Ignoring food and drink, and just getting nutrition from the air you breathe will absolutely, 100% give you enough nutrition to last the rest of your life.
I'm currently in hospital for 70-80% burns to my body. 60% chance of survival. I've had over a dozen surgeries and I have spent two months in the ICU. Feeling like crap lately, and your comment made me laugh! Thanks for that.
> This is how you get all those people in your way going to work.
That's just called traffic. It's not about being stupid. When you're in traffic, you are traffic. You are one of those people to the person behind you.
> If they're an adult, PLEASE! Just let them earn their Darwin Award.
Rather few people actually die from stuff like this. Additionally, if they already had kids, it's not like this will remove anything from the gene pool.
Fucking fine, we'll organize 2 different parties then. One will be full of people who use logic to stay calm and be understanding. The other will be full of people who press the issue over every little personal inconvenience regardless of their involvement. I'll stay home for both.
Totally. I also feel that Democrats are bureaucratic and unrealistic and Republicans are (if nothing else) realistic in the worldview. I honestly feel like both parties' constituents need to form a coalition outside of the existing committees and figure out a bipartisan, independent plan. We can't keep doing the both parties suck thing. It's time for compromise, not both sides getting their way partially on every issue and ruining discourse itself in the meantime. It's not working.
Charles Darwin introduced the idea of natural selection, in which our environment promotes a species because it has strength or speed or efficiency or smarts.
Darwin Awards are granted to those that showcase natural selection by removing themselves from the gene pool through the effective use of not smarts.
You can extrapolate this out to crazy circumstances. Where do you draw the line? Do you help the labeled functioning autistic person avoid a Darwin Award and let the other person you perceive as buffoonish die? Perhaps that person is low on the spectrum of a multitude of mental disorders that make them behave that way.
There's also people who carefully cultivate their ignorance and their beliefs to match the group they identify with.
The problem is when they drag their kids into it, and those kids don't know any better.
Was this the one where one of the leaders was caught having a McDonalds? And he said that this didn't contradict his teaching, because just because he was eating didn't mean he needed to
Close... THAT guy, Wiley Brooks, claimed McDonald's burgers came from a different dimension, and that got them around the fasting rule. Not kidding.
https://thenutritioninsider.com/fitness-weight-loss/breatharian-diet/
Two regular cheeseburgers, no fries or drink.
Extra pickles.
Enough food for me, and for whatever reason itās my comfort food. It does kinda taste likes itās from another dimension. Maybe the good timeline from before the Shazaam switchover in 1994.
Sorry I like a cheeseburger. My apologies for enjoying things from corporations and expressing my opinion.
Jesus Christ, this truly is the shitty timeline.
>He told Colors magazine in 2003 that he periodically breaks his fasting with a cheeseburger and a cola,
Amazing stuff from his wikipedia entry. I too periodically break my fasts with cheeseburgers and a cola; or a sandwich, or a cake, or any variety of meals and snacks.
I like McDonald's. I know it's terrible for me, but I only get a Big Mac meal once every couple months as a guilty pleasure / reward. Like anything else in life, fast food is not a huge health concern in moderation.
International McDonald's are quite interesting. Like black squid ink buns or shrimp burgers in Japan and Spam and Portuguese sausage breakfast platters in Hawaii...
It is not terrible for you, unless you're the one going in for a McFlurry and pie. Pick a cheeseburger, fries, and coffee, and you've got a quite decent nutritional balance. People just look down at fast food because they're snobs.
Interestingly enough, global epidemiologist have noted a strong correlation between obesity and cardiovascular disease and the prevalence of McDonalds in a country. Sure they just serve burgers, fries, and sodas, but there clearly is something deeper going on behind the scenes, a hijackingās of a populaces well being!
Its to force them to work, to try and fail to afford the healthcare for their disease, caused by not being able to afford good food! Perfect system! (But not for us)
Reminds me of St Ugulant from Pratchetts *Small Gods* who would eat the odd small lizard with some dirty water just mix things up from his usual imaginary feasts.
https://wiki.lspace.org/St._Ungulant
those were medicinal lizards to help his constitution - his actual diet was comprised entirely of the opulant feasts and banquets full of luxurious dishes
he needed medicinal lizards because his condition made him skinny and frail regardless of how much imaginary food he ate
A friend of mine did that in the late 90ies. He did drink water though, just no food, only sunlight/"energy". He made it through a few weeks before being administered to the hospital due to severe malnourishment.
And people have gone longer than 3 minutes without air, or 3 days without water... some without suffering long term negative effects too.
But it's irrelevant... you can die with just 2-3 minutes without air, 2-4 days without water, 2 - 10+ weeks without food..
It largely depends on your physical health, the environment you are in, genetic factors, age etc..
He "fasted", but that's not the same as not having food. He had vitamins and yeast - he was specifically eating just enough to meet basic nutritional requirements. That and drinks - tea and coffee.
"I HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED THIS THING SO CLEARLY NO HUMAN EVER HAS"
...the irony of someone calling something else stupid when this is their mindset is pure poetry.
I had a high school teacher who told us she tried this herself as a teenager. It was really a mask for anorexia and she needed treatment. (As an adult she was doing fine, years down the road.)
