70 years without food or water. Is this possible?

70 years without food or water. Is this possible?

70 years without eating? 'Starving yogi' says it's true
Posted on Monday, May 10, 2010 7:00 PM PT
By Brian Alexander

Prahlad Jani, an 82-year-old Indian yogi, is making headlines by claims that for the past 70 years he has had nothing -- not one calorie -- to eat and not one drop of liquid to drink. To test his claims, Indian military doctors put him under round-the-clock observation during a two-week hospital stay that ended last week, news reports say. During that time he didn’t ingest any food or water – and remained perfectly healthy, the researchers said.

But that’s simply impossible, said Dr. Michael Van Rooyen an emergency physician at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an associate professor at the medical school, and the director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative – which focuses on aid to displaced populations who lack food and water....

The full article is available here

Some of the posters on the original article have interesting points. invoking quantum physics and that a human is more then simply mechanical

Originally posted by PZ Myers:

What they really need is a James Randi. If I were in charge, I'd give the yogi a very nice single room with books and a meditation mat and whatever non-edible, non-drinkable luxury items he wanted…and I'd put him in there for four weeks, monitored by video cameras, and lock the door. Just to be nice, I'd also put a couple of bottles of water in the room, in case he breaks. But if he is really able to live without sustenance, that's the ability we have to test first, and test well.

If he came out after a month, perfectly healthy, the water in the room untouched, the video cameras showing no untoward intervention, then we can talk about fancy-pants physiological testing.

From here.
I'd say bollocks.

I'll side with the "bollocks" group. The "test" they making him go through is so laughably flawed they must realise it, and are colluding in it to obtain a result.

Aren't we getting into the silly season in the reporting world.

It's always silly season when it comes to tabloids, especially the mail.

He is not really 82.
He just looks 82.

Seems like a weird PR stunt. Most people would'nt last a week without eating or drinking so 70 years is just totally rediculous

I suppose theres "possibilties".......

Hard to say...I did it for six hours once and felt almost OK. I have to admit that I attacked a live chicken at six hours, five minutes. I still can't stand the sight of feathers!

Hrmmmm...no one has stepped up and said how this possible for some reason. I checked into it a bit more and learned about an Australian named Ellen Greve, who also claims to not eat or drink and claims to have not done so since 1993. Unfortunately, her house was food was found to be full of food.... She also says that her DNA has changed from 2 strands to 12 and the starving of the world have been brainwashed by the media into thinking they need food. Never mind that most of the truely starving of the world live in areas with little media to brainwash them.....

Mrs Greene makes loads of money giving talks on "breatharianism" when clearly she's a fraud or a looney. This leads me to the conclusion that we're all fools. We should get rich giving talks on whatever newage gibberish we can make up

Originally posted by Macallan:

Originally posted by PZ Myers:

What they really need is a James Randi. If I were in charge, I'd give the yogi a very nice single room with books and a meditation mat and whatever non-edible, non-drinkable luxury items he wanted…and I'd put him in there for four weeks, monitored by video cameras, and lock the door. Just to be nice, I'd also put a couple of bottles of water in the room, in case he breaks. But if he is really able to live without sustenance, that's the ability we have to test first, and test well.

If he came out after a month, perfectly healthy, the water in the room untouched, the video cameras showing no untoward intervention, then we can talk about fancy-pants physiological testing.

From here.
I'd say bollocks.

Oh, appearanly he did lose weight during study by the Indian Army...how odd for somebody that doesn't need food nor water to lose weight....

He's 82. He hasn't had any food or water since he was 12.

How did he accumulate the mass which traditionally goes with adulthood? Assuming his 82-year old adult self weighs more than his 12 year old adolescent state. Does his hair grow? Does he shed skin? How about his nails? Where does the material mass come from?


Oh, why am I even entertaining this? It's utterly stupid.

Originally posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breatharians#Wiley_Brooks:

Wiley Brooks is founder of the Breatharian Institute of America. He was first introduced to the public in 1980 when appearing on the TV show That's Incredible!. Brooks stopped teaching recently to "devote 100% of his time on solving the problem as to why he needed to eat some type of food to keep his physical body alive and allow his light body to manifest completely."
[...]

In 1983 he was allegedly observed leaving a Santa Cruz 7-Eleven with a Slurpee, hot dog and Twinkies. He told Colors magazine in 2003 that he periodically breaks his fasting with a cheeseburger and a cola, explaining that when he's surrounded by junk culture and junk food, consuming them adds balance.

