Human… hibernation?

I do not recommend trying to hibernate! Do so at your own risk. Most especially, don’t take my word as gospel as for how to do it.

Ancestrally all mammals probably can hibernate. That is, the mechanism is there, although in humans, it’s buried. For the sake of resilience I find this very interesting. And if it were possible to facultatively hibernate as a human being, like a chipmunk, there are possibilities it could be a beneficial adaptation, maybe such that we would live more lightly upon the earth. Or, at the very least, an interesting one.

People today are at a loss as to how to do so, but I’m not sure whether it is so much that there are no natural or self-induced pathways as that perhaps these paths have been forgotten through millions of years of tropical habituation and then by the use of fire. There are stories of meditators who enter into states of torpor similar to that of hibernation. While bears are amazing creatures I’d find it likely that not every one of them is an advanced yogi. So, maybe it could be a habit that it’s possible to forget, and then gradually to relearn as a species (as an order, actually).

I’m using this thread as a place to gather up information about hibernation, torpor, or other forms of hypometabolism, and work out through lived experience a way of doing so.

What is the reason for this? I don’t have some big argument for it because I have never done it. But maybe it would make us more resilient and in harmony with the cycles of the seasons, as bears and other wild animals are. The real reason for me is that, but also curiosity and fun. I love to understand and learn about life from direct experience. But another possibility may be treating obesity since hibernation draws from excess body fat.

Societally this looks to most like a lazy person, but adjacent to the biological idea of hibernation is the idea that it's okay to just survive for the winter. Eat, stay warm, and do nothing else.

If one could hibernate, the challenge is where would one do this. Without being disturbed, or becoming an easy snack for non-hibernating creatures.

Bears manage this in dens, and generally nobody with any sense messes with them.

Squirrels do this in short bursts, conserving energy in the cold and emerging to forage.

I really don't know how humans, with their big-brain energy requirements, could manage this on an individual basis. Those of us who live in environments with massive changes in light, temperature and food availability have kept the lights on through all seasons.

I believe various space programs and adjacent tentacles of research endeavor have been scratching at this puzzle for quite some time, but running into problem after problem.

As an outsider with no solid understanding of that research, it seems to me there are two kinds of obstacles: 1) inducing and reviving from torpor, and 2) preventing catastrophic side effects like atrophy and bed sores. (Not sure if psychological side effects belong more in the first or second category.)

It certainly doesn't appeal to me, and I say that as someone who's been experiencing terrible insomnia all week!

A couple things....
1. Most "hibernating" animals aren't actually hibernating. True hibernation involves a huge slow down of metabolism, with stuff like 1 breath a minute, 4 hearbeats a minute, lower body temp, etc. Most animals that "hibernate" are really just taking a long nap. Bears are taking a nap, Groundhogs and frogs hibernate.

2. The most practical issue I see is that while a wild animal can just curl up in a ball in a hole in the ground, humans can't really do that. We have other responsibilities like bills, houses to take care of, livestock/pets, etc. That, I think, is the biggest hurdle...finding a way to do it that doesn't shift burden onto others. Even in space travel movies, there is someone (ground control, robots/computers, etc) is monitoring and taking care of other stuff.

Thank you for your responses. It is true that people have always kept their fires burning during this time of year, whatever their climate. I’m speculating that perhaps rather than as a result of adaptation, it may be a result of abundant energy resources and ancient mental and physiological habits inherited from the tropics. And James, as to paying bills, taking care of livestock, etc., I don’t imagine this would appeal to someone unless they had a very different lifestyle with different responsibilities. Thank you for also bringing up the difference between different animal dormancies. I was using “hibernation” in a loose sense, that of “torpor”, and emerging every few days. Humans probably haven’t used torpid states since long before we were human, so any state of torpor would likely be relatively shallow.

I can imagine that anyone who is thinking of torpor as a habit would have to be far out on the margins of society, unable to practically procure the necessities of food, energy, society, etc. during the winter (or summer, in the cases of aestivation) months.

And if anyone (aside from yogi(ni)s) has actually tried to go into states of torpor, then I haven’t heard of it. An internet search I did only came up so far with artificially inducing torpor in rats and mice.

