How Long Can a Person Live Without Food

Several factors determine how long a person can live without food. The reasons why can be psychological, necessity or forced. The answer to how long a person can live without food depends on a person's body and weight, your state of mind, your will power and climate and hydration rate.

* First, you need to know who's asking and why they want to know.
* Are they an adventurer in survival training?
* Are they planning a protest with a hunger strike?
* Is it a question for a biology quiz?
* Is there an eating disorder?

There are three main factors that influence survival without food: water, body weight and your overall health.

The most important need for survival is water. Doctors confirm the average person lives about 4 to 6 weeks without food. However, the body can last only a couple of days without water. When you don't get enough water to stay hydrated you become lethargic, dizzy, confused, and eventually die. Mahatma Gandhi went on a hunger strike at age 74, protesting for India's independence. He survived 21 days even though he was of slight build. He allowed himself sips of water to survive. On the other hand Jewish hostages of the holocaust basically starved to death even though they consumed food. The amounts they ate were witnessed to be only between 300 and 600 calories a day.

In biology the rule of thumb for survival is the rule of three. In other words 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water or 3 weeks without food leads to death. But the statistics for total starvation are insufficient. One report of political prisoners in Northern Ireland showed that survival without food lasted between 46 and 73 days for 10 individuals. Terminally ill patients often refuse food and water in an attempt to end their lives. They live anywhere from 10 to 14 days.

With ample body fat, an person can last longer without food. If the person is obese,they may last between 4 and 25 weeks. The length of time is often dependent on the rate of metabolism to burn stored fat and energy. The rate of how long a person can live without food depends on many factors.

Read more...

Are Boys Food Needs Different

Are boys food needs different from girls or adults? Boys tend to have high-energy needs and can be more athletic. They need food that appeals to them while providing the extra nourishment to keep them healthy. A menu for boys’ food should consist of a balanced diet without a lot of junk food. Boys like things that are crunchy, greasy, salty or sweet.

Here are some suggestions for your boys to try:

Crunchy: You might as well give the broccoli, carrots and celery to the local rabbit shelter. Boys and girls probably aren’t going to eat them alone. Try serving carrots and celery with peanut butter dip or broccoli with a low fat dressing. They’re sure try them. Apple or pita chips, homemade tortilla chips and crispy English muffin pizzas are more winners in boys’ food category.

Salty: Try to avoid too much salt. It’s not any healthier for boys than adults. Just use a lighter touch when seasoning your stuff. Look for lightly salted peanuts, pretzels and unbuttered popcorn to satisfy that craving for salty food.

Greasy: Stay away from the greasy fried foods. French fries prepared in the oven are just as good but a whole lot healthier. Grill hamburgers instead of pan-frying. Add healthy cheese for a savory treat. If you have to fry foods, use lighter, healthier oil like peanut oil.

Sweet: Do they crave sweets? Fresh fruit is filled with natural sweetness. Add low fat yogurt or pudding to the fruit for more enticement. Low fat whipped cream, frozen yogurt, low fat ice cream or flavored gelatins are all good options as well. Try adding a little dash of cinnamon sugar mixture to toast or cereal. Instead of sugary empty calorie sodas, offer milk or flavored water.

A boys food needs different from girls can be met by providing appealing, nourishing options.

Read more...

Faithless and Insomnia: New Hope

Insomnia patients have felt faithless and insomnia had no help. Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, addresses those fears. Requiring four one-hour sessions every other week, CBT troubleshoots the patients’ problems.

The heart of CBT helps patients address their poor sleeping plan through behavioral or mental strategies as well as to control and maintain the condition of the patient to get the consistent treatment. Patients begin to understand what they need to sleep and how their sleep systems work through cognitive therapy practices. This helps them get rid of their anxiety thinking that promotes insomnia.

Negative thoughts like “you'll never fall asleep” your body generates that mental and physical anxiety your thinking is always the obstacles for insomnia disease. However, doing cognitive therapy changes your behavioral responses by retraining your body's natural sleep pattern. Some of the strategies include restricting sleep time to actual time asleep, waking at a set time every day and keeping external and internal invasions away. Doing a way with daytime naps and “resting their eyes” is also part of the therapy.
CBT is a form of sleep education. The therapy lists recommendations for getting good sleep. Things such as avoiding alcohol, nicotine and strenuous exercise close to bedtime, having a bedroom that is cool, quiet and without a TV are stressed or even perform a hard exercise period in the evening will also helps you to fall asleep very easily. Patients who are dependent on sleeping medications can also benefit through CBT. The drugs have been shown to increase your sleep by only a few minutes. And they can be addictive. Patients who have become faithless and insomnia is a nightly occurrence, are often the ones who are using the sleep medication. They're concerned about the long term effect but are scared to do away with the medication.

Read more...

Heart disease & stoke

The UK has one of the highest rates of death from heart disease in the world - one British adult dies from the disease every three minutes - and stroke is the country's third biggest killer, claiming 70,000 lives each year.
Heart attacks occur when blood flow is blocked, often by a blood clot, while strokes are caused either by blocked or burst blood vessels in the brain. A range of other conditions, including heart failure, when blood is not pumped properly around the body, and congenital heart defects can also cause long term problems, and even death, for sufferers.