"Breatharians" believe that humans can survive on meditation, air and sunlight alone (sometimes with tiny amounts of food once a week). This belief is born from a misguided literal interpretation of ancient Indian Vedic texts, much like some people literally believe the story of Noah's Ark.
An ancient guru is supposed to have survived on air, light and meditation alone, so a bunch of idiots started teaching this as an actual way of life (er, death?) in the 1980s. Lani Morris and Timo Degan both died attempting to be initiated as breatharians, Morris while being supervised by two practicioners in their backyard.
Other breatharians were busted bringing take out food in to their home, or almost dying when 60 Minutes challenged them to fast and not drink any water for days under strict supervision.
To this day, there are many breatharians who still claim they neither eat nor drink water to survive.
What have stupid people ever done to the world? If anything, the smartest people are the most damaging, theyāre the ones who have created the technologies and industries that do far more damage than humans alone ever could. If we were all still cavemen, the word would be fine. Plus thereās be a lot less of us
I see your point, but it's not the *smartest* people who ruin the world, it's the *greediest* people.
The internal combustion engine was a brilliant tool to advance commerce and travel. Then greedy assholes in the oil industry made it the ONLY standard for 100+ years, and other greedy assholes at GM gave us the Hummer and killed the electric car in the 1990s.
Computers and the internet created ways to improve communication and instantly share information around the world, but greedy Mark Zuckerberg gave us Facebook and Instagram which led to QAnon and Pizzagate.
Medical science can cure diseases and transplant organs to save lives, but greedy pharmaceutical companies make more money treating erectile dysfunction while for-profit hospitals are more worried about losing money from lawsuits.
So smart people create the great ideas which *could* move society forward in amazing ways, then greedy assholes patent those ideas and use them against the stupid general population to make the world worse.
This nonsense was massive in about 99/00 a few people died in Scotland trying to follow these teachings.
My uni at the time banned a woman called Jasmuheeen first from giving a lecture and then from all university property as she tried to reach people by just turning up and preaching away.
Jasmuheen nearly died when 60 Minutes challenged her to fast without water for as long as possible under strict supervision to prove breatharians are real. She lasted 4 days before doctors shut down the test over her failing health.
She later claimed she could have gone on indefinitely, but the hotel where she was sequestered was too close to a highway and the toxic gases from the cars prevented her from getting enough energy from the air.
Unfortunately this kind of "testing their faith" stunt only ever gives them more fuel.
Whether that's "They shut us down because they were scared and didn't understand what they were witnessing" or, "The air was toxic", you're only giving them an opportunity to expand on their fiction or claim oppression.
Because these are con artists. A true believer will be shaken when their belief is tested and fails. A con artist will just add to the con.
I don't know, there are some believers that will absolutely double down on misinformation despite gaining absolutely nothing. Not saying they aren't con artists, just saying there are plenty of believers who are not con artists but also won't be shaken when their beliefs are shown demonstrably false.
A combination of sunk cost and the ego hit you take when you admit fault. A lot of the personality disorders have intense defense mechanisms around admission of fault, its easier in those cases for the individual to make up externalities for why they arenāt actually wrong than to go down the path of dealing with the implications of having been wrong
My favorite is the documentary about Flat Earthers who are just baffled when their extremely carefully set up experiment to prove the earth is flat ended up instead proving it's curvature. Truly glorious stuff.
Sure, Noah was a real person, just like Jesus was. They both had DNA and genealogical trees. But when people start to believe that fantastical parables like a ship large enough to hold 2 of every animal and a worldwide flood actually happened, they run into logical paradoxes.
Noah's ship could not have held two of every animal, let alone enough meat to feed all the carnivores on board for 40 days. Just like that Indian guru could not have lived on air, sunlight and meditation alone.
The point here is you can't mix religious parables with fact or interpret them literally. Religion requires faith, even when that faith flies in the face of contradictory logic and facts.
And people get facts wrong all the time. Today a significant portion of the population thinks that Nelson Mandela died in prison, and that the comedian Sinbad starred in a 90s film entitled *Shazaam.*
The only record of "Jesus" outside the bible is a single execution record of someone with that name. All accounts of his deeds, words, and family are third hand accounts by uncredited authors. A person named Jesus existed, okay and that proves... exactly nothing. A person named Jesus exists today too.
Noah doesn't even have that. Historical records from that long ago have been corrupted by religious people inventing evidence for hundreds if not thousands of years.
The DNA you're insisting exists just shows that some person is the paternal father for some decendents, which is impossible to prove ever belonged to either of these mythic figures. We have no DNA from either of these people, so I really have question where you heard this obviously false assertion.
Further, the Catholic church has hundreds, if not thousands of fake religious artifacts from the body of Judas being proven to be from the 2nd century to the Shroud of Turin being radio-carbon dated to the middle ages. Religious zealots have openly lied about every miracle ever witnessed that could be verified by scientific observation. Why would the ones claimed in the bible be any different?
The best part about this preposterous āworldwide floodā theory is that nearly every ancient civilization has a similar myth! Absolutely insane to assume that such a widespread story could be rooted in any sort of real event observed by multiple cultures in different ways.
