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Q&A

Is it logically or scientifically possible to artificially send energy to the body?

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Is it possible to use a power plant-like machine to create small amounts of electrical (or other) energy directly inside the human body, making it such that the human has energy for activity without the need to eat? Something like directly giving the person heat or electricity for human energy or something like photosynthesis using solar panels and such.

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This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/143120. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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It is very possible to sustain a human being (even a physically active one) without them having to eat at all.

Gastrostomy tubes go from outside of the body directly into the stomach. But what you put in there is basically identical to food (with some restrictions). Someone can get all of their nutrition and fluid needs this way. They'd only need some water to moisten their mouth and throat, but that's optional.

Central lines aka central venous catheters are IVs placed in a large vein so they can deliver a lot of material. They can provide total parenteral nutrition.

Parenteral nutrition (PN) is the feeding of specialist nutritional products to a person intravenously, bypassing the usual process of eating and digestion...The person receives highly complex nutritional formulae that contain nutrients such as glucose, salts, amino acids, lipids and added vitamins and dietary minerals. It is called total parenteral nutrition (TPN) or total nutrient admixture (TNA) when no significant nutrition is obtained by other routes, and partial parenteral nutrition (PPN) when nutrition is also partially enteric. It may be called peripheral parenteral nutrition (PPN) when administered through vein access in a limb rather than through a central vein as central venous nutrition (CVN).

A friend of mine lived for years with a central line. She drank some water and ate tiny amounts to keep her gut going (it was severely damaged) but otherwise, got 100% of her energy and nutritional input from the central line. She was very active and could go sailing or on hikes. The port of the line disconnects easily so she was not tethered to it. As long as she connected for a few hours day and night, she was fine.

If you're asking if a human could survive off of some sort of electrical energy, well no. Energy for humans (and most animals) is from calories.

The Calorie (large calorie or kilocalorie "” symbols: Cal, kcal), also known as the food calorie, is defined as the heat energy involved in warming one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius.

Although calories are heat energy, delivering heat to people doesn't do the same thing. If it did, no one would starve in tropical countries. Our bodies work as transformers, the interface between materials in the outside world and producing energy within our bodies. There isn't a substitute.

So, yes, you can create systems where humans do not have to eat. Meaning they do not have to take anything by mouth or even through their stomachs and digestive tracts. But you can not bypass the body's systems for breaking down calories and nutrients.

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