water.

If you go on a brief fast or are without food and water for extended periods of time, your body really regulates itself. This makes it possible for people to observe fasts for their religions and even experiment with "fasting" diets such as the eat-stop-eat strategy without causing their bodies permanent harm.

Your body changes how it functions after around eight hours without food. It operates as though you were eating often prior to that.

Someone's body converts food into glucose in typical conditions. The body receives energy from glucose.

Your body's glucose reserves are drained after 8 to 12 hours without eating. Your body will start converting the glycogen in your muscles, liver, and liver into glucose.

When your body runs out of glucose and glycogen, it will start turning to amino acids for energy. Your muscles will be affected by this process, which can support your body for around three days of famine. Trusted Source prior to a significant change in metabolism in order to protect lean body tissue.

The body starts to rely on fat reserves to produce ketones for energy, a condition known as ketosis, in order to prevent severe muscle loss. During this time, you will significantly lose weight. The increased fat content of women's bodies is one of the reasons they can endure fasting for longer than males. In times of hunger, females also are better able to retain protein or lean muscle mass than males.

An individual can normally endure famine for a longer period of time if there are greater fat reserves available. Since there is only one fuel source left in the body once all of the fat stores have been fully digested, the body then switches back to breaking down muscle for energy.

When your body used its muscle stores for energy throughout the stage of famine, you'll start to feel significant unfavorable effects. According to a study published in the British Medical JournalTrusted Source, people who are on a hunger strike should indeed be regularly watched for severe starvation-related adverse effects after dropping 10% of their body weight. Additionally, it states that when a person loses 18 percent of their body weight, very significant problems will manifest.

Why does drinking water change this?

Unless you're able to drink a sufficient amount of water, you're considerably more likely to be able to endure weeks or even months of famine. Your body can replace food and fluid with significantly more of its stored energy. Without adequate fluids, your kidney function will deteriorate within a few days.

One source claims that people who are close to death can go 10 to 14 days without food or water. Although they are less frequent, certain periods of survival have been observed. Remember that bedridden persons don't expend much energy. A healthy, active person would presumably pass away much sooner.

According to one study that examined hunger strikes, in order to endure starvation for a longer amount of time, a person must consume at least 1.5 liters of water daily. In order to support renal function, the study also recommended adding a half teaspoon of salt to your water every day.

Restricted eating's negative consequences and hazards

 Living lack access to water and food can be harmful to your body. Despite the fact that your body can survive for days or even weeks without food or drink, many of its systems will start to degenerate.

Among the consequences of malnutrition are:

1. Faintness
2. Dizziness
3. Blood pressure drop
4. Slowing heart rate
5. Hypotension
6. Weakness
7. Dehydration
8. Thyroid malfunction
9. Abdominal pain
10. Low potassium
11. Body temperature instability
12. Post-traumatic stress or depression
13. Heart attack
14. Organ failure

People who have been severely malnourished for a while cannot immediately start eating normally. To prevent negative reactions, also referred to as refeeding syndrome, the body must be very gradually eased back into eating again:

1. Heart problems
2. Neurological disorders
3. Tissue swelling throughout the body

During starvation, eating can be resumed under a doctor's supervision and may entail consuming lactose-free meals, boiling vegetables, and a low-protein, low-sugar diet.

The conclusion

Without adequate food and water, human beings may survive for days or even weeks. This is not to argue that going off food for a long time is healthy or something that you should do.

Without food or water, the body can survive for a week or two, and if you drink water, it can even last longer. To prevent refeeding syndrome, those who suffer hunger must be closely watched by a physician while they recover their health after the period without food.