In farming societies,  we used to have something like this during the hunger gap each spring.

Fields are planted, there is nothing much to do but wait for the lambing and almost zero food left from winter.  Very little food to forage. Not even the hens are laying.  

A lot of cultures dealt with this by fasting for 4 to 6 weeks.  In Europe,  this evolved into Lent.  A time of low consumption and low energy expenditure.

Before farming,  most humans travelled with the food so there wasn't much predictable lean time for a scheduled fast or hibernation ritual.   Less food meant energy expenditure.

I used to joke that I hibernate. I'd put on a chunk of weight (20 to 40 lbs or more!) every fall, and it'd leave every spring without me doing anything intentional about it. I slept a lot more in winter if I had the option, especially on days that weren't sunny.

I'm guessing in my case it was tied to low vitamin d and insulin resistance. My "hibernation" pattern went away maybe five or six years ago when I started working on both issues, other than a couple groggy weeks around early December.

Of course, I wouldn’t have to worry about putting on extra weight first.  

Douglas raised a good point.  Sleeping, even a light sleep, for an extended period of time involves a certain degree of assumed safety.  I am thinking of two legged predators.

Ezra Beaton wrote:Societally this looks to most like a lazy person, but adjacent to the biological idea of hibernation is the idea that it's okay to just survive for the winter. Eat, stay warm, and do nothing else.

I love this

This topic reminds me of the classic short story by Washington Irving.

Rip Van Winkle falls asleep and when he awakes 20 years later to a very changed world.

To me, I feel today's society is much too busy to take time out of their lives to fall asleep and miss everything that is going on.

Maybe folks who live in places where it stays dark most of the winter.

I understand that somewhere between the North Pole and Norway is where it is the darkest.

Thanks for sharing the thoughts, everyone.

I have read several sources that medieval northern European people slept as much as 14 hours a day in the winter months. If true, that's about double the modern average, I think.

They would have definitely saved on all sorts of energy consumption, and maybe it had great health benefits.

Start there and work up. If you can do 14 hours a day, surely you can train up 14.5.  Maybe you'll eventually be hibernating.

Sweet dreams!

I must be in good touch with my northwestern European ancestors, because I can sleep perpetually other than eating and going to the toilet.  I need more sleep than most people because my brain works and processes differently.  I need at least nine hours a night though I can take much more.  If I go more than 2 nights with less than nine hours of sleep I start falling asleep in the wrong places at the wrong times if I have to sit still.  This has caused issues for me basically my whole life and made me wonder what's :wrong" re. my sleep?  I got tested, I don't have sleepapnia.  I'm finally in a life situation in which I can get the amount of sleep I need and I'm incredibly thankful for that.  

But, no matter how many hours of sleep I get I never wake up feeling rested, it just doesn't happen to me.  Its problematic, but I like thinking its some sort of weird throwback adaptation, so thank you for making me feel empowered

Our Neanderthal cousins probably passed the winter in some degree of torpor.  And look what happened to them.  You want some friends who can look out for you while you're passed out.

If the hibernation doesn't extend your lifespan, then I wouldn't be interested. Don't want to spend my life napping!

I do wish I could get by with less sleep, that would make me happy, but it is what it is and I just do my best.

It's an interesting concept! I don't think we're designed to truly hibernate, but we probably are designed to get a lot more sleep than most of us do, especially in winter.

Traditionally, I understand that people able to set their own schedules would probably stay up for only a few hours after dark in winter and not get up until daylight, so would get about 12 hours rest in bed. In summer, getting up at first light to garden and do farm chores before it got too hot meant a more biphasic sleep pattern with a long afternoon nap at the hottest part of the day making up for reduced sleep at night. Different cultures would have different sleep patterns based on their climate and needs, but people generally got more sleep than modern western society tends to consider "normal".

I don't know if it's possible.
If I were in that situation, I would not go 'hibernating' in some sort of 'den' in a snowy freezing climate. I would do like many birds: travel to a warmer climate, to live there during the 'winter' (which doesn't feel like winter there). And then return in the cooler climate in Spring!

