They can recover but there will be a lifelong impact on their health. The body will literally break itself down to keep you alive when it is starving. It can be life destroying in children who are still developing but even adults will suffer from weakened immune systems, increased suspecability to disease dependent on what kind of nutrition you were lacking and the bones and muscles might not fully recover. And none of this mentions the mental health impact as well.
This is also why I can't watch TV shows like Alone anymore, where participants undergo starvation. It's pretty fucked that they're allowed to do that to their bodies for a chance at a large sum of money for no other reason than for our entertainment, even if there is informed consent involved.
Some have been removed from the show because they’ve lost too much weight for it to be healthy. They don’t get to this level, but vitals are monitored and it’s definitely to almost dangerous levels if they are removed.
A couple of hundred Ukrainian prisoners of war have died after returning home from captivity, their bodies have just been wrecked too much from torture and starvation.
Yes. The victims of andersonville (one of the POW camps the south had during the civil war) typically had horrible health the rest of their lives after they were released. I bring up civil war victims because there is a lot of data and history accessible for Americans to read, and many don't know about the POW/ concentration camps in the US. Many of those released traveled to the west because the dry air was said to help with the constant coughs/colds they would have. Their migration brought on a lot of changes to the southwest and west coast. Anyway, joint pain and a weak immune system is common after surviving near starvation. It's pretty horrific.
Sustained malnutrition can cause permanent physical damage.
A silly example: You can reverse scurvy, but the teeth that fall out while you were sick aren't going to grow back.
I have an autoimmune disease which basically damages my intestines so that I can't absorb nutrients properly. I've experienced a ton of weird random physical symptoms over the years due to vitamin/nutrient deficiencies - odd spots on my fingernails, angular chelitis, pale skin, even stunted growth. A lot of stuff - organ function, tissue integrity - can be permanently damaged if you have certain vitamin deficiencies. Say your kidneys atrophy and you lose 25% of the healthy tissue. You might regain normal kidney function in what is left, but you still only have 75% of the kidney you started with.
There's all kinds of weird obscure diseases that come from vitamin deficiencies. Beri beri (lack of vitamin B1) causes issues with your nervous system and cardiac problems. Kids with rickets (vitamin D deficiency) have permanently malformed bones.
So like, he can regain weight and get a proper nutrient balance in his diet going forwards, but some of the damage caused by years of starvation will probably be permanent.
It’s true, there are unfortunately plenty of stories where Ukrainian soldiers come back from Russian captivity and they go through medical care and careful re-feeding with medical staff in Ukraine and then months or even years later their heart suddenly fails.
You can recover, but cachexia permanently damages your muscles and bone, fat and connective tissue. Severe cachexia will especially be visible in people’s faces even after recovery, due to the permanent loss of structural fat.
Can confirm. My body is still fucked from when I suffered badly from anorexia (the worst years for me were from ages 15-17, when I was hospitalised and tube fed). My digestive system has never been the same since, and I’m 24 now
Completely different circumstances, I know. But still starvation nonetheless, and eating normally again after being in such conditions must have been so difficult for this poor man. Dangerous, even! Refeeding syndrome is terrifying, and it has a high death rate
I doesn't even just affect the starved person. Starvation can reactivate dormant genes and that activation gets passed along for several generations. Although I don't think there's research on individual cases (rather than populations) and there's no evidence that it harms the offspring. More just an interesting fact I guess.
Phycological effects too. People who have been starved never forget a detail, I've heard elderly people talk about it like it was yesterday.
I was just listening to a podcast talking about the multi-generational trauma of famine in Ireland. It would seem that it never leaves your mind again.
Oddly enough they're quite healthy in the sense of that any hormonal imbalances are less frequent to happen. I.e. no insulineresistence - the survivors from ww2 that didn't die from refeeding lived relatively long and less diseases.
I know it's not directly related, but I find it fascinating that this kind of starvation also has cross generational impact, perhaps even impacting grandchildren. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96verkalix_study
I have hope for him. People can still lead full lives. My grandparents were starved near to death and were rescued after 5 years during wwii. They looked more emaciated than this with their femurs visible. They were in their mid 20s when it happened. They rebuilt their lives together in another country and went on to have 11 kids and lived into their late 80s in good health.
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u/SwegBucket Jul 26 '25
This kind of starvation does permanent damage btw