 | Starvation: Encyclopedia - Starvation
Starvation
Starvation is a severe reduction in vitamin, nutrient, and energy intake, and is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation (in excess of 1-2 months) causes permanent organ damage and may eventually result in death.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, more than 25,000 people die of starvation every day, more than 800 million people are chronically undernourished. On average, every five seconds a child dies from starvation.
Starvation - Symptoms
Starved individuals lose substantial fat and muscle mass as the body turns to these tissues for energy. The skin's pale and dry appearance accompanies this emaciation.
Vitamin deficiency is common, often resulting in anemia, beriberi, pellagra, and scurvy. These diseases collectively may cause diarrhea, skin rashes, edema, and heart failure. Individuals are often irritable, fatigued, and lethargic as a result.
Anorexia, Cachexia, Dehydration, Famine, Fasting, Hunger, Kwashiorkor, Marasmus, Hunger strike
Starvation - Treatment
Starvation is usually treated by slowly increasing food intake until no nutrient deficiencies remain. By this time, the diet of a recovering individual should consist of 5,000 calories and twice the Recommended Dietary Allowance of nutrients. Starvation is a result of malnutrition.
Starvation - Capital punishment
Starvation has always been a means to carry a death sentence. From the beginning of civilization through to the Middle Ages people were immured and starved to death.
Rajmund Kolbe, a Polish friar, offered his life to save another inmate sentenced to death in the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was starved along with another nine inmates. After two weeks of starvation he and three other inmates were still alive and executed with injections of phenol.
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.
See also
- Anorexia
- Cachexia
- Dehydration
- Famine
- Fasting
- Hunger
- Kwashiorkor
- Marasmus
- Hunger strike
Other related archivesAnorexia, Auschwitz concentration camp, Cachexia, Dante, Dehydration, Divine Comedy, Famine, Fasting, Food and Agriculture Organization, Hunger, Hunger strike, Kwashiorkor, Marasmus, Muda, Pisa, Rajmund Kolbe, Recommended Dietary Allowance, Ugolino della Gherardesca, United Nations, anemia, beriberi, calories, death, diarrhea, edema, emaciation, energy, fat, fatigued, heart failure, humans, irritable, lethargic, malnutrition, muscle, nutrient, organ, pellagra, phenol, scurvy, skin, skin rashes, thirteenth century, vitamin
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Starvation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
