February 10, 2009 • 22 mins
When it comes to survival, food and water are pretty much non-negotiable. How long can you go without them? What happens to your body when you cross that threshold? Lend your ear to this HowStuffWorks podcast to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know?
From house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. This is stuff you
should know. Welcome, Welcome. How you doing the invenue? So, Chuck? Yes,
(00:23):
I just um, I just drank a coke and I
also ate some chips and salsa, nice, and I it
was all on an empty stomach, so I feel like
I'm gonna vomit. Three of the four food groups right
cover right, So, yeah, you've got corn in the chips,
You've got tomato onion, God knows what else is cilantro
in cilantro? I'm sure is that a food group? So
(00:46):
you've got all this stuff in the salts and the
chips and and then whatever's in the coke, right, um,
And all of it came to me and into my
stomach because I am a member of the wealthiest nation
on the planet. Okay, Yeah, do you want me to
get to the bottom of this? Yeah, I kind of
don't know where you're going. Well, ironically, I should say
(01:07):
I didn't even pay for this. I found it in
the brake room and ate it. Okay, but I live
in America, and America's got the money to pay for food.
So food naturally finds its way to countries like the
United States, Western European countries, developed nations, right, it doesn't
necessarily find its way to underdeveloped nations. Okay. So you're
(01:31):
familiar with the carrying capacity, right, Okay, Um, well then
I'll explain to everybody else. Uh. It's an anthropological term,
and I think it may also have to do with economics.
But basically, a carrying capacity is the total number of humans. Uh,
something can sustain so like hunting, hunting and gathering. I
think could sustain something like several hundred million people up
(01:55):
to maybe two billion, I'm not sure. Uh. And right
as we were on the verge of hitting that mark,
we came up with agriculture out of the blue. Agriculture
can buy estimates, Uh, carry ten billion people. Okay, we're
coming up on that mark pretty quickly. Yeah. I think
we're supposed to hit ten billion in like or something
(02:15):
like that, and we may go it may go shorter, um,
depending on you know, if there's any kind of catastrophes
or major food crises or climate change. It could go
longer if we'd be if our technology advances sufficiently, like
you know, we come up with soilent green or something
like that, right, grow from food in outer space. That's
(02:35):
that's where we we eat humans. Okay, that the science
fiction film you're talking about, soilent Green. Yeah, okay, So
so we may go more or less ten billion, but
ten billions usually the mark And um. This has kind
of been on the mind of some people for a while, right, Um,
especially in the in the mid to late sixties, there
was a food shortage and there were all sorts of
(02:56):
predictions coming out that you know, we were about to
be screwed, we're in big trouble. Um. And there is
a book called um Famine nineteen seventy five with an
exclamation point or anything. Yeah, And it was an academic
book and it used an exclamation point in the title UM.
And basically in it, the author um suggests that we
(03:17):
need to triage essentially who gets food. So the countries
that are contributing the most to the rest of the
world through advancement and you know, um whatever, uh, they
should get the most food and basically the other countries
should be left to starve to death. It was pretty grim.
It was written in nineteen seven, and obviously no one
(03:39):
took that up and ran with it, of course not.
It's pretty creepy, but it seems like price mechanism kind
of has come to fulfill that same prediction. You think, yeah,
because if you look at it, if you look at
the the eu n's World Hunger Map, uh, the the
areas that are the hungriest are the areas that are
(03:59):
the least developed. They have the least amount of food.
And as if that weren't enough, it's all a vicious cycle.
The more hungry you are, the higher your literacy rates are,
unemployment rates, all sorts of mortality rates obviously, um, so
you can't really break your way out of it unless
somebody helps you. And the price mechanism theory, my theory
(04:22):
is supported by the recent food crisis we saw in
two thousand seven, right, food just dried up everywhere. Why
because fuel prices went through the roof. We got expensive
to produce and transport food, and so all of a
sudden it didn't go the way it used to. You know,
care International there like an aid group, the Food Aid Group,
(04:45):
and they have a food Aid section. They actually stopped
handing out surplus food. They can't get it anymore. Yeah.
So food is pretty much a wealthy luxury, sadly enough.
And we're kind of hitting that famine nine seventy scenario
one way or another. Wow. I never thought of it
that way. Yeah, And it is tough to think about it.
And I mentioned all this because we're talking about how
(05:08):
long can you live without food or water? Right? Right?
