Guinness failed records: The heroic attempts that fell short at the final hurdle

• By Adam Aspinall

The next time you feel a bit peckish, spare a thought for Russian Agasi Vartanyan.

In 2006, he attempted to set a new record for the longest time spent without eating.

While sitting in a large plastic cube in the city of St Petersburg, he heroically managed to go without food for a stomach-growling 50 days.

The trouble was, Agasi had forgotten to inform Guinness judges of his plan, and so his record attempt was in vain.

He also forgot to check previous records.

Guinness had already registered the longest-ever hunger strike – 94 days – carried out by jailed Irish Republicans in 1920.

Comments:

The human body is really quite amazing at regulating calorie expenditure. We are survival machines in a sense. We have adapted to the environment that we live in well. If the past had been full of food for all the time that humans have existed then it is unlikely we would be able to go without food for so long.

Most of the longest fasts, in the press have been to campaign for political change rather than for health. It is sad that people have felt that they have had to suffer starvation to bring attention to their plight - sometimes to highlight injustice that would otherwise go unchallenged.

For us, long fasts represent the extremes that the human body can go to. Looking at the literature many fasts have gone from above 40 days to around 60 days. Some people are able to go longer. This tells us that we having varying abilities to fast - some people can probably burn calories much more slowly and others can't slow their's as much. Or it could mean some people were significantly fatter at the start. The truth is probably a little of both.

Still non of these fasts could be considered normal or healthy. Prehistoric man most likely never choose to fast but suffered at times from not getting enough food. For instance, not everyday guaranteed a full meal. Sometimes a few berries was the total fare for that day. Other times a small animal but not enough to consider a full meal. (Every so often there would probably be a bounty of food with the killing of a large animal and plenty of fruit because the weather had been consistently good - so it was time to binge as the only way to store calories, seeing as though there was no refrigeration or freezing facility readily on demand.)

For health, with our virtually guaranteed food on demand environment today, fasting for a day a week is most likely very beneficial to health if we are not currently ill or suffering the effects of starvation already (malnourished). (In most cases starving for up to 3 days a week does not seem to be harmful considering what the limits are. But that does not mean it is healthy to do that.)

To lose weight fasting for 1 day a week or for a few hours before sleep so that a fast is built into everyday can help to bring about the right hormonal changes to make the body more efficient. Short fasts or intermittent fasts are known to raise growth hormone secretion, improve leptin sensitivity, improve insulin sensitivity and detox cells (where cells have waste removed more efficiently or to clear away dying or diseased cells to make way for new healthy cells - this could be considered a type of healing).