On his website, Brooks states that his potential followers must first prepare by combining the junk food diet with the meditative incantation of five magic "fifth-dimensional" words which appear on his website. In the "5D Q&A" section of his website Brooks explains that cows are fifth-dimensional (or higher) beings that help mankind achieve fifth-dimensional status by converting three-dimensional food to five-dimensional food (beef). The "Holy Cows" section of the site includes a picture of cows with glowing eyes so that readers can sense the energy of the picture. In the "Question and Answer" section of his website, Brooks explains that the "Double Quarter-Pounder with Cheese" meal from McDonald's possesses a special "base frequency" and that he thus recommends it as occasional food for beginning breatharians. He then goes on to reveal that Diet Coke is "liquid light". Prospective disciples are asked after some time following the junk food/magic word preparation to revisit his website in order to test if they can feel the magic.

Perhaps he was chewing the cords.Men can be mysterious(not demons).

Originally posted by keloda:

In Love With 9ja

(could that be a shoe size?)

Pointless comment Redem.

Originally posted by Jaybro:

Hard to say...I did it for six hours once and felt almost OK. I have to admit that I attacked a live chicken at six hours, five minutes. I still can't stand the sight of feathers!

Because you were hungry or just lonely....?

it might be possible to be without water for atleast a week...especially in winter cos we dont sweat that much.....but not without food .

Food is easy, your body simply begins to consume your own fat and muscle deposits. It's the water that's difficult, a few days of normal activity is enough to severely affect the health of most people. Maybe a little longer if you didn't exert yourself.

Originally posted by rjhowie:

Pointless comment Redem.

I disagree, it's the tabloid press that's been credulously spreading this story around as if it was anything more than the obvious bullshit of some nutter.

Originally posted by Denny77:

Because you were hungry or just lonely....?

I was hoping nobody would ask...it's the seething anger that boils within me. Chickens trigger it for some strange reason.

Originally posted by KANJEDZA:

it might be possible to be without water for atleast a week

You got that one backward. If you had to choose between only crackers or water for a week, you'd better choose water. Your enzymes don't work well without water, so in a week KANJEDZA would be a memory.

I have to say, my initial thought is to say, this can't be true, you can't just live off of universe energy. However, you have people who can survive sub-freezing temperatures for untold amounts of time, (temperatures that induce serious life threatening cases of hypothermia, since we all know that the outside temperature isn't what matters, the inside temperature is) and come in without a sniffle or a cough. The human body, and mind are baffling.

Originally posted by Elle11:

The human body, and mind are baffling.

Not without water, they aren't.

Originally posted by Jaybro:

Originally posted by Elle11:

The human body, and mind are baffling.

Not without water, they aren't.

With or without water, they are still baffling. Water withdrawal may stop the function, but if you think about it, it doesn't change the fact that human minds are powerful tools. Does it? No. I didn't think so.

Compared to.....

Originally posted by Jaybro:

Compared to.....

I don't feel the need to compare because it's biased. If I compare to say... a dolphin, well, I can't say we are very impressive, considering we only use ten percent of our capacity. But if I compare to a worm, who lives purely off of instinct, I can say, we're more evolved, and impressive than that. So I choose just to go with a basic, and very obvious opinion, which to some is also considered a fact. But I suppose it's very much a matter of perspective.

We use all of our brains. Moreover, we can't even use that if we're dead from thirst.

Originally posted by Elle11:

I can't say we are very impressive, considering we only use ten percent of our capacity.

Speak for yourself. I use all of my brain. What's so impressive about dolphins anyway?

I hear that with water and vitamins, you can go without food for quite some time, easily a month, maybe even 6 semi-comfortably. With water and vitamins, your body can keep operating and converting stored reserves into energy... I hear a lot of people used to do it to lose weight back in the '50s and '60s...

Other than that, without water, I don't care how much you stretch your body into silly positions, you're dead in two weeks tops, probably sooner.

Mentalism. is it possible?

Originally posted by Elle11:

I can't say we are very impressive, considering we only use ten percent of our capacity.

That is a baseless myth. Only 10% of our brains might be active at any one time, but 100% is used. If we didn't use it, it wouldn't be there.

They say he's got the brain of a 25-year-old. He probably takes it out of his pocket and has a nibble on it now and then...

I'm amused that credible news sources posted this story. I've never been the math/science type, but I do recall my 9th grade biology class and learning that cells are the basic building blocks of life and that they need water for cellular respiration, nutrient transport, and waste excretion.

No water = no cells

No cells = no life

Originally posted by Sanguinemoon:

70 years without food or water. Is this possible?

Of course it's possible.
It's just not probable.

Originally posted by Belfrager:

Of course it's possible.

sure, there's still the thing called photosynthesis

Originally posted by NoobSaibot:

Originally posted by Belfrager:

Of course it's possible.

sure, there's still the thing called photosynthesis

yes. also possible, just not probable.

Perhaps is angel!

Originally posted by NoobSaibot:

sure, there's still the thing called photosynthesis

Nah, even then you need a lot of water.