Human Hibernation

It's Monday again, and I'm suffering from the Monday blues again. I guess all of you guys are so I shall not whine anymore. So how did you guys spend your weekend? Mine was nothing special, went to school on Saturday, did housework on Sunday morning, went out with my girlfriend in the afternoon, went back home and slept at 12. Haha. When I put it that way, my weekend seems even shorter than it was.

Normally I don't post pictures from the articles that I discuss. However, today I'm in a picture posting mood. :D So here's the pic.



If you don't recognise the picture above, well, then I guess you haven't seen the movie "Austin Powers: the Spy Who Shagged Me". In that movie Austin Powers was put into suspended animation through Cryonics. Cryonics was once seen to be the only feasible way to keep people in suspended animation with any hope of reviving them. However, scientists have now discovered a simpler and cheaper method of doing this - by inducing hibernation in humans.

Many mammals like squirrels and bears hibernate during winter. During this time their cellular activities slow down and virtually stop, which reduces the need for oxygen and energy. However, humans and many other mammals, like mice, do not hibernate, or do they? Scientists in the article made mice go into an induced hibernation by letting them breathe air laced with hydrogen sulfide and later woke them up by letting them breathe normal air. In humans, hydrogen sulfide is used to "buffer our metabolic flexibility" allowing us to maintain our constant body temperature. Theoretically, in large doses, hydrogen sulfide is thought to bind to cells in place of oxygen causing the metabolism to "shut down", hence the induced hibernation.

Currently, there is no solid proof that humans are capable of hibernation, however, it is possible that all mammals can hibernate, it's just whether we forgot how to. If humans can hibernate though, there would be many potential uses of this new state. Sub-light space travel would require such a state to be possible in order to allow humans to survive the journey, people with incurable illnesses could be kept in a permanent hibernation state in hopes of a future cure, severe fevers could be stopped immediately and so on. The possiblities are nearly endless...

A new trick could one day put humans into a hibernation-like state without all the frigid antics of an Austin Powers movie or an Arthur C. Clarke story.

Using a natural chemical humans and other animals produce in their bodies, scientists have for the first time induced hibernation in mammals, putting mice into a state similar to suspended animation for up to six hours and then bringing them back to normal life.

The breakthrough suggests humans along with other mammals might harbor a mostly unused ability to hibernate on demand. Further research into the phenomenon could lead to medical advances, such as buying time for humans awaiting an organ transplant, scientists said.

Click here for the full article.