HEART DISEASE
The heart pumps blood around the body carrying oxygen and other nutrients to the areas that need it. When this process is interrupted, or does not work properly, serious illness and even death can result.
The risk of heart disease is greater for people with poor diet, who smoke and do not exercise, and men are more likely to suffer from it than women.
A range of tests and treatments, including drugs, heart bypass surgery and transplants, exist to alleviate symptoms or save the lives of sufferers.


STROKE

There are two types of stroke - those caused by blood clots in the brain and those that occur when blood vessels burst. In both cases, the brain is starved of oxygen, damaging or killing cells.
Sufferers are often left with difficulty talking, walking and performing other basic tasks. The chance of suffering a stroke is cut by eating healthily, quitting smoking and drinking less alcohol. People at risk of stroke are often treated with aspirin.
After a stroke, various drug treatments are available and rehabilitation is commonly used to improve patients' speech and movement.

Read more...

Cancer: The facts

One in three of us will be diagnosed with cancer during our life.

The disease tends to affect older people - but can strike at any time.

Excluding certain skin cancers, there were more than 270,000 new cases of the disease in 2001 - and the rate is increasing by about 1% a year.

Some cancer, such as breast, are becoming more common, while new cases of lung cancer fall away due to the drop in the number of smokers.

However, while the overall number of new cancers is not falling, the good news is that successful treatment rates for many of the most common types are improving rapidly.

BBC News Online has produced, in conjunction with Cancer Research UK, a guide to some of the most common forms of cancer and the treatments used to tackle them.

To learn more about different types of cancer, and to read the experiences of patients, click on the links to the right.

Read more...

Study finds stress link to asthma

Stress 'causes asthmatic babies'

Pregnant women who suffer from stress are more likely to have a child with asthma, according to research from Children of the 90s study.

Researchers working with about 6,000 families in Bristol found anxious mums-to-be were 60% more likely to have a baby who would develop the illness.

The findings show 16% of asthmatic children had mothers who reported high anxiety while pregnant.

Mothers-to-be who were less stressed had a lower incidence rate.

Key findings

Professor John Henderson, from the Children of the 90s team, said: "Perhaps the natural response to stress which produces a variety of hormones in the body may have an influence on the developing infant and their developing immune system that manifests itself later on."

The Children of the 90s study - carried out by the University of Bristol - has been following 14,000 children.

They are regularly tested and monitored to see how different lifestyles affect growth, intelligence and health.

The aim is to identify ways to optimise the health and development of children.

Key findings to come out of the project include left-handed children do less well in tests than their right-handed peers and women who eat oily fish while pregnant have children with better visual development.

Read more...

Test 'sheds light on back pain

A simple technique could help doctors differentiate between patients with different causes of back pain and thus improve treatment, a study suggests.

Researchers writing in PLoS Medicine have devised "bedside" tests which distinguish between neuropathic - nerve damage - and other causes of pain.

Neuropathic pain is commonly described as "burning" or "stabbing" but it is often difficult to formally diagnose.

Back pain is the most commonly cited reason for being absent from work.

A team from Massachusetts General Hospital in the US and Addenbrooke's in the UK recruited more than 300 patients with chronic back pain.

Some had a known history of nerve damage caused by diabetes or shingles, while others had low back pain with or without evidence of spinal nerve root damage.

Question time

By carrying out detailed comparisons of the patients, researchers were able to formulate a set of six questions and 10 physical tests which distinguished between the two groups.


Although back pain is very common, in many cases we still have a poor understanding of where the pain is coming from
Dries Hettinga
BackCare

The results, they said, were superior to existing screening tests for neuropathic pain and even to MRI scanning of the spine, which can be misleading as many people have damage to their spinal discs without any pain.

In most types of neuropathic pain, all signs of any injury have usually disappeared but certain nerves continue to send pain messages to the brain.

Traditional pain killers often do not help - other options include antidepressants, and physical as well as psychological treatment.

"Currently clinicians measure pain only by asking how bad it is, using scales from mild to moderate to severe or asking patients to rate their pain from one to 10," said lead author Joachim Scholz, an assistant professor of anaesthesia.

"This approach misses key characteristics that reflect the mechanisms causing the pain.

"The treatment of neuropathic and nonneuropathic pain is quite different, and if a diagnosis is wrong, patients may receive treatment, including surgery, that does not improve their pain."

Dries Hettinga, head of research & policy at the charity BackCare, said: "Although back pain is very common, in many cases we still have a poor understanding of where the pain is coming from and how to tailor treatments to individual cases.

"This is why the diagnostic tool that the researchers developed could make a big difference to many people with back pain.

"People with neuropathic back pain need a different treatment approach than those with non-neuropathic pain and an accurate and easy to use tool to distinguish the two types of pain would not only benefit people with back pain, but also help to tailor treatments for people with back pain and thus decrease costs."

Read more...