Achieving Human Hibernation: [Suspended Animation In-view]

As advances are being made to alter the course of senescence (the process of aging), many trails have been blazed, and one of them is the initiation of suspended animation. Suspended animation is the process of slowing down, or suspending for a while, the body’s biological functions. This has also been referred to as apparent death or biological dormancy by some. But it is worthy to note that the body doesn’t decay, and it can be resuscitated after a while.

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In the context of suspended animation, there is a temporary disruption in the body’s vital signs, without the brain suffering from decay or deterioration. Amazingly, with a near perfect condition, someone can be kept in this state for centuries, and can still be resuscitated. Now you’re looking for biological immortality; here’s one of the ways to achieve it.

You could be wondering; are humans built to withstand such hibernation? That answer is an emphatic “YES”. I’ll give you a real life scenario. In 2006, A Japanese man; Mitsutaka Uchikoshi survived 24days without water and food by falling into “suspended animation”.  He went missing in Oct 2016 after he had gone mountain climbing. When he was found 24days later, he was in the state of “apparent death”; his organs were temporarily shut, and he had almost no pulse, and the body temperature was greatly reduced.

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When interviewed, he could only remember slipping and falling off the cliff of the mountain. Clearly, his body had to hibernate for him to survive for such period. Though doctors are not sure how his body could achieve this, and how long he can stay in that state, they still believe every other human can achieve that.

Remember, this was done without any scientific aid; just natural. Now, if he could achieve this naturally, with the cutting-edge technologies we have now, we can do even more.

Processes of human hibernation

There are ways to induce hibernations in humans. We’ll be looking at a few of them:

1. Temperature-Induced Hibernation

This is where the technology of cryostasis comes into place. The earlier process of getting this done was by draining the blood from the individual and replacing it with a low temperature fluid, which circulates through the body and keeps the body in this stasis. At this point, you won’t be totally wrong to infer the body is clinically dead. The body will be placed in frozen saline solution. 

But on resuscitation, the blood will be re-delivered, and electric shock will be passed through the heart to boost-start heartbeat.

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2. Chemically-Induced Hibernation

This kind of hibernation entails therapeutic induction. This process is achieved by placing the individual in an enclosure with Hydrogen sulfide supply of over 80ppm for about 7hours. This will throw the individual into hypoxia. This is very effective in the event of an accident. It could save the person’s life and prevents brain death, as he’s being transported to the hospital in an ambulance. On resuscitation, a steady supply of air void of Hydrogen Sulfide is feed to the person for about 3hours.

Potential applications and benefits of Suspended animation

There are many potential applications of this, but I’ll just mention two very important ones:

• Can be used to sustain life in the event of extremely fatal accident
• Could one day lead to the achieving of biological immortality, or at least extending life.

Science and Technology can only get better.

Tech Rules!

References for further reading: Ref1, Ref2, Ref3