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Short Stuff: The Man Who Didn’t Eat for a Year · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome. Do short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: and there's Josh. And with us in spirit is a
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: fascinating person named Angus Barbieri who was the person who
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: went the one of the longest of all time without
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: eating solid food. Yeah, we've covered fasting before here and there.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Did we do a show on only fasting? Yeah, we
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: did have like I think it was called fasting Colin
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Deadly or what right? And I know we covered like
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the very famous hunger strikes here and there maybe in
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: that episode, but this one was not a hunger strike
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: so much. Um as a man that weighed four hundred
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: and fifty six pounds in Scotland, which which little known
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: fact is twenty one stone, that's right. And he was
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: not little known if if you're if you're from Scotland,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: a little known to me. But he needed help and
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: he went to the doctors. They put him on a
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: short fast, thinking that, all right, here's what's gonna happen.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: We're gonna put the scown of fast. He's gonna lose
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: a little weight. UM don't know if he'll keep it
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: off or not, but maybe this will kick start a
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: better lifestyle for him. Once he started not eating, he
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: said I can do this, and he didn't eat for
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: a few weeks. Then he didn't eat for a few
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  Speaker 1: more weeks, and he said, I want to get down
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  Speaker 1: to one eight from four six, so I am going
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  Speaker 1: to uh not eat. Well, he didn't proclaim at the beginning,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: but in the end he did not eat for three
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  Speaker 1: d and eighty two days, nothing at all, no nothing like,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: not fruit, not nothing. He drank coffee, he drank tea,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: drank sparkling water, and then he took some vitamins, which
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: we'll talk about in a second. But he just didn't
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  Speaker 1: eat for over a year. And what's even more astounding
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: is that he didn't just stay in this hospital at
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: dun in Dundee. Um, he went about his normal life.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: He had to quit his job at his father's fish
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  Speaker 1: and chips store. Yeah, I would think that's the first
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: first line of business. But other than that, you know,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: like he was going to and from the hospital, he
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: would go and spend a couple of nights overnight. Um.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: But he was being treated for for um as an outpatient.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: And so you might think, well, okay, clearly this guy
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: was was fudging this. He didn't really go a year
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: without eating. Well, his doctors thought of that too, and
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: they they tested him, and the test showed that he
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: probably was really not eating this whole time. Yeah. So
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: you mentioned the vitamins. Um, he had a lot of
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: body fat obviously at four fifty six pounds, and he
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: you can survive your on your body fat for a while. Um.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: But he also took a multi vitamin vitamin. See, he
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: took a yeast supplement, a sodium supplement, and a potassium supplement. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: That's gonna help maintain his electrical conductivity. And he was
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: doing okay like he would be. Uh. He would described
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: I being like weak sometimes in a little feint here
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  Speaker 1: and there, but he was not like falling over every
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: couple of hours. Uh he I mean, it's pretty remarkable
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  Speaker 1: that he was able to do this on an outpatient
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  Speaker 1: and not completely underdoctor's care and supervision. Yeah, not bed
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  Speaker 1: bedridden for a year. He was walking in and out
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  Speaker 1: of the hospital. He was just living his life. You know,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: he just wasn't eating this whole time. And it is
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: astounding to the point where he's it's basically a medical mystery,
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  Speaker 1: and it's not so much like Angus Barbieri was particularly
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: special well, Angus Barbieri points out, is how little we
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: understand how the human body in general functions, and how
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: much less we understand how it functions among individuals. They
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: just have no idea how he did this. We just
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: know that he did it because it's documented. There was
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: a um plenty of newspaper stories after he broke the
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: fast and news news came out. But his doctors also
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: documented it scientifically and released it as an an article
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: in the Postgraduate Medical Journal in And it's only like
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: ten ten pages, maybe a little longer, but it's a
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  Speaker 1: really interesting read about, you know what, detailing this this
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: process that this guy went through and what what his
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: body was doing at the time. Alright, so let's take
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: a quick break and during the the message break, everyone
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: try and think of what he did not do besides
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: eat as well. Very often that was very awkwardly worded.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: And we'll give you the answer right after this. M Okay,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: so he's not eating much anything. A little teaser question
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  Speaker 1: before the break on what else he was not doing.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: And if you guessed poop, you're correct. What did they get? Chuck?
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  Speaker 1: They get? They get nothing they have had on the
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: back for me virtually through the air waves. Uh, he
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: went between generally between like forty and fifty days without pooping. Um,
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  Speaker 1: so he did poop occasionally, And I don't even know
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  Speaker 1: what that would have been. Just they say, they say
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  Speaker 1: in this body, yes, they say in the in the
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: study that it was basically just like cell detritus, cell deletrious.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: You've mentioned that. Uh, yeah, I don't cellular poop. I guess, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: but I don't know if it'd be any better or worse.
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  Speaker 1: It'd be no more offensive than warm biscuits. I would think,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: nice skull back, thank you, thank you. But he he
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: did poop, but he's really that's like bottom of the
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  Speaker 1: barrel poop. But I mean that's a lot of dead
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  Speaker 1: cells to form like a visible poop. Even if it
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: was just one little poop, you know, that's a lot
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: of dead, dead cells that he was getting rid of.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess he only pooped probably like what seven, eight,
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  Speaker 1: eight or nine times? Yeah, for this whole year. Not bad,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: not bad. He had a clean fannie the whole time.
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  Speaker 1: So oh, this is for our friends in the UK,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: so you shouldn't say, yeah, that's right. He had a
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: clean rectum, a clean vomit. Isn't that the universal name?
