“Wonderfully hungry” doc suspended by medical board [...mental and physical evaluation...] 2016

[⊙＿⊙]

“Wonderfully hungry” doc suspended by medical board [...mental and physical evaluation...] 2016

*****

“Wonderfully hungry” doc suspended by medical board

Carrie Teegardin
August 8, 2016 Investigations, watchdog news.

A Georgia physician who asks almost everyone if they are “wonderfully hungry” was told by the Georgia Composite Medical Board on Thursday that his license will be revoked if he doesn’t complete a mental and physical evaluation within 30 days.



Dr. Andrew Ben-Hua Chung had his license suspended by the board in June after failing to comply with an order to complete a comprehensive exam. The board said in its summary suspension order that it had concerns about the doctor’s ability to practice safely, saying its investigation found that Chung refuses to speak to people unless they state they are “wonderfully hungry.”

Dr. Andrew Chung appeared Thursday before the Georgia Composite Medical Board
Dr. Andrew Chung appeared Thursday before the Georgia Composite Medical Board

At Thursday’s public hearing, in which Chung appeared before the board, the doctor repeatedly asked board members and witnesses when greeting them if they were wonderfully hungry. Chung, who said he was trained at Emory University, also said he was a non-partisan candidate for president of the United States.

Chung explained that if people are wonderfully hungry, it indicates they are not having a heart attack. He said he asks the question as a caring physician and does not put patients at risk, as suggested by the board. Chung also promotes a”Be Hungry” diet as a path to health.


Attorney Lance LoRusso testified on Thursday that he filed a complaint against Chung with the medical board in 2015 after contacting the doctor on behalf of a client. He said the doctor’s behavior during his interactions raised concerns about patient care that LoRusso thought the medical board should consider. LoRusso said the doctor would not converse with him until LoRusso said he was “wonderfully hungry.”

Chung said he had been practicing in Mableton prior to his suspension.

Chung said he had been questioned by the medical board in the past, related to a book he published that advises people to limit themselves to 32 ounces of food a day.

Chung was also linked in news accounts to the mother of Markea Berry, a 16-year-old who died of starvation in 2012. Berry weighed just 43 pounds. In 2014, Ebony Espree Berry pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in her daughter’s death. Investigators determined that the mother did not intentionally starve the teen, but should have sought medical treatment for her.

Chung told the AJC Thursday that he was connected to Ebony Berry through social media. He said he visited the mother in jail after her arrest.

Chung, who goes by “Heart Doc Andrew,” told the board Thursday that he would be willing to undergo the evaluation but insisted that the results must be made available to the public because of the need to be transparent in his political campaign.


http://investigations.blog.ajc.com/2016/08/04/wonderfully-hungry-doc-suspended-by-medical-board/





The doctor behind the 'hunger cult' that obsessed a mother who 'starved her 16-year-old daughter to death'

By Michael Zennie
22:24 EDT 26 Jun 2012, updated 06:46 EDT 01 Aug 2012

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2165270/Dr-Andrew-Chung-advocates-wonderfully-hungry-friends-Ebony-Berry-accused-starving-daughter.html




Diet Doctor Defends Mom of Teen Who Died Weighing 40 Pounds
By ALYSSA NEWCOMB
June 28, 2012

http://abcnews.go.com/US/hungry-doctor-diet-kill-georgia-teenager/story?id=16661077

[⊙＿⊙]

“Wonderfully hungry” doc suspended by medical board

Carrie Teegardin
August 8, 2016 Investigations, watchdog news.

A Georgia physician who asks almost everyone if they are “wonderfully hungry” was told by the Georgia Composite Medical Board on Thursday that his license will be revoked if he doesn’t complete a mental and physical evaluation within 30 days.



Dr. Andrew Ben-Hua Chung had his license suspended by the board in June after failing to comply with an order to complete a comprehensive exam. The board said in its summary suspension order that it had concerns about the doctor’s ability to practice safely, saying its investigation found that Chung refuses to speak to people unless they state they are “wonderfully hungry.”

Dr. Andrew Chung appeared Thursday before the Georgia Composite Medical Board
Dr. Andrew Chung appeared Thursday before the Georgia Composite Medical Board

At Thursday’s public hearing, in which Chung appeared before the board, the doctor repeatedly asked board members and witnesses when greeting them if they were wonderfully hungry. Chung, who said he was trained at Emory University, also said he was a non-partisan candidate for president of the United States.

Chung explained that if people are wonderfully hungry, it indicates they are not having a heart attack. He said he asks the question as a caring physician and does not put patients at risk, as suggested by the board. Chung also promotes a”Be Hungry” diet as a path to health.


Attorney Lance LoRusso testified on Thursday that he filed a complaint against Chung with the medical board in 2015 after contacting the doctor on behalf of a client. He said the doctor’s behavior during his interactions raised concerns about patient care that LoRusso thought the medical board should consider. LoRusso said the doctor would not converse with him until LoRusso said he was “wonderfully hungry.”

Chung said he had been practicing in Mableton prior to his suspension.

Chung said he had been questioned by the medical board in the past, related to a book he published that advises people to limit themselves to 32 ounces of food a day.

Chung was also linked in news accounts to the mother of Markea Berry, a 16-year-old who died of starvation in 2012. Berry weighed just 43 pounds. In 2014, Ebony Espree Berry pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in her daughter’s death. Investigators determined that the mother did not intentionally starve the teen, but should have sought medical treatment for her.

