Ever been seriously injured, lost a lot of blood, that sort of thing?
Do you remember how hungry you were, later?
Those of you who reject the notion of eating yourself seem to be doing the same thing. You are assuming the worst case scenario. You assume that there will be much hemorrhaging, much stress, etc.
The question isn’t whether self consumption would be a pleasant thing to do but is more whether it would be possible in order to survive.
Would you rather be a post amputation patient preparing to eat a ribeye steak or would you rather be a starving man assured of an imminent death?
It seems to me that starving would be preferable only if the stress and trauma of self-amputation increased the rate of
starvation by increasing cellular autophagy.
I wonder how many calories can be burned by a sedentary person under a lot of stress.
i’m pretty sure QtM is a real MD.
Anyway, like QtM said, and this is what i have read in my college courses as well, things like infection or wound healing cause the body to increase its metabolism. Starvation slows the metabolism. in a starvation situation you want your metabolism as slow as possible. Cutting off a limb would increase your metabolic rate due to the guaranteed infection and the work your body would have to do to repair itself while if you just starve your metabolic rate will slow dramatically.
You eat that leg already through more efficient natural processes.
It takes more calories to digest food through your alimentary canal than it does to generate the nourishment from the natural processes that occur when you go w/o food. Whatever calories are in your leg are better used by the natural more efficient processes. Digesting it through your alimentary canal is adding an unnecessary expenditure of calories.
Leg cutting off method expends calories in these ways-
burns calories cutting
burns calories digesting
burns calories healing
“Eating” leg through naturally occurring processes burns calories this way-
breaking down and redistributing the elements of the leg
The parts of the leg that’re broken down through natural processes won’t have to be supported anymore than the leg that you cut off. You’re just are able to allocate a higher percentage of those calories to your survival rather than to the processes of cutting, digesting and healing.
IIRC, humans can actually live much, much longer than a week and “a couple of days” w/o food.
What you’re missing here is that this is a zero-sum game. ** do not have more calories available to you because you cut your leg off. It’s the exact same number of calories.** Cutting it off and eating it just adds a greater expenditure of calories.
Both people in this scenario have the same number of calories available to them. The one who cuts off his leg just chooses to use his more quickly and for things other than merely surviving.
Cutting it off makes things worse. The guy who cuts his leg off dies sooner from starvation because he expends his supply of calories faster than the guy who allows Mother Nature to do her work.
Damn!
Actually, isn’t that the principle behind the diet?
Peace,
mangeorge
Ummm…make that
**You do not have more calories available to you because you cut your leg off. It’s the exact same number of calories. **
I seem to remember that the Irish protester, Bobby Sands (I think that was his name), lived somewhere around forty-three days after he began his hunger strike. More recently, David Blaine spent about a month in his foodless box.
On a related note, I believe there’s a fair bit of controversy over drinking urine. Anyone got an opinion on that one?
Heck, a patient of mine went on a 54 day hunger strike earlier this year. He survived it, but he’s got right ventricular failure now.
Drinking urine is ok up to the point that the urine is too concentrated and requires more body fluid to process it than it provides.
Starvation is a catabolic state. During catabolism, the body breaks down proteins into amino acids, and the gut has greater difficulty digesting food at all.
Surgery causes a catabolic state in anyone who wasn’t already in one. Doing surgery on someone in a catabolic state is risky to begin with. Autosurgery would be even dicier. Any tissue removed and then consumed would not be digested well if at all. As SimonX so ably pointed out, it’s far easier to leave it on, and let the body dismantle parts of it for fuel. It does so in such a way that the parts may be rebuilt, with proper support.
And I’ll let the regular GQ dopers decide which posters here are more credible.
This is true. People can live two to three months without food. This fact alone makes eating yourself impractical. You really wouldn’t be increasing your chances for survival very much over that period of time. I didn’t realize you could live so long without food.
I change my mind. Don’t eat yourself. It’s a bad idea.
