VSED: The Downsides of Fasting for Ending Life
What are the pros and cons of voluntarily stopping eating and drinking to end your life?
This is the last video in a three-part series on the process of dying. The first two were How to Die a Good Death ( ) and VSED: The Benefits of Fasting for Ending Life ( ).
Please take care while watching these videos if this is a difficult topic for you.
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Please take care while watching these videos if this is a difficult topic for you.
Great series! Even as a healthy 30-year old, it’s very reassuring that VSED is an option in the future might I live in a place without legal assisted suicide.
I’m heartbroken for this. It feels wrong but also it doesn’t. What if I did do it years a go when I was really in a bad shape in my mind, i would’ve done it. But looking back now I’m glad I didn’t. How is this justified?
I think they are talking about people with terminal illnesses that way beyond hope for recovery, like cancers that have spread to every system of the body, although I can’t imagine being a part of doing this to someone who is asking for food and water. If someone asks for food and water, I’m giving it to them.
My dad was terminal. He’d decided to stop eating and drinking. The doctors worked on my mother to get her to persuade him to get a feeding tube. *That* was inhumane.
Not sure how that’s inhumane. I thought care facilities were to provide care rather than lack of care.
Each case is unique but it strikes me as unreasonable to show up and say “I’m not well and it’s your job to take care of me but not in the way you’ve been trained to do.” Makes me think of the phrase “the inmates are running the asylum.”
@RemarkableSeanso if the staff in Victorian age performed labotomies and leeching according to how they were trained, it would be silly to intervene. 😂😂😂 your comment is so incredibly stupid to me.
@Effie I’m confused. Care providers persuading patients to accept care is the business of providing care. I don’t really know what you’re suggesting. Sounds like you’re suggesting that one should go to a care facility, refuse the care, and then say it was inhumane for the providers to even offer care.
@RemarkableSean I find it interesting that you are using the word “care” and “business” all together in one statement. Hospitals are good at saving lives when they can, they are terrible at helping with suffering and ending life peaceful which an actual CARING facility would be able to do. America is backward with their inability to face death as an inevitable part of the human condition and because of this head in the sand stance, red tape keeps doctors committed to prolonging suffering.
@RemarkableSean He didn’t ‘show up’ anywhere. He was at home, wishing to spend his final days there. The doctors called my mother and tried to get him to go into the hospital to get the feeding tube because ‘everyone gets one’.
My father had decided what was the best way for him to die, we all supported him in that. He was getting no medical intervention whatsoever. We cared for him at home. They initiated contact. Anything any ‘caregiver’ thought was so inconsequential to us as to be laughable.
You watch the person you love most in the world suffer the pain and indignity of a terminal illness and decide that taking away their last choice and call it ‘the inmates running the asylum’.
Perhaps the ‘training’ should be patient-centered as they’re the ones who are dying.
Damn. Life’s hard!
maybe it is as the video says, the dying part that is the hardest.
Appreciation for covering a sensative topic with empathy and sound science ✌️
If the patient doesn’t want to eat when dying thats ok. Other animals hide and stop eating when they are dying.
If someone wants to commit infanticide, that’s ok. Other animals commit infanticide…(I am not opposed to VSED or even equating it to infanticide, just pointing out that animal behaviour can’t justify human behaviour, unless we cherry pick animal behaviours we find agreeable)
This is interesting information for dry fasting, which I think is probably not a good idea for people to do. But it supports the reasons why people do it. Seems pretty dangerous to me.
I have noticed that some who practice it a lot seem to accelerate aging, and they appear to think it is having the reverse effect on them😮
@Spirit War Diariesnot drinking water can cause your skin to pre age. This much I know. I have done a 5 day dry fast just to see if I could. It was not fun. I got close to passing out on day five because I wasn’t taking it easy and was working out and had a physical labor job I was working at the same time. Lost 60 pounds but most of that was water and some muscle loss too. Eventually I gained it all back. The trouble with fasting is the benefits are largely only occurring when you are on the fast. A big negative that’s not talked about is how much bacteria you lose in these long fasts. I lost everything and tried to eat a high fiber diet and it was incredibly painful. I took probiotics and ate fermented foods and got a lot better.
I’m confused how not eating or drinking at all is not miserable
Because of the hormones released when someone is starved. And it is about people with terminal illness.
i have done dry fasting, by that experience i can tell you it is quite a good way to go as far as i have taken it.
This is a really important topic. Would hospice teams be on board if the patient made a request for help and comfort care while withholding food and water?
My dad got no food or water in hospice. Just morphine.
This is why you make the decision yourself, when you still can, because if you don’t your loved ones will be forced to make it for you. My father died of Alzheimer’s, and my mother had to give the order to deny him hydration and nutrition. It is cruel to put that burden on a loving relative. It is cruel to make the patient continue in a life they didn’t want to be that way. If I cannot be offered the same humane, painless death we afford a beloved pet, let me make my own choice while I am still competent.
Agreed, but if you live in a state that doesn’t allow the humane and painless death you refer to, there’s not much that can be done. As long as we let the religious make our policies this will never change.
Very difficult circumstances to provide for. I like the historical way the Inuit handled this. Grandma or Grandpa simply stayed behind out in the snow, while their younger relatives left for the next hunting ground. Death from hypothermia I guess?
Finally DrGreger found out about it too lol.
Ive been doing prolonged dry fasts for over a year now…
9 days one time. Usually 4-5 days and i don’t count 1-3 days.
literally whisper yelled “YES” when i saw that uploaded (it’s late at night and im about to wash the dishes while watching this)
I did a five day dry fast once. Won’t do that again but can definitely understand it from the perspective of someone who wasn’t to die. If they want a little water i don’t think thats a big deal, as long as they aren’t eating anything they’ll still die it will just take longer. Longest water fast I’ve heard lasted 30 days.
Jesus fasted for 40 days.
Thank you <3
I love the slight tenderness in Dr. Gregor’s voice in addressing this topic. Bless him for his gentleness.
My father died of stage 4 liver and bladder cancer. We were so unprepared and uneducated on the best way to support him. We only had three weeks after he was diagnosed until he was gone. We couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t give him an IV and also we kept trying to force him to eat. After he passed, I began to find videos from hospice nurses explaining just what Dr. Gregor is talking about. That it’s actually more humane and easier on the person dying if they aren’t taking in food and liquids. Forgive us dad we didn’t know 🙁
❤
@Lybi Winzenz Aw thanks
Pourrions nous avoir les sous-titres en français S.V.P ?
In cases referred to in Nazi Germany they died despite being fed vegetables???? How could they lose calories?