One thing to support my vision ...  
I know about pre-historic (mesolithic, neolithic) people in Europe: they traveled much more than we can imagine. There's proof of bodies found in Northern Europe (buried there with grave gifts) of people who came from a much more Southern region and must have been traveling back and forth several times.
I'm not an archaeologist, but I read some scientific articles about this.

This topic crosses my mind every winter, lately. I realized that 90% of the energy I expend in winter is for the purpose of surviving winter. I shovel snow for access to firewood stashes, I shovel paths for access to town (to get food to fuel my work). and I acquire more firewood for the following winter. It occurred to me that it would make more sense for us to have a tiny earth-bermed winter home with minimal heating requirements and to say goodnight to the outside world for a few months. Without serious physical activity, we'd need far fewer calories, which could be had from stored/preserved food that we harvest. We could disassemble our yurt in the fall and have everything stowed away safely until we emerge in the spring.  

I think a lot of my inspiration for this line of thinking is this guy's video:

It's a fascinating subject. For years I have recognized that my body wants to follow the seasons here in Canada. Rhythms that, for the most part, work in conflict with society's ideas of "normal" behavior... by nature my sleep patterns want to follow the sun/light; sleeping until the sun rises,  waking when it does. As someone else mentioned,  work and other responsibilities are often in conflict with this. I struggled to wake in winter to go to my "9 to 5" job and had little energy left after work, because it was dark when I got home. In spring and summer I was up at dawn doing various chores to fill in the time until I went to work, and continued after work where I left off. For the past year, that has all changed because I no longer have a "job", and I'm finally free to follow my own internal schedule.  And yep, all this past winter I woke late, when the sun did,  and slept early, and as spring has approached I'm up earlier each day and working on projects all day long until at least suppertime or later. The other thing I've noticed is that, through the warm weather, my focus has always been on outside activities and come fall I start losing interest in these and my mind is automatically turning toward reading articles on long term storage, etc. I get restless in the fall if I don't have at least 6 months food tucked away in my storage and freezers and yet, I don't worry about this much through the summer.
I know what I'm describing isn't unique and applies to many of you as well, especially in terms of seasonal activities.  My point is... I think many of us are still following the inborn instinct and inherited pattern of behavior of our predecessors. It is only the modern scheduling of societal rules laid on top that creates conflict with this.

Perhaps it is our interconnectedness that gets in the way. The need to work to get a salary.
I am not sure I would like the state of torpor or hibernation. When a person is seriously wounded, doctors can put him or her in a medically induced coma.
This, however, must be done under supervision, presupposing that someone has to stay awake to assist the sleeper...
After a serious accident, I was unable to move for a long time. Worse, they could not put a cast on my leg and every movement caused excruciating pain. I was given a self dosing of morphine, which made this bearable. This lasted from June 6th to July 4th.
I almost lost a leg. It had to be debrided every other day and scheduling meals around these operations became a serious concern. I lost a tremendous amount of weight at a time when I wasn't particularly fat [I have regained my healthy appetite since then, unfortunately].
The inability to move had another consequence: Constipation. After 4 days, I tried for over 20 minutes to pass... something. A very sweet nurse I will never forget ended up relieving me... manually. I remember being quite apprehensive when I noticed that she had long fingernails. Even gloved, it took over an hour to get relief. After that, they gave me some medication to assist. Since I wasn't eating much [I had lost all appetite due to the trauma and the scheduling of multiple surgeries] that didn't help my weight. [No meals and little water for 6 hours before and 6 hours after] That was the only time when I weighed less than 110 Lbs. The only way to weigh me was to weigh the entire bed with me in it and subtract what they knew to be the weight of the bedding. They came in and were quite worried as we got into July.
On July 4th, Independence Day, I finally got a cast... and then, the Doctor wanted me to stand up just to get in a wheelchair. Yeah! right! When pigs fly! is what I thought. I had lost so much muscle that I could not stand up on my own. 2 strong nurses assisted me to get in the wheelchair. The three of us where huffing and puffing when I sat down in the wheelchair.
This is the closest that I came to hibernation. Even with the morphine drip, and try as I did, it wasn't hibernation; more like forced rest, but it helped me to see why we do not hibernate, even if some folks can, with a lot of training, get into a trance that could pass for prolonged torpor/hibernation.
Meals and meal preparation are another problem: Bears are capable of putting on a lot of extra weight to spend the winter in their den, and they burn it off while sleeping, apparently without losing muscle mass, but we do. I don't know what they do for pooping, which is also a problem of horses [another mammal] who will have serious digestive issues if they stay laying down too much.
I'm not sure we should wish to be able to hibernate, although it would be great to be able to spend a really restful night, every night, at will! Maybe that is what we should wish for. I know I would fare much better if I didn't wake up around 4:30 every morning, summer or winter [and sometimes, I just can't fall asleep until 1 or 2 am]. Self hypnosis helps, sometimes...