So I guess my my goal was to kind of
put a human face on this, like what happens when
you live in Bangladesh or you know, Chad or somewhere
and you are starving to death and even worse, you
can't get any access to water or fresh water, at
(05:28):
least from from researching this, it's a horrible, horrible way
to die. Yeah, I may i may um, I may
reevaluate my dropping out of the sky in an airplane
is the worst way to die. Starving to death or
dehydration might do it for you. Right. Yeah, So let's
I mean, how long can you go without food? Say, well,
there's a general rule of threes. If you're talking about
(05:51):
survival experts, they call it the rule of threes. Odly enough,
and uh, supposedly you can go and these are rough estimates,
you know, there's we'll talk about the variances later, but
you can go three minutes without air before you die,
three hours without shelter if you're in a really harsh environment,
three days without water, in three weeks without food, three
(06:12):
hours without shelter, and if you're you know, stuck in
the freezing cold somewhere, that kind of thing. So that
that's the rule of threes. Um. There's all sorts of
play within that though. So if you're talking about food,
how long you go food, three weeks is actually kind
of on target. Um. You know, you can look at
political prisoners that have gone on hunger strikes. Yeah, the
(06:33):
IRA in the early eighties a lot longer than three weeks.
Well they did, and you can and you know, Gandhi
fasted for exactly three weeks, but he was in his
seventies at the time, so he wasn't in you know,
premium condition, which obviously if you're in the most fit
and the most healthy, you can go a little bit
longer than you know, someone who's grossly out of shape,
(06:54):
although having an abundance of fat actually would help you
survive too. So I guess that gets this into what
happened is when you start to run out of food,
bringing up the fat part, because your body what it
does is it processes uh, fat, carbohydrates, and proteins as
the stored energy, right, because it keep surviving. That's energy
you need your cells need for you know, to to
(07:17):
perform the functions that they do right. Right. And so
if you're talking about those three things and you're starting
the process of starving to death, uh, your body is
going to burn up carbohydrates. That's the first thing that's
going to burn up, which is which is good because
carves make you fat, sure, and then uh, then it
starts to burn up your fat. Stored fat even better
(07:37):
than burning up carbs, right. And if you have extra
stored fat, that's why you might get less a little
bit longer. I think you're I would make it for
a while. I think we'd beat the average. I have
a few extra pounds, if that's what you're alluding to,
I said you and okay, And then after that, the
proteins start to get burned. And that's bad news because
using up proteins is basically your body itself. Your body
(07:59):
is kind of consumed itself in a way, so it's creepy.
That's like the maybe the structure, cellular structure, like you're
just eating your own muscles or something like that. I
don't know. It sounds pretty rotten either way. Yeah, that's
that's very rotten. Your metabolism comes into play obviously, which
is how your body converts food into energy. So if
you have a real slow metabolism, you're gonna burn your
(08:20):
food a slower so you'll last longer you have which
which will also cause you to you know, have carry
little extra weight if you have a slow metabolism, right,
But also you would be breaking down the carbohydrate slower
and then the fat slower, and then the proteins more slowly. Right, Yeah, Josh,
I think that's that's probably the case. So that's explains
why you would live a little bit longer if you're starting.
(08:41):
Climate plays plays a role. If you're in the freezing
cold or in the burning heat, neither one of those
are aren't any good because you're gonna die faster basically,
which actually in this case may be better. Uh Well,
chances are if you're in extreme heat or cold, you
wouldn't make it to the point where you actually starved
to death. You would die from the elements before that
(09:04):
because it would weaken your body, you know, and tomato
tomato at that point, right, sure, yeah, you're probably just
you know, whatever hastens death, I imagine at that point
it's okay. So, um, I mean there's different stages, and
there's different symptoms for the stages of starvation, right um,
So at first, you know, and you can I can
(09:24):
identify with these like weakness, confusion, chronic diarrhea, got it
all the time, I barely ever eat, right. Um. Don't
you find that significant that you you your body starts
ejecting stuff while you're starving. You would think you'd be
hoarding it, right, Yeah, I guess it makes sense. But
that's that seems to be a common theme that that you, um,
(09:47):
you you have diarrhea, which is just bad because that
will also lead to dehydration, which we'll get treated in
a minute, right exactly. Um, and then advanced starvation. You're
you're really bad off. You're convulsive. Um, you can have
muscle spasms, a regular heartbeat, m hallucinations. Uh, and then
(10:07):
ultimately you can die of shock, correct, right, Well, your
organs will just start shutting down basically one by one. Yeah,
you know, your body's a machine and they always say
that and that food, food is the fuel, and so
without it, you're literally just gonna start breaking down bit
by bit. You said, Gandhi fasted for twenty one days,
and he probably did it more than once, I imagine. Um.
But when we were talking about the IRA earlier, they
(10:31):
one of them made it seventy one days, I think, so,
I don't remember the number exactly, but I think the
last one made it seventy one days. And um, there
were a group of ten of them, right they were
in prison in Great Britain, and they started a hunger
struck because they were being um, pretty much tortured. At
the time, everybody hated the IRA, and Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher
(10:52):
was Prime Minister at the time, would would not budge.
