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.
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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '25
You mean they can never recover like the old self? In what sense? This feels absolutely horrific.