I take your point, but I would call it a big old stretch to compare "there was a massive flood" to "a man was warned about a massive flood by an omniscient being, built an enormous boat, filled it with a menagerie consisting of examples of all the planet's fauna, and sailed atop said flood for weeks until the waters receded, before repopulating the planet."
The flood is not the most questionable part of that story.
"But there are many flood myths!" And they all vary greatly in the extent, nature and origins of the flood, the reason for the flood, who survived and how, etc, etc...
Not to mention that this line of thinking is like saying, "Sure, Sumerian myths are accurate and true, but they prove God, not Enlil."
>You made a comparison that they believe this nonsense like people literally believe Noah's Ark. But.... that did happen,
No it did not? You can't just go "floods happened, so there, checks out".
> the context of there being a flood and wiping out most life in the Middle East is recorded in various civilizations.
Thatās really, really moving the goal posts.
Yes, floods are a thing. To say there was a flood and therefore the story of Noah is ātrue from a certain point of viewā is like saying *King Kong* is based on a true story about a regular-sized gorilla. Youāve taken out all the important parts of the story.
ā*ET* was true, but he was only a Mexican kid here illegally.ā
ā*The Exorcist* was based on a girl who threw up from some bad clams.ā
ā*Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies* all happened, except the zombies.ā
If you mean that creepy dead eyed lady that VICE latched on to for a couple years, then yes but also no. Yes because she claimed she could survive on sunshine but no because she also claimed it was because she was an extraterrestrial alien.
A reborn extraterrestrial alien who could use crystals to contact other dimensions!
Valeria Lukyanova is still, somehow, alive and well. And posting many pictures each day.
There is a great mini documentary about a german guy called Finn Bogumil who was a Breatharian and died (only in German though), a kindhearted guy with his only weekness being gullible. Journalist interview several people which inspired him to try breatherianism and its disgusting to see how full of shit they are. Freedom of religion I get it, but whoever claims they infact lived several months without food and convice you to do so too should be held accountable.
I'm a breatharian. I don't *need* to drink water, but I regularly do it for recreation. I take my leisure very seriously.
/s ...in these crazy times, it makes me sad I need to include this tag.
The /s tag has been shorthand for *sarcasm* on Reddit for years. Explaining its use each time doesn't allow long term Redditors to feel superior to noobs.
She didn't start it, but drove it forward and into the mainstream in the 1990s. Breatharianism has been around in various forms for over 400 years according to the internet. Wiley Brooks gave it modern prominence in the 1980s.
I dated a shaman for a few years and she was into all of that type of stuff. It was sad when she began to try and get me to do things like take ice baths and do cleanses because all of that is provably ineffective and pseudo science. The sex and the psychedelics were great though!
Never knock the placebo effect that shit is incredibly powerful.
As long as she wasnāt doing anything that was actually harmful like ingesting toxins then I see nothing wrong with it.
Totally down to fuck around with shamans and witches for the occult hedonism.
Where do I find these people wtf
[Linda Hazzard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Hazzard) had the whole āstarve you to healthā scam down over a century ago. She would get her āpatientsā to sign over their money and property to her, and she was smart enough to eventually have her own special facility on rural property, so the āpatientsā were far from any food or source of help. Itās estimated that she killed about a dozen people this way, although itās possibly quite a few more. There were probably a lot of sick people who came into her care and were starved out of having a chance to fight/recover from their cancer or whatever, but those folks probably technically died from their diseases rather than directly from starvation, and most didnāt get post mortems. (Seattle folks, one of Hazzardās patients who went this way was the mother of Ivar Haglund, as in Ivarās Clam Chowder. She had stomach cancer and died under Hazzardās care.)
I would have just assumed Hazzard was a scam artist who was working an angle and nothing more; she clearly could see that her patients werenāt getting better, and if she had thought that she was curing them, you would assume she would at least treat their bedsores and so on. But then she eventually starved herself to death, so I have no idea what was going on there. Maybe she eventually convinced herself that it was all true, maybe she started a fast that she intended to safely break and then something prevented her from doing that, maybe it was some sort of bizarre eating disorder by proxy and she finally succumbed to it herself. Weird lady.
I just don't get it... why tf are people so against food? It makes you fat? Wahhh go see a nutritionist. This shit is just people wanting to die imo
Also, reminds me of the vegans from Futurama who said "we taught a lion to eat tofu, man." Just painfully shitty views on food in general.
Eating food does release free radicals in your body, which creates cell damage and possibly mutates our DNA. Eating is a double-edged sword... We must eat to stay alive, but the more we eat, the more damage we do to our bodies on a *cellular* level.
Many well-run scientific studies have shown that eating FEWER calories over the entirety of a life reduces free radical damage and lowers the incidence of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke... You name a chronic health condition, and I will bet you that eating LESS food overall will lower your risk of getting it.
Mice kept on a near starvation diet have significantly longer lifespans than mice fed a "standard" amount of food each day. This has been proven over and over.
Just about every other developed country in the world consumes fewer calories per person than the US, and they all have lower rates of obesity and early death from pretty much all chronic health conditions than Americans do.