She went doing very public and yeah the world and
um she she she kept repeating that these people are
criminals and they're committing suicide and she had zero compassion
for him. But from what I understand, it actually started
to kind of turn the tide of public opinion slightly
more in favor of the I R A UM than
(11:13):
than it had been before, because up to that point
they were just heartless bombers, you know. So, and actually
seventy three days. Thomas mcawie he lasted the longest at
seventy three days, and he lasted what a week or
so longer than the second Yeah, full week. Well, choosing
to starve to death is one thing that's pretty harsh,
and you've got to be pretty committed to your cause
(11:34):
to do that. There's absolutely no way whatsoever you're gonna
last seventy one days without water right now. You never
see anyone go on on a dehydration strike, no, because
even the I ra a guys, um, we're taking small
amounts of water, which is what allowed them to live
that long. Exactly, you have to would be a very
short protest if you were doing a water strike, agreed,
(11:55):
and you would not get much accomplished. So what what
kind of time length they are we talking? I'll go
back to the threes three days you could potentially live
without water. Um. Again, environment and what kind of shape
you're in play a role. If you're obviously in the desert,
you can start to be the hydrated within the hour.
And you hear about, you know, these awful stories about
(12:16):
like a baby being locked in a car that can
die from dehydration just a couple of hours in the car.
I think you've been showing them that. I think like
maybe an hour. Yeah, yeah, and it's um, I guess
this is the point where we should say that this
is not something anyone should test. You know, this is
no laughing matter. Legal department loves you, chuck. Yeah. I
need to say these things because you do not want
(12:36):
to test your body to see how long you go
without water. You can go on fast and people do
the cleanses and things, as you know. I've done my
cleans the Master cleanse before and um, is that the
lemonade cleans Yeah, yeah, with the cayan pepper lemon and
gray bean maple syrup. I've done that before. To all
it did was kick up like chicken pox and me, oh,
I was so sick after like four days. Yeah, yeah,
(12:56):
I couldn't hank I pooped my pants. I'll bet you did.
Once per moves through you, isn't it. Yeah, it's very
h It leads lends itself to an accidental scenarios that
is a sign of starvation. So it is so Yeah,
you can't live without water for very long. Um, you
lose water when you sweat, when you urinate, um water
(13:17):
in your feces. You lose water when you breathe through evaporation.
So your body is constantly losing water. Yeah, even like
you said, when you breathe, I found that surprising until
I really thought about it. I'm like, of course, that's
why you can see your breath. It's water vapor right right,
And you know there's a lot of water. Our body,
I believe is water, and uh, we need water. It
(13:38):
carries it runs through the blood to carry oxygen everywhere.
It acts as cushions for your joints and soft tissue
and helps your food digest, helps you absorb food energy.
There's actually this precarious balance going on, Chuck. There's this, uh,
I guess kind of dance between water and solutes in
your body. A waltz sure sometimes is a fox trot
(14:00):
depending on the state of um. And so solutes can
be things like calcium, sodium, electro lights, think things that
you need, but um, you don't need an over abundance
of them in relation to the amount of water. You
don't want to high concentration or low concentration. And this
is part of the homeostasis that that um state of
(14:20):
balance in your body's processes. Part of that is UM
an isotonic state, which is a balance in the solution
of solutes and water. Got got me? Okay, you got me,
You're with me so far with so basically there's there's
two places um. These solutions can be in your body
(14:41):
on the cellular level. They can be outside the cell,
which is extracellular, or they can be inside the cell,
which is intercellular. But and you want to have an
equal and isotonic balance and equal solution inside and outside. Right,
and if you if one's thrown off, say there's a
high concentration, which means there's a lot of salutes and
(15:01):
not too much water. UM on the extracellular spaces. Uh,
the water is going to go from inside the cell outside.
It's it's trying to strike a balance. If you're not
replenishing water and the water is being shifted around like this,
that's when you're in trouble. That makes sense. Okay, Now,
when you start losing water, you get thrown out of balance.
(15:24):
When you get thrown out of balance, basically dehydration, all
sorts of terrible things can happen. To your cells. Right,
So let's say there is a build up of sodium.
You've seen what sodium does your lips if you eat.
Have you ever had Burger King's chicken fries? No? Okay,
well what if you? If you they were an ill
(15:44):
conceived and short lived. Um, they were French fries, but
they were made of chicken, so they weren't they were.
It was chicken, a chicken nugget elongated and those things
you just you took a bite and your lips were
immediately checked like you've been skiing for eight days. Yeah,
oh my god. It's so there's um, there's too much
sodium can dry out cells, right, it can wither them.
(16:07):
So if you have too much sodium in your cells
and not enough water, they can shrink and become destroyed.
