The Pros and Cons of Getting Scurvy for Weight Loss

Last Updated on August 29, 2025 by Michael

Alright, apparently this needs to be said out loud: Getting scurvy on purpose is not a diet plan. It’s barely even a cry for help. It’s more like a cry for someone to revoke your decision-making privileges and maybe check your browser history.

But here we are.

Quick Refresher for Anyone Who Slept Through History Class

Scurvy. The disease that killed more pirates than cannonballs, krakens, and Johnny Depp movies combined. Basically, your body needs vitamin C to make collagen – that stuff holding your meat puppet together. Stop eating anything with vitamin C for about three months and boom, you’re cosplaying as a decomposing pirate.

Your teeth get loose. Your gums bleed. Old wounds open back up like surprise sequels nobody wanted. You essentially become a human jenga tower where someone keeps removing the important pieces.

And now, in the year of our lord 2024, people are doing this intentionally. Because TikTok said so? Because someone’s ex lost weight after getting scurvy? Who knows. Who cares. The point is, it’s happening, and apparently someone needs to explain why voluntarily contracting an 18th-century maritime disease is a bad idea.

This timeline is exhausting.

The “Benefits” According to People Who’ve Lost Their Minds

The Supposed Pros (Written While Laughing Hysterically)

Weight Loss Is “Guaranteed”

Sure, you’ll lose weight. You’ll also lose teeth, blood, and probably consciousness, but hey – skinny legend, right?

When your mouth becomes a horror movie prop and chewing feels like gargling glass shards, yeah, that salad starts looking pretty impossible. Forget the salad actually – even soup becomes a challenge when your body’s falling apart faster than a IKEA bookshelf in an earthquake.

You’ll Be Unforgettable

Walk into any room looking like an extra from a zombie film and people will definitely remember you. They’ll remember to avoid you. They’ll remember to call adult protective services. They’ll remember this as the day they met someone who failed evolution so hard that Darwin himself rose from the grave just to facepalm.

But memorable? Oh, absolutely.

Living History!

You know those people who are really into historical reenactment? The ones who spend weekends churning butter and dying of dysentery? You’re gonna make them look like casuals. They’re out here pretending to have consumption while you’re actually dissolving from the inside out. That’s commitment. That’s authenticity. That’s probably a mental health crisis, but let’s not get caught up in details.

The Cons (Buckle Up, Buttercup)

Your Body Literally Falls Apart

Not metaphorically. Not figuratively. LITERALLY.

Picture this: You wake up one morning and your pillow looks like a crime scene because your gums decided to audition for a horror movie overnight. You go to brush your teeth but – plot twist – they’re loose. Like, baby-tooth-loose. Except you’re not getting money from the tooth fairy, you’re getting a lecture from a very confused dentist.

Then the bruises start. And listen, these aren’t your regular “walked into a coffee table” bruises. These are “looked at a doorframe too aggressively” bruises. “Thought about exercise” bruises. “Existed too hard” bruises. You’ll look like you went through a blender that was set to “gentle suggestion of violence.”

Here’s the part nobody tells you: Old scars reopen. Yeah. That fun little appendectomy scar? It’s back, baby! And it brought friends! Your body basically rage-quits on the whole “healing” thing because healing requires collagen and you’ve decided collagen is for people who aren’t committed to the bit.

The joint pain – oh, the joint pain. Every movement sounds like you’re stepping on a bag of chips. Walking becomes an interpretive dance about suffering. Sitting down is a three-act play. Standing up deserves a Emmy nomination for Best Drama.

And the smell. Sweet mother of citrus, the smell. When your body’s decomposing while you’re still using it, there’s an aroma. It’s not “forgot to shower.” It’s not even “forgot to shower for a week.” It’s “archaeological dig site discovers bog person, bog person is somehow still alive and shopping at Target.”

Dating Life? Dead. Social Life? Deader.

Tinder bio: “Adventure seeker, vintage disease enthusiast, probably bleeding right now.”

Yeah, that’ll really bring in the matches.

You know what’s not hot? Having to explain to a date why you’re spitting teeth into your napkin at Olive Garden. “Oh, don’t mind me, just shedding some dental work. Anyway, you were saying about your promotion?”