P.S. QtM has a history, a reputation, and has demonstrated numerous times that he knows what he is talking about w.r.t. medical matters. FWIW he has my full faith and credit in his field.
to repeat the advice from that most famous of text adventures, Zork, “Autocannibalism is not the answer”.
While others run about, and scream, and shout, Ex Machina wonders whether it’s a good idea to practice yogic autoeroticism?
-It’s not 
People have gone more than a year without food. This came up in a thread the other week regarding somebody in India who claims to have gone without food or water for decades.
On a slightly different tack, I am impressed that your dinner guests were able to carry on a spirited conversation in this topic. I may be one of those poor schmick who says they’re a doctor on the internet (in my defense I say it everywhere else, too, including at NEJM meetings, so if I’m delusional, I’m at least consistent) but I wonder if I could wrangle a dinner invitation. I’m a mean cook.
Well, actually, not “mean” at all, by the standard you proposed, but I can cook.
Consider me very, very sceptical. Even with a constant input of oral glucose solution huger strikers are in a bad way after less than two months. You wouldn’t have a credible reference to this person who has gone a year without food would you?
And I believe that you are missing the point. A leg contains a lot of large muscles and nerves. Muscles and nerves both chew energy non stop. Asleep or awake they are chewing your body’s energy reserves. Once the limb is severed this energy expenditure ceases.
I believe this is Ex Machina’s point. It’s not that you have more calories gross, it’s that the calories you do have are now in a form that can be stored at no energetic cost. If the limb stays on for three months and chews one calorie/ minute that is 130, 000 calories that you have lost.
Obviously if the leg comes off shortly into the fast you will have more net calories than if it stayed on.
I’m not saying this is practical because I agree with QtM. Healing is an expensive process and the energy used would probably exceed the energy saved. However that does not invalidate Ex Machina’s point that a starving man will get more net calories from a steak than he will from his leg, even if the steak was once his leg.
Perhaps one may start with boogers for a tasty hors d’oeuvre.
I believe this is the crux of the question. If you can show that the nutritional or caloric needs of the remaining body after amputation would be greater (from amputation to the point of fatal starvation), due to stress and healing, than the benefit of having a store of fresh meat, then life could not be extended. But if the nutritional value, less the physiological requirements of healing etc. is a net gain, then cut away.
There are probably factors to be considered, such as the time after starvation begins, the rate of metabolism, etc. which could be considered to come to a pretty good approximation, by someone who has a good knowledge of physiological processes, as to whether x number of calories over y period of time at z rate of metabolism plus stress factors a,b,c would increase or decrease life span.
As for people who claim to be doctors: it makes no sense to claim to be a doctor if anybody can do so. I may be a doctor. But you have know way of knowing it. If you know medical facts then state them and let them stand on there own merit. It adds nothing to the statement to say “…and I know this to be true because I am a doctor.”
Some people are idiots pretending to be doctors; well, maybe I am a doctor pretending to be an idiot.
I hope the tone of this post doesn’t come across the wrong way. I am not calling specific people dishonest. I am just saying that there is nothing added to information in terms of credibility by adding the assertion of expert credibility.
Think of this post as a test of intellectual honesty. It is simply a logical observation with no rancor intended. If your reaction is “Well, I guess he is right.” then you are ok. But if you are feeling a pique of indignation welling inside then something is wrong.
Again, if you are a doctor, feel free to claim that you are. But understand that it can’t add or detract from your position if the fact of your profession isn’t 100 percent apparent.
I do believe that Stephen King researched the story-he asked his neighbor, a retired physician as well if it would be possible.
(from the end notes in Skeleton Crew)
You already have access to the calories contained in you calf without cutting it off.
There are no additional calories to be gained by eating it opposed letting your body break it down.
The only question is about how you’re going to access those calories.
You body comes with a method of accessing those calories that doesn’t require actions by the digestive tract, healing and wounds. You’d already be “eating” your leg, and whatever other appropriate parts of your body through these processes.
The crux of the biscuit is what level of efficiency you care to use in accessing these calories.
All that you get to choose is how quickly you burn these calories.