And also outside of the cells as well, you have
all sorts of process He's going on. So if there's
too much water inside the cells and not enough outside,
the solution is too concentrated outside, then you have all
sorts of connections, um, a little vessels and things that
can rupture. Right, Okay, so this is what's going on
(16:31):
with dehydration. Actually, both of those can happen. So One
of the processes that that can take place and kill
you very easily is cerebral adema. Right, that just sounds
like a killer. It's not good. Basically, what happens is
the U the uh osmotic gradient occurs, so it's out
of balance and the water is sucked into the cell,
(16:55):
which sounds kind of weird because you know you're dehydrated,
but so it's taking any available water. It can um
and if that happens too much to sell can rupture,
and if it happens in your brain, your brain swells
and you're in big trouble because once a cell is
damaged like that, it can't be repaired. The exact opposite
(17:18):
can happen to your brain can if the balance is
off you have too much sodium not enough water, which
seems much more intuitive, and dehydration, uh, the the brain
can shrink. Actually. Do you remember Terri Shiavo, right, the
patient that was on life support and I got too
much media attention. I remember her? Right? Um? She actually
(17:39):
when when she finally died, you know, she died of dehydration.
After thirteen days they took her off life support. She
was in a persistent vegetative state. Which we've talked about before. Um,
And she was basically just functioning on her brain stem.
When they did the autopsy after she died of dehydration
thirteen days later, it was half the size, half of
its normal size. Her brain was it just shrunk because
(18:02):
of a lack of water. It's interesting, It is interesting
and horrifying. It is Unfortunately, from everything I've read, every
medical professional said, there's no way she can feel pained.
She's not in a state of consciousness where she can
experience pain, which is good because that would have been
a really painful way to die. I would imagine dying
of thirst or dehydration starvation is not a pleasant way
(18:22):
to go if you're obviously not in a vegetatus. Right. Yeah, well,
you know though you've experienced something similar before. I know
you have when you've had a hangover. You know those
throbbing headaches that you have. Your brain is literally shrinking,
right right. Um, You're you're you're dried out, basically. Um.
(18:44):
You dehydrate when you when you drink heavily. Um, and
your body actually shuffles water around itself, right, And one
one great store of water in your body is in
your brain. So what's happening is water is being on
from your brain and sent to other parts of your
bodies to rehydrate them, which seems like a terrible mechanism, right,
(19:06):
But what's going on is your brain actually doesn't have
any um, any any nervingtings. There's no way to feel
pain in your brain. But the membrane that connects your
brain to your skull, it's called the dura, it does
have pain receptors. So that's where the stretched and that's
where you get the headache, which is why you need
to replenish yourself with water. Well, yeah, they say, you know, uh,
(19:27):
if you're drinking alcohol in large amounts for you know,
New Year's Eve, let's say to uh toward the end
of the night, and you you need to start slamming water
or alternate the alcoholic beverage with a couple of I've
always heard that too. I find it really difficult to do. Well, yeah,
that's because you have to put down the glass of
scotch in order to do it. So what else you got?
You got anything else? I've got nothing else? You know,
don't don't try this at home if you're in a
(19:49):
survival scenario though you're gonna want to get on the
water too. It's sweet. That's first order of business, unless
you're obviously caught in freezing ice storm somewhere, and then
you're gonna one to get your shelter really fast. Right. Also,
you you've got plenty of water right around. You need
to melt it, true, Yeah, you have to melt it.
That's a good point. You don't want to eat snow
or chew on ice that will actually dehydrate you further.
(20:11):
Well it really, I know that the best way to
drink water is that room temperature. That's when your body
absorbs the most from it, right, But I didn't know
you can't eat snow. Well, it's uh. What it does
is it drops your core body temperature so much that
you're doing more harm than good. Got you, got you
well again, don't try going without food or water if
you don't have to drink eight to tin cups a day.
(20:32):
I know it varies from different doctors, but I think
by and large, if women drink, you know, roughly ninety
ounces of water day and men drink about a hundred
and twenty ounces a day, then you should be doing
pretty well. You definitely want to hydrate got you and
when your mom said that you should eat all your
food because they're starving kids in China, she wasn't that
far off. So consider that and uh, chuck, what do
(20:54):
we got? Uh? You know, I think we should give
some props to some of our podcasting mates here. I
know that we have a lot of great fans and
so of you know some of the other podcasts we do.
But we have a great auto podcasts if you're into that,
called high Speed Stuff, and we have a music one
that's been launched recently. It's very cool kind of side. Yeah,
it's stuff from the B side takes an interesting angle
(21:17):
on different various music subjects. Is school. I like it?
And of course stuff you missed him? History class? Great? Yeah?
And uh what else? Brain stuff from our company founder
Marshall Brain the brain and then we can't forget Strickland
and tech stuff he would badger us for the next
few weeks. Sold. So tech stuff. If you're into gadgets
and technology, then they're your guts. But you can find
(21:39):
all those on the how stuff works page of iTunes.
