What happens in the body when there is no food

A group of United Nations-affiliated experts has warned that the population of the Gaza Strip is at imminent risk of famine as more than 90% of its 2.2 million inhabitants They face “severe food insecurity” and a quarter of the population experiences “catastrophic levels of hunger”.

Even before the war between Israel and Hamas, nearly 70% of Palestinians depended on humanitarian aid to feed themselves, as the territory has been under an Israeli and Egyptian blockade since 2007.

Now, according to the World Food Programme, only between 20% and 30% what the population needs can enter Gaza across the border.

The lack of electricity and fuel and the inability to travel safely have aggravated the difficulties in producing food or getting it to the population.

According to the expert group, the majority of the population Go a day or more without eating.

As in the vast majority of food crises that the Famine Review Committee has assessed in the 20 years since its creation, the situation in Gaza is not environmental in origin, but human.

But Gaza is unusual in how quickly the population has descended into malnutrition.

In interviews, nutrition experts and doctors described what can happen when people can’t get food.

Children are usually the first to fail

Children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, people with health problems and the elderly are often the first to succumb to acute malnutrition.

How long they can survive under conditions of extreme hunger varies.

“It depends on the age of the person,” says Zita Weise Prinzo, a senior nutritionist at the World Health Organization.

“It depends on your state of health.

“It depends on whether they have access to liquids or some type of food, although this does not cover all their nutritional needs.”

UNICEF, The aid organization, which focuses on children, is particularly concerned about newborns, said Anuradha Narayan, the agency’s senior advisor for child nutrition in emergencies. Before the war, around 60 percent of Palestinian babies were fed formula.

Now their families have little or no access to food for themselves.

“We know there are many families who probably can’t feed their babies formula,” she said.

It is estimated that there is 1.6 liters of drinking water per capita in Gaza (compared to the minimum of 15 liters per day recommended by the WHO).

The progression to severe malnutrition is rapid

Narayan said the agency estimates that between 7,000 and 8,000 children are so severely malnourished that they are at risk of dying without immediate care, but that the active conflict in Gaza is making it difficult for humanitarian agencies to assess the situation.

“We expect these numbers to increase significantly over the next two to three weeks,” he said.

Narayan said that in his work in other food security crises, such as in Ethiopia, it was typical to see a child become ill and progress to severe malnutrition and wasting within a few days.

For Gaza, he said, “it’s harder to predict, but if there is almost no food to feed young children, and there are diseases involved, I would say it could be exactly the same thing.

You go from reasonably well to some level of malnutrition – perhaps not severely wasted, but wasted – in the space of a few days.

Especially in the case of the youngest ones, under two years old, this is certainly the case.”

According to Dr. Stanley Zlotkin, a professor of nutrition at the University of Toronto and an expert on the effects of severe food shortages, the trajectory of people with some access to food would be different.

An adult may be able to survive for a long time with intermittent access to calories or only on foods that offer limited nutrients, he said.

In a situation like that of Gaza, where they still exist sporadic availability of some foods, most adults could survive for a time, but this would not be enough for children to avoid progression to malnutrition.

This is what happens in the body

According to Heather Stobaugh, nutrition and emergency expert at Action Against Hunger, an undernourished body first burns fat reserves until they are exhausted.

So “the body will resort to muscle and eventually the vital organs will start to decompose,” he explained.

In the most severe forms of malnutrition, the immune system weakens and vital organs begin to shrink: heart, lungs, etc.

“When a child or adult gets to this point,” he added, “their body is literally consuming“.

Weise Prinzo said that people in this state minimize energy expenditure.

“They stop any movement that is not necessary for immediate survival, but changes in functioning also occur within the organs heart and liver“, She said.

“They really try to get by, but eventually one or the other of the systems starts to fail.”

At this point, a starving person has a number of physical ailments, such as extreme tiredness, inability to regulate temperature, and emotional deterioration.

“We say ‘acute malnutrition“And acute means it can occur in a short period of time,” explains Stobaugh.

“It doesn’t always have to be months of slow degradation.”

Malnutrition and disease lead to a dark cycle

A malnourished person is vulnerable to disease due to a weakened immune system and conflict conditions, where clean water and sanitation facilities are lacking and people often live overcrowded in shelters.

A malnourished body’s defenses – epithelial cells, which form the surface of the skin and barrier tissues in places such as the intestine – break down and white blood cells do not function properly.

“So when you get sick, the body uses reserves of protein and energy that you have, trying to fight the infection, and that cycle of infection and malnutrition is what quickly causes wear and tear,” explains Narayan.

This process is faster in children

Zlotkin noted that diseases spread rapidly in situations like the current one in Gaza, where 90% of the population has been displaced and is taking shelter in tents or other makeshift structures, and there are few adequate latrines or washing facilities.

Pneumonia and gastrointestinal infections are the main causes of death in malnourished people.

“Epidemics of diseases such as extreme diarrhea combine with a lack of sanitation, food and clean water,” explains Stobaugh.

“This sort of perfect storm of adverse environmental and health conditions will exacerbate the rate at which a body becomes malnourished and can ultimately be brought to the brink of death quite quickly.”

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