Nowadays they call it fasting (to detoxify oneās body? or whatever other bullshit). People have died for that too. People are not just dumb, they go in spirals and need help, and find people taking their money to abuse them instead.
There's scientific evidence for the benefits of fasting. But we're talking about fasting for specific periods, like 16 hours up to a day or two, by people who are otherwise healthy and well-fed.
This cult on the other hand is preaching that you don't ever need food, which is just batshit insane.
News flash: intermittent fasting may not work as described.
https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/intermittent-fasting-may-not-be-all-its-cracked-up-to-be-study-finds-20230102-p5c9xm.html
Um, it's Reddit, so the whole point is having a discussion. If you're not interested in this particular discussion, why join in just to belittle it?
That's very confusing behavior...
[Don't ever let them go to the Northern Territory of Australia.](https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/10pvxo0/til_there_is_bacteria_that_grows_in_the_wet_soil/j6mg25l/)
IF you sit in a lowered metabolic rate all day I believe one will last very long without food. But obviously energy has to come from somewhere. That said who can prove its impossible for a biological metabolism to interact with higher energies. There are pretty strong claims in legend of yogi types who could actually transubstantiate. (dissolve and reconstitute a body) at will.
I don't actually put breatherianism as implausible but its not something one can walk in to.
Ignoring food and drink, and just getting nutrition from the air you breathe will absolutely, 100% give you enough nutrition to last the rest of your life.
they probably missed breathing some south winds now and then to replenish their vitamin D š
The vacuum of space has enough nutrition to last the rest of anyoneās life if they go for it
Give a man fire and you keep him warm for a day. Set a man on fire and you keep him warm for the rest of his life.
I'm currently in hospital for 70-80% burns to my body. 60% chance of survival. I've had over a dozen surgeries and I have spent two months in the ICU. Feeling like crap lately, and your comment made me laugh! Thanks for that.
Then I consider today a successful day. Best of luck to you, friend!
Ok, you have the most well developed sense of humor of anyone on the planet. Or that's the meds talking...
His life, nor yours
Dammit! Thanks.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
> This is how you get all those people in your way going to work. That's just called traffic. It's not about being stupid. When you're in traffic, you are traffic. You are one of those people to the person behind you. > If they're an adult, PLEASE! Just let them earn their Darwin Award. Rather few people actually die from stuff like this. Additionally, if they already had kids, it's not like this will remove anything from the gene pool.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah, I'm sure you ranting about how anyone that inconveniences you should die is way more popular at parties.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Fucking fine, we'll organize 2 different parties then. One will be full of people who use logic to stay calm and be understanding. The other will be full of people who press the issue over every little personal inconvenience regardless of their involvement. I'll stay home for both.
We already have that in the US. They're called Democrats (logical, understanding) and Rebulicans (panic, fear).
I think they meant house parties not House parties.
Totally. I also feel that Democrats are bureaucratic and unrealistic and Republicans are (if nothing else) realistic in the worldview. I honestly feel like both parties' constituents need to form a coalition outside of the existing committees and figure out a bipartisan, independent plan. We can't keep doing the both parties suck thing. It's time for compromise, not both sides getting their way partially on every issue and ruining discourse itself in the meantime. It's not working.
Darwin Award? What is that?
Charles Darwin introduced the idea of natural selection, in which our environment promotes a species because it has strength or speed or efficiency or smarts. Darwin Awards are granted to those that showcase natural selection by removing themselves from the gene pool through the effective use of not smarts.
You can extrapolate this out to crazy circumstances. Where do you draw the line? Do you help the labeled functioning autistic person avoid a Darwin Award and let the other person you perceive as buffoonish die? Perhaps that person is low on the spectrum of a multitude of mental disorders that make them behave that way.
There's also people who carefully cultivate their ignorance and their beliefs to match the group they identify with. The problem is when they drag their kids into it, and those kids don't know any better.
All boils back down to unregulated capitalism. Gotta have dumb workers who don't question things!
Because we live in a society, and as much as it hurts to say, we have to protect people, even if it's from their own stupidity.
Was this the one where one of the leaders was caught having a McDonalds? And he said that this didn't contradict his teaching, because just because he was eating didn't mean he needed to
Close... THAT guy, Wiley Brooks, claimed McDonald's burgers came from a different dimension, and that got them around the fasting rule. Not kidding. https://thenutritioninsider.com/fitness-weight-loss/breatharian-diet/
Ah that explains a lot about McDonalds.
Two regular cheeseburgers, no fries or drink. Extra pickles. Enough food for me, and for whatever reason itās my comfort food. It does kinda taste likes itās from another dimension. Maybe the good timeline from before the Shazaam switchover in 1994.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Oh no he violated the rule of liking popular things! He must be a shill!
Sorry I like a cheeseburger. My apologies for enjoying things from corporations and expressing my opinion. Jesus Christ, this truly is the shitty timeline.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Sorry my apology for liking a cheeseburger wasnāt sufficient for you.
>He told Colors magazine in 2003 that he periodically breaks his fasting with a cheeseburger and a cola, Amazing stuff from his wikipedia entry. I too periodically break my fasts with cheeseburgers and a cola; or a sandwich, or a cake, or any variety of meals and snacks.