And if you want to learn more about, um, how
long you can go without food or water? You can
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(22:00):
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you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know?
From house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. This is stuff you
should know. Welcome, Welcome. How you doing the invenue? So, Chuck? Yes,
(00:23):
I just um, I just drank a coke and I
also ate some chips and salsa, nice, and I it
was all on an empty stomach, so I feel like
I'm gonna vomit. Three of the four food groups right
cover right, So, yeah, you've got corn in the chips,
You've got tomato onion, God knows what else is cilantro
in cilantro? I'm sure is that a food group? So
(00:46):
you've got all this stuff in the salts and the
chips and and then whatever's in the coke, right, um,
And all of it came to me and into my
stomach because I am a member of the wealthiest nation
on the planet. Okay, Yeah, do you want me to
get to the bottom of this? Yeah, I kind of
don't know where you're going. Well, ironically, I should say
(01:07):
I didn't even pay for this. I found it in
the brake room and ate it. Okay, but I live
in America, and America's got the money to pay for food.
So food naturally finds its way to countries like the
United States, Western European countries, developed nations, right, it doesn't
necessarily find its way to underdeveloped nations. Okay. So you're
(01:31):
familiar with the carrying capacity, right, Okay, Um, well then
I'll explain to everybody else. Uh. It's an anthropological term,
and I think it may also have to do with economics.
But basically, a carrying capacity is the total number of humans. Uh,
something can sustain so like hunting, hunting and gathering. I
think could sustain something like several hundred million people up
(01:55):
to maybe two billion, I'm not sure. Uh. And right
as we were on the verge of hitting that mark,
we came up with agriculture out of the blue. Agriculture
can buy estimates, Uh, carry ten billion people. Okay, we're
coming up on that mark pretty quickly. Yeah. I think
we're supposed to hit ten billion in like or something
(02:15):
like that, and we may go it may go shorter, um,
depending on you know, if there's any kind of catastrophes
or major food crises or climate change. It could go
longer if we'd be if our technology advances sufficiently, like
you know, we come up with soilent green or something
like that, right, grow from food in outer space. That's
(02:35):
that's where we we eat humans. Okay, that the science
fiction film you're talking about, soilent Green. Yeah, okay, So
so we may go more or less ten billion, but
ten billions usually the mark And um. This has kind
of been on the mind of some people for a while, right, Um,
especially in the in the mid to late sixties, there
was a food shortage and there were all sorts of
(02:56):
predictions coming out that you know, we were about to
be screwed, we're in big trouble. Um. And there is
a book called um Famine nineteen seventy five with an
exclamation point or anything. Yeah, And it was an academic
book and it used an exclamation point in the title UM.
And basically in it, the author um suggests that we
(03:17):
need to triage essentially who gets food. So the countries
that are contributing the most to the rest of the
world through advancement and you know, um whatever, uh, they
should get the most food and basically the other countries
should be left to starve to death. It was pretty grim.
It was written in nineteen seven, and obviously no one
(03:39):
took that up and ran with it, of course not.
It's pretty creepy, but it seems like price mechanism kind
of has come to fulfill that same prediction. You think, yeah,
because if you look at it, if you look at
the the eu n's World Hunger Map, uh, the the
areas that are the hungriest are the areas that are
(03:59):
the least developed. They have the least amount of food.
And as if that weren't enough, it's all a vicious cycle.
The more hungry you are, the higher your literacy rates are,
unemployment rates, all sorts of mortality rates obviously, um, so
you can't really break your way out of it unless
somebody helps you. And the price mechanism theory, my theory
(04:22):
is supported by the recent food crisis we saw in
two thousand seven, right, food just dried up everywhere. Why
because fuel prices went through the roof. We got expensive
to produce and transport food, and so all of a
sudden it didn't go the way it used to. You know,
care International there like an aid group, the Food Aid Group,
(04:45):
and they have a food Aid section. They actually stopped
handing out surplus food. They can't get it anymore. Yeah.
So food is pretty much a wealthy luxury, sadly enough.
And we're kind of hitting that famine nine seventy scenario
one way or another. Wow. I never thought of it
that way. Yeah, And it is tough to think about it.
And I mentioned all this because we're talking about how
(05:08):
long can you live without food or water? Right? Right?
