Dormant Breakthrough

Scientists are working on induced human hibernation, as seen naturally in animals, to treat a range of diseases

- Shreeshan Venkatesh

SEVERAL ANIMALS, including species of reptiles, insects, molluscs, avians and mam-mals have the ability to go into long periods of hibernation during which all activities—physical and physiological required to preserve life—are brought down to the bare minimum. The understanding is that these organisms go into periods of suspended animation to conserve energy to overcome seasonal shortages of food and harsh environmental conditions. The potential of hibernation in space travel brought the subject into public discourse recently and scientists now say that this suspended animation has the potential to become a game changer in the world of medicine.

Scientists have always been amazed that even after months of dormancy, hibernating animals wake completely healthy, even healthier than their pre-hibernation periods. Human body has been known to utilise periods of deep sleep for repair and rejuvenation of the body and researchers are today confident that hibernation is also such a similar reparative process. They suggest that humans may well possess all the hardware required to induce and mimic hibernation.

In 2010, a team led by Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School and M S Malhotra from the medical commission of the Indian Olympic Association, published case reports of three Buddhist monks from the Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim having entered advanced meditative states in which their metabolic rates were reduced by up to 64 per cent.

In 2006, a Japanese citizen, Mitsutaka Uchikoshi, unwittingly became the first documented case of human hibernation. After suffering a broken pelvis in an accident in western Japan’s Mt Rokko, Uchikoshi survived outdoor in an unconscious state for 24 days before being discovered by a trekker. Uchikoshi survived and soon recovered fully.

Replicating the process