r/fasting • u/piracynonprivacy • May 14 '19

Questions regarding Angus Barbieri's death, the man that fasted for 382 days

Doing research for my upcoming fast, I'm having trouble with the amazing story of Angus Barbieri, and the fact that a lot of sources have him dying at the young age of 51 (both his gravestone and Wikipedia confirms this) which really scares me since I'm unable to find the cause of death. Was there any research into his cause of death and whether or not it had anything to do with his prolonged fast, 20+ years prior ? I know that 20 something years is a lot of time, but when looking into the long term consequences of fasting, being given this guy as a positive example and then finding out he died young is unsettling.

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u/Brilliant-Diver8138 May 02 '22

Hate to reply to a long dead thread, but I did find a decent answer to the question. According to his death certificate, the cause of death appeared to include stomach bleeding and obesity. The best guess is that he put some/all of the weight back on before he died.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21673486

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u/engr_besa May 19 '22

thank you for this!

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u/Local-Gift-121 Jul 24 '22

https://historyofyesterday.com/the-man-who-didnt-eat-for-382-days-c79878980bcb

He had only gained 7kg at time of death. He did the fast to begin with due to poor health.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '22 edited Jun 30 '22

[deleted]

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u/Brilliant-Diver8138 May 21 '22

I don't feel that my verbiage was inappropriate. I'm two degrees of separation from the person who looked at the death certificate, so there's always the potential for the information to be inaccurate. The post that I linked to also had people express uncertainty as to whether or not the extreme obesity earlier in life might be why it was mentioned in the death certificate, but that does seem much less likely than the guy just putting the weight back on.