So I guess my my goal was to kind of
put a human face on this, like what happens when
you live in Bangladesh or you know, Chad or somewhere
and you are starving to death and even worse, you
can't get any access to water or fresh water, at
(05:28):
least from from researching this, it's a horrible, horrible way
to die. Yeah, I may i may um, I may
reevaluate my dropping out of the sky in an airplane
is the worst way to die. Starving to death or
dehydration might do it for you. Right. Yeah, So let's
I mean, how long can you go without food? Say, well,
there's a general rule of threes. If you're talking about
(05:51):
survival experts, they call it the rule of threes. Odly enough,
and uh, supposedly you can go and these are rough estimates,
you know, there's we'll talk about the variances later, but
you can go three minutes without air before you die,
three hours without shelter if you're in a really harsh environment,
three days without water, in three weeks without food, three
(06:12):
hours without shelter, and if you're you know, stuck in
the freezing cold somewhere, that kind of thing. So that
that's the rule of threes. Um. There's all sorts of
play within that though. So if you're talking about food,
how long you go food, three weeks is actually kind
of on target. Um. You know, you can look at
political prisoners that have gone on hunger strikes. Yeah, the
(06:33):
IRA in the early eighties a lot longer than three weeks.
Well they did, and you can and you know, Gandhi
fasted for exactly three weeks, but he was in his
seventies at the time, so he wasn't in you know,
premium condition, which obviously if you're in the most fit
and the most healthy, you can go a little bit
longer than you know, someone who's grossly out of shape,
(06:54):
although having an abundance of fat actually would help you
survive too. So I guess that gets this into what
happened is when you start to run out of food,
bringing up the fat part, because your body what it
does is it processes uh, fat, carbohydrates, and proteins as
the stored energy, right, because it keep surviving. That's energy
you need your cells need for you know, to to
(07:17):
perform the functions that they do right. Right. And so
if you're talking about those three things and you're starting
the process of starving to death, uh, your body is
going to burn up carbohydrates. That's the first thing that's
going to burn up, which is which is good because
carves make you fat, sure, and then uh, then it
starts to burn up your fat. Stored fat even better
(07:37):
than burning up carbs, right. And if you have extra
stored fat, that's why you might get less a little
bit longer. I think you're I would make it for
a while. I think we'd beat the average. I have
a few extra pounds, if that's what you're alluding to,
I said you and okay, And then after that, the
proteins start to get burned. And that's bad news because
using up proteins is basically your body itself. Your body
(07:59):
is kind of consumed itself in a way, so it's creepy.
That's like the maybe the structure, cellular structure, like you're
just eating your own muscles or something like that. I
don't know. It sounds pretty rotten either way. Yeah, that's
that's very rotten. Your metabolism comes into play obviously, which
is how your body converts food into energy. So if
you have a real slow metabolism, you're gonna burn your
(08:20):
food a slower so you'll last longer you have which
which will also cause you to you know, have carry
little extra weight if you have a slow metabolism, right,
But also you would be breaking down the carbohydrate slower
and then the fat slower, and then the proteins more slowly. Right, Yeah, Josh,
I think that's that's probably the case. So that's explains
why you would live a little bit longer if you're starting.
(08:41):
Climate plays plays a role. If you're in the freezing
cold or in the burning heat, neither one of those
are aren't any good because you're gonna die faster basically,
which actually in this case may be better. Uh Well,
chances are if you're in extreme heat or cold, you
wouldn't make it to the point where you actually starved
to death. You would die from the elements before that
(09:04):
because it would weaken your body, you know, and tomato
tomato at that point, right, sure, yeah, you're probably just
you know, whatever hastens death, I imagine at that point
it's okay. So, um, I mean there's different stages, and
there's different symptoms for the stages of starvation, right um,
So at first, you know, and you can I can
(09:24):
identify with these like weakness, confusion, chronic diarrhea, got it
all the time, I barely ever eat, right. Um. Don't
you find that significant that you you your body starts
ejecting stuff while you're starving. You would think you'd be
hoarding it, right, Yeah, I guess it makes sense. But
that's that seems to be a common theme that that you, um,
(09:47):
you you have diarrhea, which is just bad because that
will also lead to dehydration, which we'll get treated in
a minute, right exactly. Um, and then advanced starvation. You're
you're really bad off. You're convulsive. Um, you can have
muscle spasms, a regular heartbeat, m hallucinations. Uh, and then
(10:07):
ultimately you can die of shock, correct, right, Well, your
organs will just start shutting down basically one by one. Yeah,
you know, your body's a machine and they always say
that and that food, food is the fuel, and so
without it, you're literally just gonna start breaking down bit
by bit. You said, Gandhi fasted for twenty one days,
and he probably did it more than once, I imagine. Um.
But when we were talking about the IRA earlier, they
(10:31):
one of them made it seventy one days, I think, so,
I don't remember the number exactly, but I think the
last one made it seventy one days. And um, there
were a group of ten of them, right they were
in prison in Great Britain, and they started a hunger
struck because they were being um, pretty much tortured. At
the time, everybody hated the IRA, and Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher
(10:52):
was Prime Minister at the time, would would not budge.