Chung told the AJC Thursday that he was connected to Ebony Berry through social media. He said he visited the mother in jail after her arrest.

Chung, who goes by “Heart Doc Andrew,” told the board Thursday that he would be willing to undergo the evaluation but insisted that the results must be made available to the public because of the need to be transparent in his political campaign.


http://investigations.blog.ajc.com/2016/08/04/wonderfully-hungry-doc-suspended-by-medical-board/

[⊙＿⊙]

"Be hungrier, which really is wonderfully healthier"

•••••

‘Breatharian’ couple survives on ‘the universe’s energy’ instead of food
By Lauren Windle, The Sun June 15, 2017 | 2:19pm | Updated


http://nypost.com/2017/06/15/breatharian-couple-survives-on-the-universes-energy-instead-of-food/

[⊙＿⊙]

Fact Check Medical

Do Breatharians Survive Without Food or Water?

Claims about "breatharians" resurfaced in June 2017, but once again people purportedly living on light alone did not offer proof that they survive this way.


CLAIM
A Californian and Ecuadorian couple proved it is possible to live on nothing but air.

RATING
FALSE
ORIGIN
In mid-June 2017, tabloids and similar sources published articles about a couple that purports to survive by eating little to no food. Akahi Ricardo and Camila Castello, the articles said, call themselves “breatharians,” and say they survive on “the universe’s energy,” along with pieces of fruit and vegetable broth eaten 2-3 times per week.

This is not the first time that people have made this claim. A Wikipedia page for the practice perhaps best sums it up in noting that “[t]hough it is common knowledge that biological entities require sustenance to survive, breatharianism continues.” Notably, The Sun and many regurgitators of the piece repeated claims purportedly made by Ricardo and Castello without checking them against very basic science understood across humanity:

Camila and Akahi – who have a five-year-old son and two-year-old daughter together – have survived on little else besides a piece of fruit or vegetable broth just 3 times per week since 2008.

And Camila even practised a Breatharian PREGNANCY – not eating anything during the entire nine months that she carried her first child.

The married couple-of-nine-years claim that their “food-free lifestyle” has improved their health and emotional well-being as well as meaning they can spend money on travelling rather than the weekly shop … Camila explained: “I was completely open to changing my food-free lifestyle when I first became pregnant because my child came first. But I just never felt hungry so I ended up practicing a fully Breatharian pregnancy.

“I didn’t feel the need or desire to eat solid food during the entire nine months and so I only ate 5 times, all of which were in social situations.
Throughout the profile (which was republished across the web with no additional fact checking), the couple alternately claimed to eat occasionally and to describe themselves as “food free.” Whether the couple claimed to eat very little or nothing at all, no apparent verification of their claims was made before pushing the dangerous suggestion one could live without food or water out to large audiences.

Predictably, the practice has indeed proved fatal. Victims in Scotland, Australia, and Switzerland were among individuals who died in an attempt to survive without food or water. A 1999 Guardian article about the deaths quoted an expert on survival medicine:

Experts differ as to the absolute maximum length of time that human life can continue without water, but the broad consensus rests at somewhere between seven and 10 days – though severe dehydration and confusion (due to the build-up of sodium and potassium in the brain) would set in sooner. In the desert, of course, lack of water can kill in a matter of hours.

“It depends on the climate, and how much exercise you’re taking, but if you’re lying in bed you would probably be just about all right for a week,” says Dr Charles Clarke, who specialises in high-altitude survival medicine and has accompanied the climber Chris Bonington on expeditions to Mount Everest. “But towards the end of the first week, you’d become pretty gravely ill. Your blood would become thicker, your kidneys can’t cope; multiple organ failure follows, you get hypothermic and eventually you die.”
Moreover, the couple profiled by The Sun weren’t the first “breatharians” to admit to or be caught eating food while claiming not to eat or drink. Jasmuheen, an ex-business woman and founder of the movement has never proved she doesn’t eat, demonstrates signs of eating, and nutritional experts believe the claim may be a delusion shared among individuals who underestimate their “occasional” eating:

Jasmuheen freely admits to drinking orange juice regularly and occasionally nibbling chocolate biscuits for a “taste sensation”. In the past she has described her diet as including tea with honey and soya milk, chocolate, crisps, soup and the odd piece of fruit. Thoeretically, a diet consisting of those foods in small amounts could represent a calorific intake to which the body could adjust without significant weight loss.

Reporters visiting Jasmuheen’s Brisbane home have been bewildered to find her fridge well-stocked with vegetarian food which, she says, belongs to her partner Jeff Ferguson, a convicted fraudster. And a British journalist accompanying Jasmuheen to her check-in desk at Heathrow last December was astonished when the BA clerk asked her to confirm that she’d ordered an in-flight vegetarian meal. “No, no,” she replied. “Well, yes, OK, I did. But I won’t be eating it.”




Although claims of “breatharians” surviving and thriving pop up every few years, we were unable to find any evidence contradicting the body of science demonstrating humans require water and food to stay alive. It’s possible the couple profiled by The Sun in June 2017 both genuinely made and believed their own claims, but we found no proof the impossible assertion was actually true. When tested, purported breatharians such as Jasmuheen failed to last more than a few days without food and water.



Feedback
Sources
Filed Under:BreatharianBreatharianismDangerous Woo+1 More
Fact Checker:Kim LaCapria
Featured Image:Shutterstock
Published:Jun 16th, 2017


http://www.snopes.com/breatharians/