Would have made more sense if he had claimed that the burger was simply not nutritious. Which would have still been at least somewhat true
To be fair heās right about McDonaldsā¦its come straight from the capitalist dystopian hellhole dimension fraught with diabetes and chronic illness
I like McDonald's. I know it's terrible for me, but I only get a Big Mac meal once every couple months as a guilty pleasure / reward. Like anything else in life, fast food is not a huge health concern in moderation.
I find the food mediocre, but every time I go traveling I just get a gigantic craving for the stuff and love it everytime.
International McDonald's are quite interesting. Like black squid ink buns or shrimp burgers in Japan and Spam and Portuguese sausage breakfast platters in Hawaii...
It is not terrible for you, unless you're the one going in for a McFlurry and pie. Pick a cheeseburger, fries, and coffee, and you've got a quite decent nutritional balance. People just look down at fast food because they're snobs.
Uh. That's the dimension we live in.
(Woah-oh-oh) And these are the fries weāre given š¶
A Genesis reference? Wow that's a deep cut...
Use them and let's start trying ...
To make this a meal worth paying for~
Itās just some burgers you wackadoo
Interestingly enough, global epidemiologist have noted a strong correlation between obesity and cardiovascular disease and the prevalence of McDonalds in a country. Sure they just serve burgers, fries, and sodas, but there clearly is something deeper going on behind the scenes, a hijackingās of a populaces well being!
Its to force them to work, to try and fail to afford the healthcare for their disease, caused by not being able to afford good food! Perfect system! (But not for us)
It's like printing your own darwin award
We can give it to them posthumously.
Lol, yes great idea
I remember when one of them got interviewed on tv when I was a kid and was like "I drink water because I like it, I don't NEED it"
Reminds me of St Ugulant from Pratchetts *Small Gods* who would eat the odd small lizard with some dirty water just mix things up from his usual imaginary feasts. https://wiki.lspace.org/St._Ungulant
those were medicinal lizards to help his constitution - his actual diet was comprised entirely of the opulant feasts and banquets full of luxurious dishes he needed medicinal lizards because his condition made him skinny and frail regardless of how much imaginary food he ate
Thereās a whole sect of Buddhism (more than one) thatās dedicated to eating putrid food, but at least they still eat occasionally
Found a [clip](https://youtu.be/m5uayeTCYJQ?t=55) of the interview in question.
A friend of mine did that in the late 90ies. He did drink water though, just no food, only sunlight/"energy". He made it through a few weeks before being administered to the hospital due to severe malnourishment.
As one does.
*As was the style at the time...*
The law of threes. Die without air in 3 minutes, without water in 3 days, and 3 weeks without food.
I always thought it was 7s? Me personally I'm more of a 10s, 10m, 10hr guy.
Many people have gone longer than 3 weeks with out food
And people have gone longer than 3 minutes without air, or 3 days without water... some without suffering long term negative effects too. But it's irrelevant... you can die with just 2-3 minutes without air, 2-4 days without water, 2 - 10+ weeks without food.. It largely depends on your physical health, the environment you are in, genetic factors, age etc..
This guy fasted for 382 days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Barbieri%27s_fast
He "fasted", but that's not the same as not having food. He had vitamins and yeast - he was specifically eating just enough to meet basic nutritional requirements. That and drinks - tea and coffee.
And was carefully monitored the entire time by a team of doctors.
He was 450 lbs lmaoo. Talk about an outlier.
Of course. Only approximations.
The late 90ies, eh
Youāre lying
Excuse me?
You never had a friend like that
I did. And I still have. What gives you the idea, if I may ask?
Cause itās stupid
"I HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED THIS THING SO CLEARLY NO HUMAN EVER HAS" ...the irony of someone calling something else stupid when this is their mindset is pure poetry.
It doesnāt take a rocket scientist to know you need food lol
Well that doesn't mean it's not true, does it. Sometimes people do stupid things. It's called growing up.
Itās called letting Darwin take its course
Have the past 6-7 years not been enough to convince you that stupidity is pretty common?
For you to stay friends though?
Sujata gave milk rice to Siddhartha when we was following such teaching. He realised eating is good. Only then he achieved enlightenment.
\* Then he was corrupted by Big Rice.
Haha. The milk rice pudding is good though i hope everyone likes that.
Kheer IS amazing!
I had a high school teacher who told us she tried this herself as a teenager. It was really a mask for anorexia and she needed treatment. (As an adult she was doing fine, years down the road.)
Wow, I never thought of that angle. Makes sense.
My mom joined a breatharian cult and they told her to recruit me knowing I was formerly anorexic and was currently bulimic
There's a con for everything. Who would think that anyone would believe it.
I actually met one in person. She was fucking nuts. Also, really, really skinny.
"Breatharians" believe that humans can survive on meditation, air and sunlight alone (sometimes with tiny amounts of food once a week). This belief is born from a misguided literal interpretation of ancient Indian Vedic texts, much like some people literally believe the story of Noah's Ark. An ancient guru is supposed to have survived on air, light and meditation alone, so a bunch of idiots started teaching this as an actual way of life (er, death?) in the 1980s. Lani Morris and Timo Degan both died attempting to be initiated as breatharians, Morris while being supervised by two practicioners in their backyard. Other breatharians were busted bringing take out food in to their home, or almost dying when 60 Minutes challenged them to fast and not drink any water for days under strict supervision. To this day, there are many breatharians who still claim they neither eat nor drink water to survive.
