Starvation

Starving Russian girl during the Russian famine of 1921

The following are some of the symptoms of starvation:

Starved Vietnamese man, who was deprived of food in a Viet Cong prison camp. Note the rib cage showing, a clear sign of starvation.

Starvation is an imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure. The body expends more energy than it takes in. This imbalance can arise from one or more medical conditions or circumstantial situations, which can include:

Medical reasons

• Anorexia nervosa
• Bulimia nervosa
• Eating disorder, not otherwise specified
• Celiac disease
• Coma
• Major depressive disorder
• Diabetes mellitus
• Digestive disease
• Constant vomiting

Circumstantial causes

• Child, elder, or dependant abuse
• Famine for any reason, such as political strife and war[7][8]
• Hunger striking
• Excessive fasting
• Poverty

With a typical high-carbohydrate diet, the human body relies on free blood glucose as its primary energy source. Glucose can be obtained directly from dietary sugars and by the breakdown of other carbohydrates. In the absence of dietary sugars and carbohydrates, glucose is obtained from the breakdown of stored glycogen. Glycogen is a readily-accessible storage form of glucose, stored in notable quantities in the liver and skeletal muscle.

After the exhaustion of the glycogen reserve, and for the next 2–3 days, fatty acids become the principal metabolic fuel. At first, the brain continues to use glucose. If a non-brain tissue is using fatty acids as its metabolic fuel, the use of glucose in the same tissue is switched off. Thus, when fatty acids are being broken down for energy, all of the remaining glucose is made available for use by the brain.

After 2 or 3 days of fasting, the liver begins to synthesize ketone bodies from precursors obtained from fatty acid breakdown. The brain uses these ketone bodies as fuel, thus cutting its requirement for glucose. After fasting for 3 days, the brain gets 30% of its energy from ketone bodies. After 4 days, this may increase to 70% or more.[9] Thus, the production of ketone bodies cuts the brain's glucose requirement from 80 g per day to 30 g per day, about 35% of normal, with 65% derived from ketone bodies. But of the brain's remaining 30 g requirement, 20 g per day can be produced by the liver from glycerol (itself a product of fat breakdown). This still leaves a deficit of about 10 g of glucose per day that must be supplied from another source; this other source will be the body's own proteins.

After exhaustion of fat stores, the cells in the body begin to break down protein. This releases alanine and lactate produced from pyruvate, which can be converted into glucose by the liver. Since much of human muscle mass is protein, this phenomenon is responsible for the wasting away of muscle mass seen in starvation. However, the body is able to choose which cells will break down protein and which will not. About 2–3 g of protein has to be broken down to synthesize 1 g of glucose; about 20–30 g of protein is broken down each day to make 10 g of glucose to keep the brain alive. However, this number may decrease the longer the fasting period is continued, in order to conserve protein.

Starvation ensues when the fat reserves are completely exhausted and protein is the only fuel source available to the body. Thus, after periods of starvation, the loss of body protein affects the function of important organs, and death results, even if there are still fat reserves left. In a leaner person, the fat reserves are depleted faster, and the protein, sooner, therefore death occurs sooner.) Ultimately, the cause of death is in general cardiac arrhythmia or cardiac arrest, brought on by tissue degradation and electrolyte imbalances. Things like metabolic acidosis may also kill starving people.[10]

Starvation can be caused by factors beyond the control of the individual. The Rome Declaration on World Food Security outlines several policies aimed at increasing food security[11] and, consequently, preventing starvation. These include:

• Poverty reduction
• Prevention of wars and political instability
• Food aid[12]
• Agricultural sustainability
• Reduction of economic inequality

Supporting farmers in areas of food insecurity through such measures as free or subsidized fertilizers and seeds increases food harvest and reduces food prices.[13]

Patients that suffer from starvation can be treated, but this must be done cautiously to avoid refeeding syndrome.[14] Rest and warmth must be provided and maintained. Small sips of water mixed with glucose should be given in regular intervals. Fruit juices can also be given. Later, food can be given gradually in small quantities. The quantity of food can be increased over time. Proteins may be administered intravenously to raise the level of serum proteins.[15] For worse situations, hospice care and opioid medications can be used.

Percentage of population suffering from hunger, World Food Programme, 2020.

  < 2,5%

  < 5,0%

  5,0–14,9%

  15,0–24,9%

  25,0–34,9%

  > 35,0%

  No data

According to estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization there were 925 million under- or malnourished people in the world in 2010.[16] This was a decrease from an estimate of roughly 1 billion malnourished people in 2009.[17] In 2007, 923 million people were reported as being undernourished, an increase of 80 million since 1990–92.[18] An estimated 820 million people did not have enough to eat in 2018, up from 811 million in the previous year, which is the third year of increase in a row.[19]

As the definitions of starving and malnourished people are different, the number of starving people is different from that of malnourished. Generally, far fewer people are starving, than are malnourished.