I found this interesting article in Quora on sleep. As it turns out, the sleeping habits we have now have more to do with the industrial age work scheduling than the sleep pattern requested by our bodies:
https://www.quora.com/How-many-hours-did-medieval-people-sleep
It does make sense to me that the 2 phase sleep, which is recorded in several European languages may have been the norm: Go to sleep at dusk, then wake up in the middle of the night, have a snack, visit etc. then go back to sleep again. I rarely sleep the whole night through.
On the other hand, my husband naps for an hour or so after lunch every day without fail. I just can't sleep during the day, but that's me.
TV, radio, lights, cell phones, the Internet do tend to keep us up at any and all hours. Before we had those, we probably had more restful sleep, whether it was in one block of darkness or two.

I gave myself hypothermia as an experiment so you wouldn’t have to! I was walking today and when I had come close enough to home that it would be safe, released efforts to keep my body warm, slowed down, and relaxed into the cold. I don’t know my temperature exactly but the reading said 93.4F. Later I checked with a different, more accurate thermometer and it was 0.7F higher than the other reading so I’m guessing my real temperature was something around 94.5-95F, which is apparently the same as a hibernating bear. I felt sort of like a bumblebee on a cold morning looks, relaxing into partial ectothermy and letting my metabolism slow. It was peaceful and the landscape around was quite vivid. I may also have gone into torpor yesterday. It could have been that or ordinary shallow sleep, I’m not sure.

I think bears are probably a good analogy of all animals because they are also large omnivorous mammals with a somewhat similar diet, and their hibernation is shallow in comparison with other hibernators. So if instead of slowly returning my body temperature to normal, I instead nestled into my burrow, then I guess that would be like hibernating?

There are many animals that go into a daily torpor, and I’m guessing that maybe the human body is more amenable to this? Anyway, I will update on these sorts of things…

Also relevant, I found this video today. Apparently meditation can in some cases reduce the metabolism by 64%…

The average person spends about twenty six years sleeping as it is. Or for insomniacs like me about thirteen years sleeping and thirteen wishing I could sleep. I'd rather find a way to do without sleep and get that huge chunk of my life back. I have thought about hibernating. My bladder said Go on- I dare ya.

The "mammalian dive reflex" shows that certain environmental stimuli can pretty well universally provoke a similar response.  Free divers, in particular, exhibit this behavior - much reduced heart rate, blood flow directed away from extremities in favor of internal organs, etc.  See, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH9boP9pksM

It has also become "trendy" of late to engage in prolonged ice baths, and to do breath work/exercises before or during the bath.  Wim Hof ("The Iceman") seems to have popularized this.  There is some evidence that this can stimulate (re)growth of brown fat - a highly vascular form of fat which is adapted to thermogenesis, i.e. turning stored lipids into heat energy.  Human infants have prominent brown fat deposits, which seem to aid small creatures, with a high surface area to volume ratio in comparison to most adults, in maintaining body temperature when ambient conditions are cool or cold (relative to normal body temperature).  Modern western adult humans generally don't have extensive brown fat deposits, though this does vary from one individual to another.  I'd be curious to know whether cold-adapted adult populations (Inuits who live fairly traditionally, Greenlanders, Yakuts, the Tsaatan reindeer herders of Mongolia, etc.) maintain more brown fat deposits from infancy into adulthood, but I haven't found anything to say one way or the other.

