TORONTO – Her heart rate could accelerate, her blood pressure may skyrocket and her body’s organs will need some time to adjust to running normally again.
Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence should be medically monitored to watch for these health complications as she breaks her liquid diet Thursday, a Canadian doctor says.
“Anytime a person starts to restrict nutritional intake to less than what the body needs to meet daily requirements, it’s harmful,” says Dr. Skevoulla Xinaris, a psychologist and manager of the eating disorders program at Lakeridge Health in Oshawa, Ont.
“After a period of such limited intake, medical complications can arise,” she warned.
After 44 days, Spence agreed to end her hunger protest, subsisting on only medicinal teas, fish broth, vitamins and water.
She remains in hospital on an intravenous line as she recovers following these six weeks without solid food.
How should Spence break her liquid fast?
The following days will be precarious – Xinaris says a “gradual process” is ahead of Spence as she breaks her liquid fast and tries to return to healthy eating.
Lab work needs to be done to ensure her organs are functioning normally; her digestive system needs to reboot and monitoring her heart are just a few steps doctors will likely take in nursing Spence back to health.
Eating solid food should be carefully phased in so it’s not a shock to her body – such as her neurological system, her cardiac health or her blood.
“Her heart rate will drop and blood pressure will drop. When you start eating again, it’ll go up, so you have to monitor that you’re not shooting the blood pressure or heart rate up too quickly,” Xinaris said.
Because she’s only had soup and tea, once she consumes a variety of nutrients, electrolyte disturbances could shake her body up.
She’s going to feel bloated as her stomach has shrunk over the course of her hunger strike, and her lack of energy will slowly subside.
Xinaris says she estimates that Spence probably wasn’t eating more than 500 calories a day. To compensate, her body likely turned to eating her muscle for energy and slowed her metabolism to a halt to keep surviving.
Spence should have been eating around 2,200 to 2,500 calories a day, Xinaris says.
In her program, anorexic patients build on their diets, so more calories are slowly eased in.
If patients have trouble eating, doctors will use feeding tubes or liquid supplements to help the process.
The side effects of fasting
Spence’s diet likely included a string of side effects – confusion, lack of concentration or focus, dizziness, faintness.
“She was running in the negative. It takes a lot of endurance and I’m sure there were periods of the day where I suspect she felt a tremendous amount of weakness,” Xinaris said.
Some people face permanent damage to their organs from long periods of fasting.
“With starvation, if there isn’t enough nutrition over a period of time, the bodily organs get compromised,” she said.
If the heart’s in trouble, patients will feel their heart racing, chest pains or heart palpitations.
Kidney failure could occur in the severe stages. These irregularities signal your body giving in, Xinaris said.
When the body is malnourished for that long and has eaten through fat stores, organs are the next to go.
As for Spence, her pre-fast health would indicate if the hunger strike caused permanent health concerns.
“If she was a relatively healthy woman going into this, the chances for a full recovery are greater.”
It’s hard to tell how much longer Spence could have lasted on her liquid diet.
“There’s been a history – people have died after 66 days of a hunger strike,” Xinaris said, alluding to the starvation deaths of Irish prisoners in 1981.
Bobby Sands and nine other prisoners took only water and salt until they died.
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