She went doing very public and yeah the world and
um she she she kept repeating that these people are
criminals and they're committing suicide and she had zero compassion
for him. But from what I understand, it actually started
to kind of turn the tide of public opinion slightly
more in favor of the I R A UM than
(11:13):
than it had been before, because up to that point
they were just heartless bombers, you know. So, and actually
seventy three days. Thomas mcawie he lasted the longest at
seventy three days, and he lasted what a week or
so longer than the second Yeah, full week. Well, choosing
to starve to death is one thing that's pretty harsh,
and you've got to be pretty committed to your cause
(11:34):
to do that. There's absolutely no way whatsoever you're gonna
last seventy one days without water right now. You never
see anyone go on on a dehydration strike, no, because
even the I ra a guys, um, we're taking small
amounts of water, which is what allowed them to live
that long. Exactly, you have to would be a very
short protest if you were doing a water strike, agreed,
(11:55):
and you would not get much accomplished. So what what
kind of time length they are we talking? I'll go
back to the threes three days you could potentially live
without water. Um. Again, environment and what kind of shape
you're in play a role. If you're obviously in the desert,
you can start to be the hydrated within the hour.
And you hear about, you know, these awful stories about
(12:16):
like a baby being locked in a car that can
die from dehydration just a couple of hours in the car.
I think you've been showing them that. I think like
maybe an hour. Yeah, yeah, and it's um, I guess
this is the point where we should say that this
is not something anyone should test. You know, this is
no laughing matter. Legal department loves you, chuck. Yeah. I
need to say these things because you do not want
(12:36):
to test your body to see how long you go
without water. You can go on fast and people do
the cleanses and things, as you know. I've done my
cleans the Master cleanse before and um, is that the
lemonade cleans Yeah, yeah, with the cayan pepper lemon and
gray bean maple syrup. I've done that before. To all
it did was kick up like chicken pox and me, oh,
I was so sick after like four days. Yeah, yeah,
(12:56):
I couldn't hank I pooped my pants. I'll bet you did.
Once per moves through you, isn't it. Yeah, it's very
h It leads lends itself to an accidental scenarios that
is a sign of starvation. So it is so Yeah,
you can't live without water for very long. Um, you
lose water when you sweat, when you urinate, um water
(13:17):
in your feces. You lose water when you breathe through evaporation.
So your body is constantly losing water. Yeah, even like
you said, when you breathe, I found that surprising until
I really thought about it. I'm like, of course, that's
why you can see your breath. It's water vapor right right,
And you know there's a lot of water. Our body,
I believe is water, and uh, we need water. It
(13:38):
carries it runs through the blood to carry oxygen everywhere.
It acts as cushions for your joints and soft tissue
and helps your food digest, helps you absorb food energy.
There's actually this precarious balance going on, Chuck. There's this, uh,
I guess kind of dance between water and solutes in
your body. A waltz sure sometimes is a fox trot
(14:00):
depending on the state of um. And so solutes can
be things like calcium, sodium, electro lights, think things that
you need, but um, you don't need an over abundance
of them in relation to the amount of water. You
don't want to high concentration or low concentration. And this
is part of the homeostasis that that um state of
(14:20):
balance in your body's processes. Part of that is UM
an isotonic state, which is a balance in the solution
of solutes and water. Got got me? Okay, you got me,
You're with me so far with so basically there's there's
two places um. These solutions can be in your body
(14:41):
on the cellular level. They can be outside the cell,
which is extracellular, or they can be inside the cell,
which is intercellular. But and you want to have an
equal and isotonic balance and equal solution inside and outside. Right,
and if you if one's thrown off, say there's a
high concentration, which means there's a lot of salutes and
(15:01):
not too much water. UM on the extracellular spaces. Uh,
the water is going to go from inside the cell outside.
It's it's trying to strike a balance. If you're not
replenishing water and the water is being shifted around like this,
that's when you're in trouble. That makes sense. Okay, Now,
when you start losing water, you get thrown out of balance.
(15:24):
When you get thrown out of balance, basically dehydration, all
sorts of terrible things can happen. To your cells. Right,
So let's say there is a build up of sodium.
You've seen what sodium does your lips if you eat.
Have you ever had Burger King's chicken fries? No? Okay,
well what if you? If you they were an ill
(15:44):
conceived and short lived. Um, they were French fries, but
they were made of chicken, so they weren't they were.
It was chicken, a chicken nugget elongated and those things
you just you took a bite and your lips were
immediately checked like you've been skiing for eight days. Yeah,
oh my god. It's so there's um, there's too much
sodium can dry out cells, right, it can wither them.
(16:07):
So if you have too much sodium in your cells
and not enough water, they can shrink and become destroyed.
