I don’t think the “several decades” claim can really be addressed without more information but what about ten days without water? Is it possible that he found some way to hide water and consume it without being seen by the observers. Is it possible that the doctors are involved in some elaborate hoax?
I would normally also question the source of the story but the BBC is not World Net Daily or the Weekly World Reader.
So what’s going on here? Is this fakir a faker or does this offer evidence that Hindu Goddesses exist?
I think that through advanced yoga techniques, people can slow their metabolism to where they can go longer without food or water. I also think it is possible he had SOME water either with or without the knowledge of the doctors. Let’s see him go another 10 days.
Let’s say he went that long without urinating or defecating. What about the fluid lost by breathing and sweating? I’ve been camping before and woke in a pool of water from my own breath for just having a poorly ventilated tent.
I remember hearing about the “rule of 3s” on CSI a few weeks ago. I don’t remember all of them, but the last two were: 3 days without water; 3 minutes without air. So 10 days w/o water seems, well, miraculous. Note that the article says he didn’t “consume anything”, though. Normally one talks about consuming food, not water.
Is it also possible that this guy is capable of lowering his metabolism? Practitioners of meditation have been shown to be able to lower their pulse rate and even their body tempurature. This might extend the timeframe that one can go w/o food.
I’d want to make sure the doctors or other attendants (can’t believe he had a doctor present at all times) were not in collusion.
Judging from the article, it appears that the physicians in Ahmedabad did not appear to consult with any experts in the art of deception (magicians). That is unfortunate.
He did get to rinse his mouth out with water, then spit it out. After it was measured to be sure none was actually consumed.
I believe a person could through a lifetime of rigorous and repeated fasting, train his body to survive for weeks without food and water. It is accepted scientifically that most people can go for several days, weeks even without food, but only a few days without water. If a person were to extend this period each time they fasted. After a lifetime of doing this, ten days doesn’t sound impossible.
I don’t know what the man’s medical malformity has to do with his ability but HE seems to think it assists him.
Then again, perhaps he has achieved NIRVANA.
Ugh! I know saying something is false because of the source is a fallacy and all… But CSI frequently just makes stuff up. It’s still entertaining, though.
How long you can go without water depends on how much water you’re excreting. E.g., are you in an arid hot desert or a mild subtropical climate? How hard are you excerting yourself? Did you do something really stupid, like drink seawater? Etc.
Go Ask Alice, a service of Columbia University that I trust, says a person can go for 10 days in moderate weather:
Even if someone could thoretically survive ten days without water they would still be dehydrated and probably comatose by the end of it. This fakir dude was not dehydrated and showed no ill effects at all. He was getting water somehow, the question is how.
Really, the question is, what kind of doctors would engage an experiment like this, measuring water, making sure a man doesn’t eat… doesn’t strike me as being of the highest medical ethics.
Well, assuming he is not faking this (the 10-day streak, at least), there are two possibilities which avoid introducing unnessecary complexity:
He is very experienced in fasting in food and water, and therefore is able to survive this. I am not sure if the body can adapt yourself to this. But even if it cannot, there is this:
Different people can go different times without food and water. Assume for this scenario this is fixed and cannot change even if you “train” yourself. The fakir previously fasted in the wilderness for at least 10 days, and did not die. Therefore, he is one of the people who can survive for 10 days…evolution in action
Isn’t this guy basically claiming to be a human perpetual motion machine? Note that they said that in the 10 days he was there that he lost weight, while he claims not to have eaten in “several decades”. I guess he could’ve been really fat to begin with, but it doesn’t sound legit to me.
I say check him for a Camelback with the tube running through his beard.
Look, I’m skeptical about this event as well, but let’s get real. You can’t debunk this alleged miracle, simply by pointing out alternate explanations. An alternate explanation is just that, and nothing more. It does not a debunking make.
As I remember from somewhere, a human expends energy of about 1200 kilocalories a day in just staying alive. Depending on your initial fat content, you can live on that energy for some time. I don’t think 10 days is anything special but decades would seem to violate thermodynamic principles.
And debunking such stories by remote control is impossible. We would have to have the individual under our control with no hospital personnel involved. And, as has been pointed out, it would be a highly unethical and illegal experiment. The only proof would be when we let the guy die from dehydration and that would be murder of one kind or another.