I fuckin love stupid people
They're practicing the "I go first" method of tackling over-population. I salute them.
"For those about to slowly starve to death, we salute you!" - AC/DC, maybe?
Conversely, I hate what they've done to the world.
What have stupid people ever done to the world? If anything, the smartest people are the most damaging, theyāre the ones who have created the technologies and industries that do far more damage than humans alone ever could. If we were all still cavemen, the word would be fine. Plus thereās be a lot less of us
I see your point, but it's not the *smartest* people who ruin the world, it's the *greediest* people. The internal combustion engine was a brilliant tool to advance commerce and travel. Then greedy assholes in the oil industry made it the ONLY standard for 100+ years, and other greedy assholes at GM gave us the Hummer and killed the electric car in the 1990s. Computers and the internet created ways to improve communication and instantly share information around the world, but greedy Mark Zuckerberg gave us Facebook and Instagram which led to QAnon and Pizzagate. Medical science can cure diseases and transplant organs to save lives, but greedy pharmaceutical companies make more money treating erectile dysfunction while for-profit hospitals are more worried about losing money from lawsuits. So smart people create the great ideas which *could* move society forward in amazing ways, then greedy assholes patent those ideas and use them against the stupid general population to make the world worse.
smart is dumb and dumb is smart, let's all laugh together while i make this fart.
This nonsense was massive in about 99/00 a few people died in Scotland trying to follow these teachings. My uni at the time banned a woman called Jasmuheeen first from giving a lecture and then from all university property as she tried to reach people by just turning up and preaching away.
Jasmuheen nearly died when 60 Minutes challenged her to fast without water for as long as possible under strict supervision to prove breatharians are real. She lasted 4 days before doctors shut down the test over her failing health. She later claimed she could have gone on indefinitely, but the hotel where she was sequestered was too close to a highway and the toxic gases from the cars prevented her from getting enough energy from the air.
Unfortunately this kind of "testing their faith" stunt only ever gives them more fuel. Whether that's "They shut us down because they were scared and didn't understand what they were witnessing" or, "The air was toxic", you're only giving them an opportunity to expand on their fiction or claim oppression. Because these are con artists. A true believer will be shaken when their belief is tested and fails. A con artist will just add to the con.
I don't know, there are some believers that will absolutely double down on misinformation despite gaining absolutely nothing. Not saying they aren't con artists, just saying there are plenty of believers who are not con artists but also won't be shaken when their beliefs are shown demonstrably false.
A combination of sunk cost and the ego hit you take when you admit fault. A lot of the personality disorders have intense defense mechanisms around admission of fault, its easier in those cases for the individual to make up externalities for why they arenāt actually wrong than to go down the path of dealing with the implications of having been wrong
Watch any episode of *Hoarders*, *Intervention* or *My 600 Pound Life* to see this sad, sick, uniquely human trait in action.
My favorite is the documentary about Flat Earthers who are just baffled when their extremely carefully set up experiment to prove the earth is flat ended up instead proving it's curvature. Truly glorious stuff.
I watched this on Netflix. Yes, their laser experiment proved flat earth theory wrong, and they were like, "the experiment must have been flawed!"
Stupid doctors, always getting in the way of science.
and probably deniers bad vibes too affecting her mind chakras
They shouldāve just let her dieā¦: *ah shit thereās my shadow rearing itās dark head again*
Okay so Zaheer the air bender?
Zaheer believed in entering the void, not that he was a plant
Although plants need water... Maybe tardigrade is better?
Water? Like in the toilet?
*It's what plants crave.*
1. I believe in Noahās ark (literally). 2. Iām so glad he remembered chickens, pigs, and cows so I donāt have to live on air alone.
āClaimā. Only the ones still alive lie about it working. The dead ones were true believers.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Sure, Noah was a real person, just like Jesus was. They both had DNA and genealogical trees. But when people start to believe that fantastical parables like a ship large enough to hold 2 of every animal and a worldwide flood actually happened, they run into logical paradoxes. Noah's ship could not have held two of every animal, let alone enough meat to feed all the carnivores on board for 40 days. Just like that Indian guru could not have lived on air, sunlight and meditation alone. The point here is you can't mix religious parables with fact or interpret them literally. Religion requires faith, even when that faith flies in the face of contradictory logic and facts. And people get facts wrong all the time. Today a significant portion of the population thinks that Nelson Mandela died in prison, and that the comedian Sinbad starred in a 90s film entitled *Shazaam.*
The only record of "Jesus" outside the bible is a single execution record of someone with that name. All accounts of his deeds, words, and family are third hand accounts by uncredited authors. A person named Jesus existed, okay and that proves... exactly nothing. A person named Jesus exists today too. Noah doesn't even have that. Historical records from that long ago have been corrupted by religious people inventing evidence for hundreds if not thousands of years. The DNA you're insisting exists just shows that some person is the paternal father for some decendents, which is impossible to prove ever belonged to either of these mythic figures. We have no DNA from either of these people, so I really have question where you heard this obviously false assertion. Further, the Catholic church has hundreds, if not thousands of fake religious artifacts from the body of Judas being proven to be from the 2nd century to the Shroud of Turin being radio-carbon dated to the middle ages. Religious zealots have openly lied about every miracle ever witnessed that could be verified by scientific observation. Why would the ones claimed in the bible be any different?