And also outside of the cells as well, you have
all sorts of process He's going on. So if there's
too much water inside the cells and not enough outside,
the solution is too concentrated outside, then you have all
sorts of connections, um, a little vessels and things that
can rupture. Right, Okay, so this is what's going on
(16:31):
with dehydration. Actually, both of those can happen. So One
of the processes that that can take place and kill
you very easily is cerebral adema. Right, that just sounds
like a killer. It's not good. Basically, what happens is
the U the uh osmotic gradient occurs, so it's out
of balance and the water is sucked into the cell,
(16:55):
which sounds kind of weird because you know you're dehydrated,
but so it's taking any available water. It can um
and if that happens too much to sell can rupture,
and if it happens in your brain, your brain swells
and you're in big trouble because once a cell is
damaged like that, it can't be repaired. The exact opposite
(17:18):
can happen to your brain can if the balance is
off you have too much sodium not enough water, which
seems much more intuitive, and dehydration, uh, the the brain
can shrink. Actually. Do you remember Terri Shiavo, right, the
patient that was on life support and I got too
much media attention. I remember her? Right? Um? She actually
(17:39):
when when she finally died, you know, she died of dehydration.
After thirteen days they took her off life support. She
was in a persistent vegetative state. Which we've talked about before. Um,
And she was basically just functioning on her brain stem.
When they did the autopsy after she died of dehydration
thirteen days later, it was half the size, half of
its normal size. Her brain was it just shrunk because
(18:02):
of a lack of water. It's interesting, It is interesting
and horrifying. It is Unfortunately, from everything I've read, every
medical professional said, there's no way she can feel pained.
She's not in a state of consciousness where she can
experience pain, which is good because that would have been
a really painful way to die. I would imagine dying
of thirst or dehydration starvation is not a pleasant way
(18:22):
to go if you're obviously not in a vegetatus. Right. Yeah, well,
you know though you've experienced something similar before. I know
you have when you've had a hangover. You know those
throbbing headaches that you have. Your brain is literally shrinking,
right right. Um, You're you're you're dried out, basically. Um.
(18:44):
You dehydrate when you when you drink heavily. Um, and
your body actually shuffles water around itself, right, And one
one great store of water in your body is in
your brain. So what's happening is water is being on
from your brain and sent to other parts of your
bodies to rehydrate them, which seems like a terrible mechanism, right,
(19:06):
But what's going on is your brain actually doesn't have
any um, any any nervingtings. There's no way to feel
pain in your brain. But the membrane that connects your
brain to your skull, it's called the dura, it does
have pain receptors. So that's where the stretched and that's
where you get the headache, which is why you need
to replenish yourself with water. Well, yeah, they say, you know, uh,
(19:27):
if you're drinking alcohol in large amounts for you know,
New Year's Eve, let's say to uh toward the end
of the night, and you you need to start slamming water
or alternate the alcoholic beverage with a couple of I've
always heard that too. I find it really difficult to do. Well, yeah,
that's because you have to put down the glass of
scotch in order to do it. So what else you got?
You got anything else? I've got nothing else? You know,
don't don't try this at home if you're in a
(19:49):
survival scenario though you're gonna want to get on the
water too. It's sweet. That's first order of business, unless
you're obviously caught in freezing ice storm somewhere, and then
you're gonna one to get your shelter really fast. Right. Also,
you you've got plenty of water right around. You need
to melt it, true, Yeah, you have to melt it.
That's a good point. You don't want to eat snow
or chew on ice that will actually dehydrate you further.
(20:11):
Well it really, I know that the best way to
drink water is that room temperature. That's when your body
absorbs the most from it, right, But I didn't know
you can't eat snow. Well, it's uh. What it does
is it drops your core body temperature so much that
you're doing more harm than good. Got you, got you
well again, don't try going without food or water if
you don't have to drink eight to tin cups a day.
(20:32):
I know it varies from different doctors, but I think
by and large, if women drink, you know, roughly ninety
ounces of water day and men drink about a hundred
and twenty ounces a day, then you should be doing
pretty well. You definitely want to hydrate got you and
when your mom said that you should eat all your
food because they're starving kids in China, she wasn't that
far off. So consider that and uh, chuck, what do
(20:54):
we got? Uh? You know, I think we should give
some props to some of our podcasting mates here. I
know that we have a lot of great fans and
so of you know some of the other podcasts we do.
But we have a great auto podcasts if you're into that,
called high Speed Stuff, and we have a music one
that's been launched recently. It's very cool kind of side. Yeah,
it's stuff from the B side takes an interesting angle
(21:17):
on different various music subjects. Is school. I like it?
And of course stuff you missed him? History class? Great? Yeah?
And uh what else? Brain stuff from our company founder
Marshall Brain the brain and then we can't forget Strickland
and tech stuff he would badger us for the next
few weeks. Sold. So tech stuff. If you're into gadgets
and technology, then they're your guts. But you can find
(21:39):
all those on the how stuff works page of iTunes.
And if you want to learn more about, um, how
long you can go without food or water? You can
type those words into our handy search bar at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
(22:00):
Let us know what you think. Send an email to
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