Why don’t humans hibernate?

In 1900, a British Medical Journal article was published. described a Russian town called Pskov where people practiced “winter sleeping.”

Families would sleep together almost all day and night. The families would take turns maintaining the stove and eat bread once a week. The “hibernation”, which lasted through the long winter, continued until the grass grew again.

Peasants from 18th century France were also the subject of similar stories.

These narratives have no strong evidence to support them. These accounts of “human hibernation,” if true, have likely been exaggerated.

What Is Hibernation

Hibernation occurs when animals reduce their metabolic activity to conserve energy.

During hibernation animals enter into a state called torpor, a deep sleep like state where their body temperature and heart rate are significantly reduced.

Hibernation allows for animals to survive longer periods without food. Bears will consume large quantities of food prior to hibernating in order to accumulate fat reserves that they can use as energy during hibernation.

Hibernation occurs in many animals including hummingbirds, hummingbirds, frogs and bees.

Hibernation occurs most often in animals living in cold climates. It allows them to conserve their energy in the winter when temperatures are too low to hunt and forage. Some animals in warm climates such as bees and bats can also enter torpor when food is scarce or temperatures are extreme.

Why Don’t We Hibernate?

Hibernation is not possible for humans because we lack the necessary biological adaptations.

Hibernation involves a complex, multi-step process. It includes significant changes in an animal’s physiology. These include a drastic reduction in body temperature, heart rate and breathing rate. These changes could be dangerous to humans because our bodies aren’t adapted to handle such extremes in heart rate and temperature.

Recent research suggests that humans from a half-million years ago had the capability to hibernate. It is possible that modern humans have lost this ability over the years as they evolved and adapted to new environments.

Hibernation could have become less beneficial, or not hibernating became more advantageous. Humans who reproduced and hunted all year long were more likely than those who remained inactive during a few months of the year to survive and pass their genes on.

Fire, clothing and improved food storage and gathering practices, as well as innovations such a fire, clothing and other technologies, may have also helped to make hibernation unnecessary.

Human Hibernation Applications

Some researchers believe that our genetic code may still contain the ability for our evolutionary ancestors to hibernate.

Human hibernation could be possible through medical advances in the future. Healthcare teams have been known to induce therapeutic hypothermia when dealing with high-risk situations such as trauma, difficult surgery, or transplants.

While this is not exactly hibernation (although it can be), therapeutic hypothermia lowers the body’s temperature and respiratory rate to a level that may reduce the risk of life-threatening emergencies.

More advancements in the space and medical fields may open up new possibilities. Long space flights could be made possible if inactive people can be kept safe and healthy using fewer resources.

As of yet, there is no known way to put a person into a state of prolonged torpor. This method of reducing body temperature and metabolic function carries with it a high risk for organ failure, nutritional deficiency, immune system malfunctions and other life-threatening situations.