VSED: The Benefits of Fasting for Ending Life
Even under hospice with excellent palliative care, some spend their last months in uncontrollable suffering. What can be done in places in the United States that outlaw physician-assisted dying? Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking offers a legal way to have control over the end of your life.
The first video in this three-part series was How to Die a Good Death ( ). The next one is VSED: The Downsides of Fasting for Ending Life ( ).
Please take care while watching these videos if this is a difficult topic for you.
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-Michael Greger, MD FACLM
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Please take care while watching these videos if this is a difficult topic for you.
It’s OK. I don’t get humans’ stuff.
I’ve witnessed it firsthand multiple times. This is a fabrication of what really happens in my experience.
Difficult but potentially valuable for the (hopefully distant) future. Thanks for sharing.
My great granny dis this. She had a stroke and one side was smaller as the muscle had atrophied. She had decided that it was enough, and went on her own terms. I say good on her. She was stuck in a nursing home and her lovely huspand Pat had died a decade earlier, so that was that. I think this is a good video and this process IS a valid way out.
I have heard of older people doing this. I didn’t realize it was an actual method to speed up death. People phrased it more like they were too depressed to eat or drink. Maybe they didn’t understand what their loved one was doing
Since losing more people and entering my mid 20s, I feel like the childish rose colored glasses have been ripped off. Death feels more tangible than it did before. I think being more open to topics like this may help me feel less fear.
okay great. i feel this so much. im 30 next year and i remember being a teen and how no one around me was close to death. 🙁 now i lost many people…starts happening so suddenly it feels like
@manga4774 I’m sorry for the pain you’ve experienced. And yes, one day you’re young and carefree, then life hits. The knowledge that everyone I know will someday be gone, is so heavy. But death is a part of life. Like most things, it’s better to face it head on and learn how to cope.
My mom survived in a hospice for 36 days after stopping eating and 8 days after stopping drinking. She had aphasia for 3.5 years before dying of brain and colon cancer though so she wasn’t saying much.
My aunt did this after she had a stroke that left her paralyzed on one side. Loved ones asked if she could be given IV fluids and nutrition. But she only wanted palliative care, and the hospice nurses honored that. She was ready to go. 💛
I remember reading about a roman senator or someone, who had gotten a disease and decided to end his life by stop eating and drinking. After harsh fasting of few days the illness went away. His decision to end his life had actually cured the disease he was ending his life for.
But once he had gotten to that point he had already made up his mind and didn’t start eating again. And died within few days.
Heartfelt thanks for addressing this difficult topic. My mother and my lifelong best friend both chose this method to end their terminal illnesses with the least possible suffering for themselves and their loved ones.
Awesome! Thank you! For those wondering, I have done a 14-day water-only fast and can tell you that not eating was easy and enjoyable. I wasn’t trying to die, so I kept drinking water. I had heard not drinking water would make dying miserable and I am glad to hear that it does not.
how can it not? have you tried needing water for just a few hours? a day? i’ve never been thirsty for more than an hour or two, and it’s miserable
@AngelaBut some illnesses and diseases are worse.
Hi, I’ve done a few dry fasts (three days max) and I found them to be much easierthan water fasts once you get past the first few hours. N.B I’m not recommending them, just confirming that going without water may not be so very difficult once one commits… I hope neither of us find ourselves in a situation where this info is relevant.
@Twizzle Wobbleberry Thank you!
Dear Doctor, I like how you continue to expand into general health and well-being topics. I will continue to share a great deal of your videos.
My mother became non responsive and I agreed to place her in hospice where she had no food or water. Our last communication was squeezing each other’s hands. Then that stopped. She died after 11 days in hospice.
I believe she would still be with me today had I known about plant-based eating before her last illness.
Thank you for this information.
I am reminded of the story of the “simple life” advocate and homesteader Scott Nearing. At the age of 100, and sensing his loss of physical and mental capacity, he decided that he would plan his own death so he simply stopped eating. According to his wife, Helen, his death was peaceful.
You are remarkable for discussing this topic. Thank you for explaining what it means and what happens during this process.❤
Terminal animals in the wild do this. I once rescued a clearly unwell wild hedgehog, I even took it to the vet who administered antibiotics and treated its fleas, but it absolutely refused all coaxing to eat or drink, it just curled up in its box in my garage, peacefully went “into itself”, and died 2 days later.
Anyone who has ever done a deathbed vigil for a loved one, including a companion animal, knows that ceasing to eat and drink is a natural progression of the last stage of death. It isn’t fraught, and should be discussed as an active method of end-of-life care more frankly. Thanks for posting.
Thank you for helping us understand a more peaceful transition in hospice. I cared for my father in hospice in our home in 2000, and none of this was ever discussed with us.
I’ve never heard about VSED. Thank you dr Greger for this video. VSED could end unnecessary suffering for so many.
Such an important topic. It’s very hard though for people with dementia and other neurological conditions where you have to be able to be cognitively able to make a decision to end your life and as Dr Greger states it may take time away from spending with your loved ones when the disease progresses quite slowly and you want to spend as much time as possible with your loved ones but don’t want to spend your last few months or years in a facility because you can no longer live without support. Currently caring for a family member now who is not able to make decisions is heartbreaking watching them ‘live’ in a way I know they would not want. I also watch other dementia residents every day and see some very confronting things and often think if these people could have ended their life before they got to this stage if they would have.
Having lost my mother in 2022 on her 96th birthday, this video brought SO much comfort. Rest easy, Mom.
Thank you so much for addressing this issue of death with dignity.
My 91 year old mother did exactly that , no food, no water for about a week before she passed. She had no co- morbidity, mentally sharp. She was not dying, just made the conscious choice to leave.