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   Do Breatharians Survive Without Food or Water? [Fact Check]    
      
   *****    
      
   Fact Check Medical    
      
   Do Breatharians Survive Without Food or Water?    
      
   Claims about "breatharians" resurfaced in June 2017, but once again people   
   purportedly living on light alone did not offer proof that they survive this   
   way.    
      
      
   CLAIM    
   A Californian and Ecuadorian couple proved it is possible to live on nothing   
   but air.    
      
   RATING    
    FALSE    
   ORIGIN    
   In mid-June 2017, tabloids and similar sources published articles about a   
   couple that purports to survive by eating little to no food. Akahi Ricardo and   
   Camila Castello, the articles said, call themselves “breatharians,” and   
   say they survive on “   
   the universe’s energy,” along with pieces of fruit and vegetable broth   
   eaten 2-3 times per week.    
      
   This is not the first time that people have made this claim. A Wikipedia page   
   for the practice perhaps best sums it up in noting that “[t]hough it is   
   common knowledge that biological entities require sustenance to survive,   
   breatharianism continues.”    
   Notably, The Sun and many regurgitators of the piece repeated claims   
   purportedly made by Ricardo and Castello without checking them against very   
   basic science understood across humanity:    
      
   Camila and Akahi – who have a five-year-old son and two-year-old daughter   
   together – have survived on little else besides a piece of fruit or   
   vegetable broth just 3 times per week since 2008.    
      
   And Camila even practised a Breatharian PREGNANCY – not eating anything   
   during the entire nine months that she carried her first child.    
      
   The married couple-of-nine-years claim that their “food-free lifestyle”   
   has improved their health and emotional well-being as well as meaning they can   
   spend money on travelling rather than the weekly shop … Camila explained:   
   “I was completely    
   open to changing my food-free lifestyle when I first became pregnant because   
   my child came first. But I just never felt hungry so I ended up practicing a   
   fully Breatharian pregnancy.    
      
   “I didn’t feel the need or desire to eat solid food during the entire nine   
   months and so I only ate 5 times, all of which were in social situations.    
   Throughout the profile (which was republished across the web with no   
   additional fact checking), the couple alternately claimed to eat occasionally   
   and to describe themselves as “food free.” Whether the couple claimed to   
   eat very little or nothing at    
   all, no apparent verification of their claims was made before pushing the   
   dangerous suggestion one could live without food or water out to large   
   audiences.    
      
   Predictably, the practice has indeed proved fatal. Victims in Scotland,   
   Australia, and Switzerland were among individuals who died in an attempt to   
   survive without food or water. A 1999 Guardian article about the deaths quoted   
   an expert on survival    
   medicine:    
      
   Experts differ as to the absolute maximum length of time that human life can   
   continue without water, but the broad consensus rests at somewhere between   
   seven and 10 days – though severe dehydration and confusion (due to the   
   build-up of sodium and    
   potassium in the brain) would set in sooner. In the desert, of course, lack of   
   water can kill in a matter of hours.    
      
   “It depends on the climate, and how much exercise you’re taking, but if   
   you’re lying in bed you would probably be just about all right for a   
   week,” says Dr Charles Clarke, who specialises in high-altitude survival   
   medicine and has accompanied the    
   climber Chris Bonington on expeditions to Mount Everest. “But towards the   
   end of the first week, you’d become pretty gravely ill. Your blood would   
   become thicker, your kidneys can’t cope; multiple organ failure follows, you   
   get hypothermic and    
   eventually you die.”    
   Moreover, the couple profiled by The Sun weren’t the first “   
   reatharians” to admit to or be caught eating food while claiming not to eat   
   or drink. Jasmuheen, an ex-business woman and founder of the movement has   
   never proved she doesn’t eat,    
   demonstrates signs of eating, and nutritional experts believe the claim may be   
   a delusion shared among individuals who underestimate their “occasional”   
   eating:    
      
   Jasmuheen freely admits to drinking orange juice regularly and occasionally   
   nibbling chocolate biscuits for a “taste sensation”. In the past she has   
   described her diet as including tea with honey and soya milk, chocolate,   
   crisps, soup and the odd    
   piece of fruit. Thoeretically, a diet consisting of those foods in small   
   amounts could represent a calorific intake to which the body could adjust   
   without significant weight loss.    
      
   Reporters visiting Jasmuheen’s Brisbane home have been bewildered to find   
   her fridge well-stocked with vegetarian food which, she says, belongs to her   
   partner Jeff Ferguson, a convicted fraudster. And a British journalist   
   accompanying Jasmuheen to her    
   check-in desk at Heathrow last December was astonished when the BA clerk asked   
   her to confirm that she’d ordered an in-flight vegetarian meal. “No,   
   no,” she replied. “Well, yes, OK, I did. But I won’t be eating it.”    
      
        
      
        
   Although claims of “breatharians” surviving and thriving pop up every few   
   years, we were unable to find any evidence contradicting the body of science   
   demonstrating humans require water and food to stay alive. It’s possible the   
   couple profiled by    
   The Sun in June 2017 both genuinely made and believed their own claims, but we   
   found no proof the impossible assertion was actually true. When tested,   
   purported breatharians such as Jasmuheen failed to last more than a few days   
   without food and water.    
      
      
      
   Feedback    
   Sources    
   Filed Under:BreatharianBreatharianismDangerous Woo+1 More    
   Fact Checker:Kim LaCapria    
   Featured Image:Shutterstock    
   Published:Jun 16th, 2017    
      
      
   http://www.snopes.com/breatharians/   
      
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