David Blaine, an endurance artist, experimented with total food deprivation - in front of a crowd. He did not eat anything between September 5 and October 19, 2003.
“A 30-year-old male, weight 96 kg, height 1.84 m, entered a transparent Perspex box on the banks of the river Thames in London and was suspended in the air from a crane for 44 days. During this period, he took only water to drink.”*
I found out about his experiment a short while ago and I wanted to see if I can find some research data about it. And I did. There are at least 3 scientific studies written on Blaine's experiment.
Let's see some numbers:
So, at the end of the experiment, David Blaine was 24.5kg lighter. Even though his situation was not life threatening, he was admitted to the hospital for careful intense refeeding (for 5 days).
Researchers took a lot of measurements before, after, and during the experiment (daily urine tests). However, by modern means, these measurements cannot be perceived as being very accurate. But, even so, they are useful. Here's another photo:
From the experiment
- Blaine lost 10.4kg of muscle
- He developed some nutritional deficiencies (B-vitamins, low potassium, low vitamin A...)
- Two weeks in - he experienced faintness and dizziness upon standing up quickly
- He developed sharp shooting pains in his trunk and limbs
- He experienced nausea and abdominal discomfort
- He found time for some reading/journaling
Endnotes
Overall, there is nothing unusual from Blaine's experiment that does not show up in people who fast (don't eat anything, only drink water) for prolonged periods of time. In fact, compared to a person who fasted for 382 days (I wrote about it here), Blaine seems to have done worse. But he fully recovered from his experiment, showing the amazing endurance capability of the human body.
If you're a geek and you want to see additional data from the 3 scientific studies, I wrote a more detailed review on Blaine's fast on my blog.
I'll leave you with a quote from Blaine:
“I think to be able to survive something like this proves that we can live with nothing…Everybody wants domination, wants to own and control everything and believes that money and diamonds and riches and all this stuff is what life is about, but, you know, at the end of the day that really means nothing…there is no value in that.”*
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Cristi Vlad, Self-Experimenter and Author