In my miseducated youth, I used to try to power through the winter with an “Are we there yet?” attitude.
Overwhelm, exhaustion and meltdowns over the course of several decades finally led to a kinder approach to winter. Since discovering the JOMO (Joy-of-Missing-Out) of hibernating during the winter months, it has made the whole season marginally tolerable.
There are those among us who actually enjoy this dim and dreary time of year, who relish the Siberian winds that chill the very soul. Some out there even wish it would snow. I can’t be able. Hunkering down, and Hygge-ing up, I yearn for Spring.
The human body can tolerate little in terms of fluctuations of temperature. A few degrees up or down results in fever or hypothermia, both of which kill us pretty quickly if not treated, fast. Indeed, living year-round in Nanjing provides ample opportunity to explore extremes in temperature and their effect on the body, but none so extreme as rising above critical fever level of 42 degrees Celcius or below 35 for hypothermia, in terms of internal body temperature.
This year and last has surely allowed us to get a decent idea of our typical body temperature. Mine is 35.6 , which is lower than the average of 37. So, it doesn’t take much to activate “I’m freezing” mode.
Once the dark days and sub-zero temps set in, the only way through is by layering up and upping the ante on bedtime. Drastically. If it were possible to up this ante to say, 6 weeks, I would be in.
Still, web searches on human hibernation turn up naught but fantastical possibilities for space exploration, and very significant developments in trauma care for victims of cerebral or cardiac arrest. Human hibernation, it would appear, is impossible. We can’t store food or water, so would die of starvation. We can’t suppress metabolism without the resulting organ failure and would die of sepsis. We can’t resist the urge to murder and plunder those settlements which tried to “sleep it off”, and would die of the human condition.
Hibernation, torpor, “deep sleep”; the state of minimal thermal, breathing and metabolic activity by which many animals in less temperate climates survive the winter. Humans do not hibernate.
The BBC Science Focus Magazine ascribes this criminal inability to the fact that homo sapiens wandered out of Africa relatively late in the evolutionary process, already equipped with fire, clothes, hunting and agriculture; thus eliminating the need to sink into baseline metabolic rates to survive frigid conditions.
Those who did try to snooze through the winter blues were “ousted by the guys with the fur clothes sitting around the campfire in the next cave along”.
And yet, for those of us engulfed by invernal torpor, the doubt lingers. Perhaps some of us perishers survived, perhaps we maintain the topical winter torpor gene on the down low. A soon as the December equinox draws close, I feel the need for sleep, for bed, for warmth, for solitude. Retreating to my cave, I wonder. I wonder.
Stories of mythical beasts do exist, strange creatures who despite the decisive research to the contrary, have gone ahead and hibernated anyway, like a boss.
On 7 October, 2006, 35-year old Mitsutaka Uchikoshi decided to walk down Mount Rokko in Western Japan, rather than join his friends in the post-picnic cable car ride home. Totally relatable, as a sufferer of vertigo, but what happened next beggars belief. With nothing but the dregs of a bottle of water and a pouch of barbeque sauce, Uchikoshi set off on foot. He got lost. What else to do, in the woods? He found a stream, thinking to follow it to a settlement. He slipped, fell, and broke his pelvis. After wandering around for one more day, Uchikoshi stumbled upon a meadow, and in the sunlight, with a feeling of great comfort, he lay down and went to sleep. On October 31st, 24 days later, a hiker stumbled across his body.
Incredibly, the body was still alive. At 22 degrees, suffering multiple organ failure and blood loss, Uchikoshi made a full recovery and was discharged from hospital by a baffled medical team, with a clean bill of health. Doctors around the globe have hailed the case as “revolutionary”, though some remain skeptical, stating that 24 days without water is physiologically impossible.
In Canada, the country where you go for the culture and scenery, and stay because your car won’t start, Erika Norbury wandered into the unforgiving night back in 2001 wearing nothing but a pink t-shirt and a diaper, and in the most literal sense of the word, froze to death. It was minus 24 degrees outside.
When her mother found her 2 hours later, she was curled into a ball and “so cold, […] she was afraid to hold her too tightly for fear of breaking off her frozen limbs.” She was considered clinically dead upon arrival to hospital, she had no pulse or vital signs, and her core body temperature was 16 degrees.
And yet, despite the “chunk” of ice in her throat that prevented the paramedics from intubating, despite the feet frozen together, despite it all, she survived. It’s believed that due to the rapid cooling (to say the least) of her body, the brain was able to survive with enough oxygen, though all other vital signs were virtually non-existent.
Still, these cases involve actually freezing the body in order to keep the central operating system, the brain, alive. And as we have already established, it is the feeling cold part of winter that is up in the top three things I hate most about the damnable season.
It would seem that the dream of hitting the duvet for the duration of deep winter was not to be. Imagine my surprise, when at last I came across a journal article by Juan-Luis Arsuaga and Antonis Bartsiokas, entitled Hibernation in hominins from Atapuerca, Spain half a million years ago.
This paper, published in the journal L’Anthopologie, postulates the very real possibility of hibernation as a means for surviving the frigid Iberian winters for our hominin ancestors.
The Atapuerca UNESCO World Heritage site, is an anthropological treasure trove of fossil remains which are over 400,000 years old. That’s 20,000 generations ago. Granted, much has changed since then, but still, possible is possible. Helpfully known as Sima de los Huesos, the pit of bones, Atapuerca, near Burgos in northern Spain, has provided scientists with enough evidence of seasonal disruption of bone growth to propose hibernation as an explanation.
The patterns in human bone growth, matched those of the bones of bears found in the same cave system. And bears, as well we know, are a dab hand at hibernating.
In 2022, the obsession with hibernation hinges on the desire to explore deep space, lessening the need for space, fuel, and the psychological challenges of long-distance space voyages. Because the 300 million miles, 7 years trip to Mars would rouse an “Are we there yet?” from even the most stoic of wanderlusts.
Its practical implications have allowed for medical advancement of therapeutic hypothermia. It’s been done, but we don’t know how. As I tap the keys in my mittens, swathed in four layers of wool beneath my leg blankets, Nanjing, China and much of Asia slips into its annual torpor, the city sleeps and the dwellers celebrate Lunar New Year, The Year of The Tiger.
In Ireland, February 1st heralds the beginning of Springtime. The dark months are long and weary. The practical implications of figurative hibernation have also lessened the psychological challenges of the winter voyage in my life, given that the fight and flight option is still a no go.
But yes, fellow travellers. We are nearly there.
Xin Nian Kuai Le, Nanjingers.