I haven't tried either free diving or ice baths (though in my climate, some degree of cold exposure is inevitable).  Sauna (with cold plunges or a roll in the snow) is a way of life here, but I don't have one (not yet, anyway).

The physiological changes associated with the mammalian dive reflex are akin to hibernation.  Brown fat activation is somewhat contrary (but, speculating here, might be necessary for true hibernation to maintain body temperature, or might be useful when awakening from torpor).

Thank you so much Thom! That article is fascinating.

Update on observations and experiments...

When my body temperature is low I find that I can just eat and eat and eat and seek out everything calorie dense. I keep noticing this after being outside for a long time, especially when I wear clothes that aren't the warmest. My mind can get laser-focused on food. I am also more drowsy at night and feel a greater desire to sleep, which keeps the body temperature slightly lower anyway. There are so many interconnected factors that can point towards a shallower or deeper form of adaptation to cold. Though some of these effects, even at only mildly lowered temperature, ended up being against what I usually find desirable, like decreased mental activity and clumsiness. And the appetite was frustrating before I understood what was going on. But when desired and intended, all these things are fine.

Another thing, though, is this: what does one say to other people? I'm imagining the looks on people's faces when told, "Don't expect to hear from me for a few days--I'll be going into hibernation"!

I have tried hibernating in the Idaho Panhandle.It eventually will throw off your sleep pattern,and you will have a gigantic headache from over resting..Your bowels don't appreciate it either! Also you will enter a period of depression which I am fighting off now that I am back home.Humans can't hibernate period !

I’m sorry to hear about the sickness that resulted from trying to hibernate! What did you do?

I know oversleeping can cause sickness and depression and that sounds to be what happened. Is that what you did, try to sleep through the winter? Or did you do something different?

My thinking about when an animal is likely to hibernate, is when it is more pleasurable to hibernate than to stay active. If there is no food outside, then it isn’t pleasant to be active. Likewise if it is excessively cold, then being active is unpleasant. And the more safe and comfortable one’s den is, if it is well made and well insulated, then it would be more pleasant to hibernate. But animals who can find food even when it is cold out, such as predators and browsers, tend to be able to go without hibernating. As well as humans, with our relationship with fire.

A recent sickness made me go into a quiescent state for a few days (though not hibernation). There was much more pleasure in staying in one place, not eating and not moving as opposed to getting up, eating, working, etc. And in particular eating worsened this sickness so it didn’t make sense to eat much. It felt like it clarified some things on an experiential level.

A good example of the principle is white nose fungus in bats. Since it thrives in cold moist environments, it tends to attack the bats during hibernation. It makes them feel itchy and irritated, and when that happens they emerge from hibernation and begin flying. Since it is winter, it is cold and they can’t find any food and so they go outside their cave and die.

It is probably something in DNA.

There are certain traits that follow a person that affect physical and personality-related characteristics.

These traits are across Nutrients, Performance, Sensory, Personality, and Appearance categories.

I just feel that hibernation is not one of those traits....

You may be right. It sounds as if humans are capable of at least something like hibernating though. It is considered safe to meditate deeply for up to six days in one sitting, with a decreased heart rate and metabolism which makes me think that the capacity is there. But the behavior is not typical, especially with humanity as it is today being in such a hurry that even ordinary sleep tends to be difficult.

Pic related.

It seems to me the likely apocryphal stories of Taoist masters (ie “The Seven Taoist Masters”, a great Chinese tale) spending years in caves without food are alluding to something akin to hibernation, but with an integral mental-spiritual aspect. Maybe marmots were the ultimate Taoist masters all along?

😂

Taoist folklore is wonderful, full of all sorts of bizarre and incredible stories. I should read more of it if only for the fun of it. There is one about a woman who ran off into the mountains and subsisted mostly on pine needles and resin, never got cold and lived well over two hundred years. Also slightly dubious and I can’t find the place where I read it. But I like to treat such stories with “respectful unknowing”.

I imagine if people habitually meditated through the winters then we might have a much more enlightened society, or at least a healthier and better rested one, even if we got up for a meal every day. The earlier in life people start meditating, the more likely they are to become enlightened, whatever one considers enlightenment to be, from the examples I’ve heard.