Friends will stage interventions. Then, when those don’t work, they’ll stage exits. From your life. Permanently. Because watching someone voluntarily decompose is traumatic and they didn’t sign up for front-row seats to your self-destruction spectacular.

Every Medical Professional Will Judge You

Walking into an ER with scurvy in 2024 is like showing up to a Tesla dealership in a horse and buggy and asking for an oil change.

The doctor won’t even be mad. They’ll just be… disappointed. That special kind of disappointed that transcends professional boundaries. The kind where they go home and tell their spouse about you, and their spouse doesn’t believe them, and they have to show pictures because “nobody’s that stupid, Harold.”

They’ll prescribe you orange juice. ORANGE JUICE. The cure for your devastating illness is available at every gas station in America for $2.99. The pharmacist won’t even know how to ring it up. They’ll have to call a manager. The manager will need to call corporate. Corporate will assume it’s a prank.

Warning Signs You’ve Made a Terrible Life Choice

Week 1-4: “This Seems Fine” You’re tired. But everyone’s tired. Society is exhausting. This is normal.

Week 5-8: “Hmm, That’s Weird”

• Gums looking sus
• Skin feels like sandpaper had a baby with a cheese grater
• Friends asking if you’re okay (you’re not)

Week 9-12: “CALL A PRIEST AND A DOCTOR”

• Teeth falling out like you’re a human slot machine hitting the worst jackpot
• Bleeding from places that don’t have “bleeding” in their job description
• Walking requires a full engineering consultation
• Existing becomes an extreme sport
• Death starts looking like employee of the month

A Reality Check

Some Revolutionary Alternatives

Wild idea: What if you just… ate less food? And maybe walked around sometimes?

Too simple? Okay, here are some other groundbreaking concepts:

• Vegetables (they’re like vitamins but crunchy)
• Exercise (moving your body before it falls apart)
• Water (it’s like soda but disappointing)
• Not contracting preventable diseases for Instagram clout

Let’s Talk About How Preventable This Is

You know what cures scurvy?

One. Orange.

ONE.

A single orange stands between you and looking like an extra from Pirates of the Caribbean who didn’t make the cut because you were too disturbing for a Disney movie.

The bar for not getting scurvy is so low it’s a tripping hazard in hell, and here you are playing limbo with it.

Still Thinking About It?

Really? REALLY?

After everything? After learning your teeth will abandon you like rats from a sinking ship? After finding out you’ll smell like a medieval battlefield? After discovering your body will literally unzip itself at the seams?

You’re still considering this?

Here’s what’s going to happen: You’ll feel terrible for three months. You’ll look worse. You’ll traumatize every medical professional in a five-mile radius. You’ll eat a single piece of citrus fruit and recover in 72 hours. You’ll realize you could have just eaten the fruit three months ago and avoided this entire disaster.

Then you’ll have to live with the knowledge that you got a pirate disease. On purpose. In an era where we have vitamin gummies shaped like dinosaurs.

The Bottom Line

This isn’t a diet. It’s not a cleanse. It’s not a journey. It’s your body literally rage-quitting because you couldn’t be bothered to eat an orange. It’s like deciding oxygen is optional, or that gravity is more of a suggestion than a law.

Pirates – literal PIRATES – figured out this was a bad idea 300 years ago. These were people who thought bathing was suspicious and dentistry involved string and doorknobs. They figured out scurvy was bad. But sure, you know better than centuries of maritime disaster.

The fact that this article exists is proof that we’ve failed as a species. Natural selection is somewhere crying into a beer, wondering where it all went wrong.

Eat fruit. Don’t get scurvy. This shouldn’t be controversial.

But here we are, in the darkest timeline, where people are voluntarily contracting preventable diseases for a beach body that they won’t even be able to enjoy because they’ll be too busy bleeding from their eyeballs.

(Your eyeballs won’t actually bleed. Probably. Maybe. Look, anything’s possible when you’re literally falling apart at the molecular level.)

Just… just eat an orange. Please. For the love of all that is holy and citrus-flavored. Eat the orange.