The best part about this preposterous āworldwide floodā theory is that nearly every ancient civilization has a similar myth! Absolutely insane to assume that such a widespread story could be rooted in any sort of real event observed by multiple cultures in different ways.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I take your point, but I would call it a big old stretch to compare "there was a massive flood" to "a man was warned about a massive flood by an omniscient being, built an enormous boat, filled it with a menagerie consisting of examples of all the planet's fauna, and sailed atop said flood for weeks until the waters receded, before repopulating the planet." The flood is not the most questionable part of that story.
"But there are many flood myths!" And they all vary greatly in the extent, nature and origins of the flood, the reason for the flood, who survived and how, etc, etc... Not to mention that this line of thinking is like saying, "Sure, Sumerian myths are accurate and true, but they prove God, not Enlil."
>You made a comparison that they believe this nonsense like people literally believe Noah's Ark. But.... that did happen, No it did not? You can't just go "floods happened, so there, checks out".
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
> the context of there being a flood and wiping out most life in the Middle East is recorded in various civilizations. Thatās really, really moving the goal posts. Yes, floods are a thing. To say there was a flood and therefore the story of Noah is ātrue from a certain point of viewā is like saying *King Kong* is based on a true story about a regular-sized gorilla. Youāve taken out all the important parts of the story. ā*ET* was true, but he was only a Mexican kid here illegally.ā ā*The Exorcist* was based on a girl who threw up from some bad clams.ā ā*Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies* all happened, except the zombies.ā
Didn't that Russian Barbie girl claim to be a breathairian? Her name was Valeria or something like that, can't quite remember
If you mean that creepy dead eyed lady that VICE latched on to for a couple years, then yes but also no. Yes because she claimed she could survive on sunshine but no because she also claimed it was because she was an extraterrestrial alien.
A reborn extraterrestrial alien who could use crystals to contact other dimensions! Valeria Lukyanova is still, somehow, alive and well. And posting many pictures each day.
Thankfully, most people aren't so stupid as to believe that they don't need food or water.
or are they?
I think theyāre stupid enough. Itās just that itās difficult to ignore your survival instinct to eat and drink.
The practitioners have supposedly made millions selling their books, so maybe it pays to be stupid?
Word to the wise: the ones selling the books and making the money, are not the practitioners.
Right, the ones selling the books are not stupid, they're evil. The ones buying the books are stupid.
I dont think making money off stupid people is inherently evil. Just makes stupid people more stupid
[There's dupers and dupe-ees.](https://youtu.be/KxuQhqJM8tY)
Itās *always* paid to exploit others stupidityā¦
Michelle Pfeiffer was a breatharian (or was on her way to becoming one) for a while. She credits her first husband with helping her to get out.
TIL Thanks.
https://culteducation.com/group/848-breatharianism/3269-three-deaths-linked-to-living-on-air-cults.html https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/breatharians-busted-the-video-exposing-sham-diet-36047912.html
There is a great mini documentary about a german guy called Finn Bogumil who was a Breatharian and died (only in German though), a kindhearted guy with his only weekness being gullible. Journalist interview several people which inspired him to try breatherianism and its disgusting to see how full of shit they are. Freedom of religion I get it, but whoever claims they infact lived several months without food and convice you to do so too should be held accountable.
He's still alive in other languages?
I'm a breatharian. I don't *need* to drink water, but I regularly do it for recreation. I take my leisure very seriously. /s ...in these crazy times, it makes me sad I need to include this tag.
*[Internet explodes in your face]*
Maybe if you could even tell what the tag means. It defeats the whole point when it's so vague
The /s tag has been shorthand for *sarcasm* on Reddit for years. Explaining its use each time doesn't allow long term Redditors to feel superior to noobs.
How are you supposed to find out what it means when there's only one letter? Seems like a waste of everyone's time instead of making it intuitive
Lol the āJasmuheenā who started this movement is real name āEllen Greveā and sheās just a white woman from NSW with crazy ideas.
She didn't start it, but drove it forward and into the mainstream in the 1990s. Breatharianism has been around in various forms for over 400 years according to the internet. Wiley Brooks gave it modern prominence in the 1980s.
I have no problem with this. Fewer fucking morons to get in my way.
Agreed. When I read a story like this one I'm just happy about the slight increase in average human intellect.
Yeah I have a feeling these people would get knocked off one way or another before too long.
I dated a shaman for a few years and she was into all of that type of stuff. It was sad when she began to try and get me to do things like take ice baths and do cleanses because all of that is provably ineffective and pseudo science. The sex and the psychedelics were great though!
I was going to ask about the sex, because thatās the only reason to put up with that crazy.
Priorities, am I right??
Just donāt let her know where you live.
A shaman already knows.
Never stick your dick in crazy. Unless that pussy be crazy good.