The proportion of malnourished and of starving people in the world has been more or less continually decreasing for at least several centuries.[20] This is due to an increasing supply of food and to overall gains in economic efficiency. In 40 years, the proportion of malnourished people in the developing world has been more than halved. The proportion of starving people has decreased even faster.

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Women of the Caesars

The starving Livilla refusing food.
From a drawing by André Castagne

Historically, starvation has been used as a death sentence. From the beginning of civilization to the Middle Ages, people were immured, and died for want of food.

In ancient Greco-Roman societies, starvation was sometimes used to dispose of guilty upper-class citizens, especially erring female members of patrician families. In the year 31, Livilla, the niece and daughter-in-law of Tiberius, was discreetly starved to death by her mother for her adulterous relationship with Sejanus and for her complicity in the murder of her own husband: Drusus the Younger.

Another daughter-in-law of Tiberius, named Agrippina the Elder (a granddaughter of Augustus and the mother of Caligula), also died of starvation, in 33 AD, however, it is unclear if her starvation was self-inflicted.

A son and daughter of Agrippina were also executed by starvation for political reasons; Drusus Caesar, her second son, was put in prison in 33 AD, and starved to death by orders of Tiberius (he managed to stay alive for nine days by chewing the stuffing of his bed); Agrippina's youngest daughter, Julia Livilla, was exiled on an island in 41 by her uncle, Emperor Claudius, and her death by starvation was arranged by the empress Messalina.

It is also possible that Vestal Virgins were starved when found guilty of breaking their vows of celibacy.

Ugolino della Gherardesca, his sons, and other members of his family were immured in the Muda, a tower of Pisa, and starved to death in the thirteenth century. Dante, his contemporary, wrote about Gherardesca in his masterpiece The Divine Comedy.

In Sweden in 1317, King Birger of Sweden imprisoned his two brothers for a coup they had staged several years earlier (Nyköping Banquet). According to legend they died of starvation a few weeks later, since their brother had thrown the prison key in the castle moat.

In Cornwall in the UK in 1671, John Trehenban from St Columb Major was condemned to be starved to death in a cage at Castle An Dinas for the murder of two girls.

The Makah, a Native American tribe inhabiting the Pacific Northwest near the modern border of Canada and the United States, practiced death by starvation as a punishment for slaves.[23]

Buchenwald inmates, 16 April 1945 when camp was liberated

Many of the prisoners died in the Nazi concentration camps through deliberate maltreatment, disease, starvation, and overwork, or were executed as unfit for labor. Many occupants of ghettos in eastern Europe also starved to death, most notoriously in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland. Prisoners were transported in inhumane conditions by rail freight cars, in which many died before reaching their destination. The prisoners were confined to the cattle cars for days or even weeks, with little or no food or water. Many died of dehydration in the intense heat of summer or froze to death in winter. Nazi concentration camps in Europe from 1933 to 1945 deliberately underfed prisoners, who were at the same time forced to perform heavy labour. Their diet was restricted to watery vegetable soup and a little bread, with little to no dietary fats, proteins or other essential nutrients. Such treatment led to loss of body tissues, and when prisoners became skeletal, the so-called Muselmann were murdered by gas or bullets when examined by camp doctors.

Maximilian Kolbe, on a West German postage stamp, marked Auschwitz

Starvation was also used as a punishment where victims were locked into a small cell until dead, a process which could take many days. Saint Maximilian Kolbe, a martyred Polish friar, underwent a sentence of starvation in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1941. Ten prisoners had been condemned to death by starvation in the wake of a successful escape from the camp. Kolbe volunteered to take the place of a man with a wife and children. After two weeks of starvation, Kolbe and three other inmates remained alive; they were then executed with injections of phenol.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Starvation.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Starvation

• Online books, and library resources in your library and in other libraries about Starvation
• U.N. Chief: Hunger Kills 17,000 Kids Daily - by CNN
• Wilson, DE; Zeikus, R; Chan, IF (Apr 1987). "Relationship of organ lipoprotein lipase activity and ketonuria to hypertriglyceridemia in starved and streptozocin-induced diabetic rats". Diabetes. 36 (4): 485–90. doi:10.2337/diabetes.36.4.485. PMID 3817303.
• Swaner, JC; Connor, WE (Aug 1975). "Hypercholesterolemia of total starvation: its mechanism via tissue mobilization of cholesterol". The American Journal of Physiology. 229 (2): 365–9. doi:10.1152/ajplegacy.1975.229.2.365. PMID 169705.