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  Speaker 1: I think? So? Okay. So at the end of this
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  Speaker 1: whole thing, he got down to that ideal weight of
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty pounds um if you think, well, sure,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: but then he starts eating and puts it all back on.
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  Speaker 1: Not not so. Five years later he just weighed one
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: not too bad at all when he came back from
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: his fast. And this is very important. I was waiting
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: tables in Arizona one time and a woman, oh yeah,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: fell over in the restaurant. And I think this was
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: during the fasting episode. I told the story, and an
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: ambulance came and we were like, what happened? Her friends like,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: she fasted for a week and then celebrated by eating
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: steak and drinking wine. Yeah, it's like, that's not how
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: you do it. You gotta you gotta take baby steps.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: And that's he did. He broke his fast with a
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: breakfast of boiled egg, a slice of bread with butter,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: and then that black coffee that he had been drinking before.
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  Speaker 1: He ate that. He he said that I forgot what
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: food even tastes like, and afterwards said, you know, I
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: feel a little full, but I enjoyed it and it
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: went down. Okay, yeah, and so again, like like, his
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: doctors were testing him on a pretty much a daily basis.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: You're intest blood tests and he um. They were keeping
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: track of like things like his blood glucoast level, and
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: that's a really good indicator. You can't really fake a
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: blood glucoast level. If you eat something, it's gonna show
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: up on a daily test. And one of the reasons
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: why Angus Barbieria is this medical marvel is that he
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: was walking around with a blood clue blood glucoast level
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: of thirty. If you are eating normally, your blood glucoast
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: level is about one forty. And if you fast overnight,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: like say you don't eat anything after five or something
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: like that, the next morning when you're tested, you have
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: about a seventy. This guy was walking around with the
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  Speaker 1: thirty and the fact that he wasn't just feigning constantly
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  Speaker 1: is really impressive. But the thing that gets me chuck
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: is the hyper calcemia. That's right, as expected, he developed
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: hyper calcemia, which is very high, higher than usual at
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  Speaker 1: least amounts of calcium in the blood, and he's peeing
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: out a lot of calcium or you know, higher than
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: normal amounts of calcium in his key. So the fact
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: that he had a lot of extra calcium, people like,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: what's going on here, and they think it's because he
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: was losing so much weight so fast that his bones
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  Speaker 1: knew that they didn't need to carry that kind of
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  Speaker 1: weight anymore, and they started dissolving. He lost so much
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: weight he should skeleton too. That's amazing. It is amazing,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: so much weight that the Guinness Book of World's Records
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: in one before they decided it's probably not good to
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: encourage world records for fast sting. Yeah. They he was
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: the last one to be I guess awarded um, you
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: know by the Guinness Book for for that kind of notoriety.
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  Speaker 1: And then after that they said due to its specialist
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: nature and not due to the sheer danger, Uh, we're
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: not gonna open this up for any other people. There
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: is one other Guinness record about eating um that's even
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: longer than Angus Barbieri's um. The world record holder for
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: a hunger strike. Angus didn't eat for three d eighty
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: two days. A guy named Dennis Glor Goodwin didn't eat
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  Speaker 1: for three d and eighty five days. So he went
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: three three more days without eating before he was force
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  Speaker 1: fed through a tube. He was protesting his innocence about
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: a charge of rape. I saw no follow up. No,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: he was actually guilty. He was actually innocent. Whatever became
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: of him, The only mention I can find of him
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: is that he didn't eat for three hundred and eighty
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: five days. Yeah, and I love that. On day three
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: eighty five, they're like, we've had enough, right, right, can
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: force feeds you through a tube? They didn't do that
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  Speaker 1: on day forty or sixty or two or three. Really,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: they're like, all right, fine, you you got the record,
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  Speaker 1: Now stop showing off. We're gonna force feed you. Uh.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: And so as you know, if you listen to our
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: fasting episode, UM, fasting is is not a good way
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: to lose weight. It's very extreme. It can be deadly.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: UM Like, you can literally drop dead of of what
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: they just called sudden death UM at like the six
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: or seven week mark or before, depending on how much
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: you weigh. If you're skinny, you can enter that danger
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  Speaker 1: zone really fast and just be sitting at your desk,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: feel a little faint, and then you're gone, right, And
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: it's because your body eventually goes through fat, and even
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: if you still have some fat left, it starts eating
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: other things too, like muscle. Well, it turns out that
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: your heart is made of muscle, and eventually your heart
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: tissue might start getting eaten by your body, and that's
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: not good for your heart. It can kill you. And
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: then there's also another danger to like that lady that
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: that um fainted from eating steak and wine after fasting
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: for a week. There's a real issue called refeeding chuck.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: And it's like that's how I don't want to say
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of people people have died. They survived the fast,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: but when they started eating food, they actually died as
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: a result of it. Food overdose. Yeah, basically you get
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: an overdose of nutrients. It's and like, we don't understand
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: how that works or how to refeed somebody which makes
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: long extended fast over like something like forty days from
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: what I've seen UM, which seems really biblical if you
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: ask me, it doesn't sound scientific. Basically that UM, anything
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: over that period is is very very very dangerous because
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: after like six eight weeks you start to enter a
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: danger zone. Don't do it, folks, if you're getta fast
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: just keep it in a couple of days. Sure, that's
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: my advice. But even that, let's just c o a
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: chuck No doctor, don't listen to Chuck No eat responsibly.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: That's what Dr Chuck says. There you, uh well, thanks
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: a lot for joining us here on short stuff. We
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: hope you were thrilled and amazed, maybe even a little amused.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: If not, we'll try again next time. Stuff you Should
• 12:14
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• 12:17
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