Hibernating Humans Getty Images

Involuntarily? Yes. On purpose? Maybe. In February, for instance, Swedish snowmobilers found a man who had been trapped under snow in his car for two months with barely any food. After he was rescued, local doctors suggested that he had survived by adjusting his core body temperature downward to about 88ºF and keeping still, the same process bears use to hibernate.

Some people, such as those who practice meditation, can enter a hibernation-like state on purpose. When a person falls asleep, his body’s oxygen use typically drops by only about 6 percent. Herbert Benson, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, has studied Tibetan monks in deep meditation and found that they can decrease their oxygen needs by as much as 64 percent.

And doctors may someday induce a drastically low body metabolism and temperature to keep trauma patients alive. Reducing oxygen needs could decrease tissue damage in cases where the body can’t get as much oxygen as usual, for example during a heart attack. Mark Roth, a biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, is working on a suspended-animation treatment that could do just that. He has shown that having mice inhale air infused with hydrogen sulfide decreases their breathing rate by 92 percent and also drops their body temperature. After he revives them, they recover completely and behave normally.

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10 Comments

Intriguingly, there's a lot of hydrogen sulfide in surströmming.

I would love to be able to do this. I'd sleep the whole winter away.

Or it could be an extreme way to wait for something
--------------------------------------------
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.

@Artex

*cough* MARS! *cough*

Wonder if this could be used for incarceration instead of filling our prisons? Might be more of a deterrent.

@fishystuff42,

bad idea...look what happened in "The Demolition Man". prisoners were set free in a time where peace existed for once on earth and almost destroyed it.

"religion is like a prison for the seekers of wisdom"

-Killah Priest

I read the last sentence like this: "After he revives them, they recover completely and behave normally..." except for the insatiable desire to kill, kill, kill!

my friend's mom made $15485 last week. she been making cash on the laptop and got a $347900 condo. All she did was get lucky and use the guide revealed on this web site bit.ly/re2IpS

This is so not new news. We have a complete long history of hibernation being displayed by our Political Leaders being in hibernation, frozen in time, from any REAL decision making. I feel all our Government Leaders have been asleep for years! And worse, this condition is contagious to other countries around the world.

.............................
Science sees no further than what it can sense, i.e. facts.
Religion sees beyond the senses, i.e. faith.
Open your mind and see!

I think that's an amazing story.

Now that explain why I can hardly feel my breathing in and out when I meditate, the sitting still in one position for a long period of time, also the mind is being force to be still by concentrating on the object of meditation. So I think human can induce hibernation on purpose through training and preparation.



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