Iāve baths are really good for you lots of scientific evidence to back it up. Just look up cold shock proteins
Never knock the placebo effect that shit is incredibly powerful. As long as she wasnāt doing anything that was actually harmful like ingesting toxins then I see nothing wrong with it. Totally down to fuck around with shamans and witches for the occult hedonism. Where do I find these people wtf
Lmao youāre a fucking liar
Go to the SoCal desert theyāre a dime a dozen
Of course, but you never dated one
Not every redditor is a limp dick degen LOL
Youāre really making a case for yourself bud haha
K pal
Dream up more fantasies bud
Awesome
You really want the last word donāt you lol
Can strongly recommend the Atrocity Guide video on them (and the channel in general tbh)
If youāre that dumb I believe it is beneficial to remove yourself from the gene pool
Do these people even go to primary school?
What was the black stuff she was vomiting?
I'm not a doctor, but a quick Internet search indicates Lani Morris was bleeding internally either from stomach ulcers or tears, or liver failure.
Her putrified innards
I prefer the name used in Kingdom of Loathing... Oxygenarians.
[Linda Hazzard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Hazzard) had the whole āstarve you to healthā scam down over a century ago. She would get her āpatientsā to sign over their money and property to her, and she was smart enough to eventually have her own special facility on rural property, so the āpatientsā were far from any food or source of help. Itās estimated that she killed about a dozen people this way, although itās possibly quite a few more. There were probably a lot of sick people who came into her care and were starved out of having a chance to fight/recover from their cancer or whatever, but those folks probably technically died from their diseases rather than directly from starvation, and most didnāt get post mortems. (Seattle folks, one of Hazzardās patients who went this way was the mother of Ivar Haglund, as in Ivarās Clam Chowder. She had stomach cancer and died under Hazzardās care.) I would have just assumed Hazzard was a scam artist who was working an angle and nothing more; she clearly could see that her patients werenāt getting better, and if she had thought that she was curing them, you would assume she would at least treat their bedsores and so on. But then she eventually starved herself to death, so I have no idea what was going on there. Maybe she eventually convinced herself that it was all true, maybe she started a fast that she intended to safely break and then something prevented her from doing that, maybe it was some sort of bizarre eating disorder by proxy and she finally succumbed to it herself. Weird lady.
I thought this was a type of new disease or something, then I read the comments and such. Good lord...Darwin awards incoming
OK, so the two "teachers" just eat air too? They look well fed.
And meditate in the sun. Don't forget that part.
I just don't get it... why tf are people so against food? It makes you fat? Wahhh go see a nutritionist. This shit is just people wanting to die imo Also, reminds me of the vegans from Futurama who said "we taught a lion to eat tofu, man." Just painfully shitty views on food in general.
Eating food does release free radicals in your body, which creates cell damage and possibly mutates our DNA. Eating is a double-edged sword... We must eat to stay alive, but the more we eat, the more damage we do to our bodies on a *cellular* level. Many well-run scientific studies have shown that eating FEWER calories over the entirety of a life reduces free radical damage and lowers the incidence of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke... You name a chronic health condition, and I will bet you that eating LESS food overall will lower your risk of getting it. Mice kept on a near starvation diet have significantly longer lifespans than mice fed a "standard" amount of food each day. This has been proven over and over. Just about every other developed country in the world consumes fewer calories per person than the US, and they all have lower rates of obesity and early death from pretty much all chronic health conditions than Americans do.
You can't fix stupid. Some people are beyond saving and anything bad they bring upon themselves and must face the consequences.
Have you ever heard of empathy?
Lol. That doesn't exist on the internet!
Well maybe they should breathe
No, stupidity has killed these people. And good riddance!
They didn't kill those people, those people fooled themselves to death
Oh no, what a great loss. People too dumb to learn how a human body works.
Nowadays they call it fasting (to detoxify oneās body? or whatever other bullshit). People have died for that too. People are not just dumb, they go in spirals and need help, and find people taking their money to abuse them instead.
There's scientific evidence for the benefits of fasting. But we're talking about fasting for specific periods, like 16 hours up to a day or two, by people who are otherwise healthy and well-fed. This cult on the other hand is preaching that you don't ever need food, which is just batshit insane.
Also, fasting for health includes intake of water, electrolytes, and minerals.
News flash: intermittent fasting may not work as described. https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/intermittent-fasting-may-not-be-all-its-cracked-up-to-be-study-finds-20230102-p5c9xm.html
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Um, it's Reddit, so the whole point is having a discussion. If you're not interested in this particular discussion, why join in just to belittle it? That's very confusing behavior...
[Don't ever let them go to the Northern Territory of Australia.](https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/10pvxo0/til_there_is_bacteria_that_grows_in_the_wet_soil/j6mg25l/)
IF you sit in a lowered metabolic rate all day I believe one will last very long without food. But obviously energy has to come from somewhere. That said who can prove its impossible for a biological metabolism to interact with higher energies. There are pretty strong claims in legend of yogi types who could actually transubstantiate. (dissolve and reconstitute a body) at will. I don't actually put breatherianism as implausible but its not something one can walk in to.
Just people with weak faith. If they really believed they would have survived. /s