Hibernation: Not a Snooze

thousand nine. Uh, And we love it when people go back and listen to all the podcasts in order, right, But what really helps us out is if you want to start at the beginning and also listen to the most recent episode. Does that work? Yeah? I call it sandwiching. Oh really, that's the term for yeah, you started. If you want to start at the beginning, that's great. But it also really helps us out if you listen to the most recent one. And um, so I just want

to throw it out there. You know, we don't want to tell you how to listen. I see what you're doing. This is just a request or or you could just go buy yourself a two thousand and twelve camera. That's very true, right, but it does help us. And you know, if you really don't want to do that, of course, listen how you want. But um, it's good for us

that the most recent episodes get listened to. And um, I think it's kind of cool then because you you can flash forward through time and see how bad we were then and how bad we are now and just compare off a little little different thing. Yeah yeah, alright, well put man, Yeah, just a p s A. Appreciate that. That's good. P s A. How's your Facebook page? Wait

a minute, just occurred to me. Though people aren't listening to this recent one anyway, then they're not gonna not to do Maybe the people they live with, who sandwich, We'll tell them, Hey man, yeah, you should be doing in a different way. I didn't think that through. But what did you ask me? I asked how your Facebook pages going? Oh, Charles W Chuck Bryant, Yes, it's going

well good. I'm on there a little bit and uh, putting an insider stuff like occasionally even say what we are recording that day, which is, oh yeah, we've usually not we guarded that with like Fort Knox, But occasionally I'll throw that out there. Yeah, that's good. And then other stuff, you know, insider heads up on performances and ticket sales, you know, dog and cat pictures. That's what I'm doing. I've got my own Twitter account to josh

um Clark. Yeah, and where can they find you? On Facebook? Same same place. I don't even bother Okay, just go to Twitter, all right here the Facebook guy? Sure, what's yours? Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Yeah, it's like behind the scenes or just other stuff, you know, things that strike your fancy. Yeah, that's a lot of admin and stuff for us today. Yeah. Do you want to do administrative details right now while we're at it? Nope, you want to talk about hibernation.

So Charles Chuck, if you will. Um, right now, you're sitting there, you're thinking, you're moving your papers around, looking up and down, breathing, hearts beating at uh. You're got an eye on Jerry Um eating her fritos, eating her Freedo's. Jerry is burning a lot of energy too, but she's also taking it in. And all of this energy expenditure requires a ton of energy input, and in fact, we humans in particular, are not really great at um at

energy conversion. Right. We lose like six of the energy if we break down glucoast into c O two and I think a t P and a TPS like this really powerful molecule that powers ourselves. When we do that, we lose like six of that potential energy to heat a waste, you'd think so, but it turns out we have evolved the channel that waste into keeping our bodies warm,

which makes us warm blooded. Right. The thing is is we have something really important and maybe one of the most overlooked important technologies humans ever came up with clothing, which allows us to live outside of our normal habitat, which is the tropics and subtropical areas. That's why we spread about the earth exactly thanks to clothing, in large part in shoes to a lesser But that's part of clothing any important extent. Sure, but it depends on who

you asking. Isn't it accessory? But if we if we were warm blooded animals that didn't have clothing and had kind of spread out into colder climbs, one strategy that we might have when it got really cold and food became scarce therefore the energy input was a lot harder to come by. Might be hibernation, that's right, which is something some animals do. That's right. Uh, it's funny. I think a lot of people think of bears and mediately when they think of hibernation, um. But not only do

a lot of animals hibernate um bears. If you want to get technical, let's get technical technical. Oh boy, that'll be in the brain forever now. Um. Technically, bears do not hibernate. Um. We are going to call it hibernation. And a lot of people do. Say. You know, any animal that undergoes a period sustained period of like a body temperature drop and metabolism change, um is high hibernation. And that's what I think. But technically the real um.

You know, if you get a pedantic biologist up in your grill, they might um push the glasses back on their nose and say that it's when the temperature is significantly decreased long term state. This is a sixty biologist you're doing. Metabolism slows drastically, and the the will energy coma like condition that takes some time to recover from. Uh. And bears are a little different because they aren't really in that coma like state. You can wake them up

pretty easily. You should not their temperature, y, Yeah, I think that's important to be right. Hey, you hybernating bear, um, and the body temperature of the bears don't drop very much compared to some other animals. But yeah, for our intents and purposes, as we're going to dig into the whole thing. When we say hibernation, we mean anytime an animal UM goes into this kind of state beyond sleep,

with the goal of surviving a rough period of the year. Yeah, whether it's a shortage of food or whether um and it could be cold. Usually associate hibernation with you know, winter time, but actually, in the tropics there's something called estivation, which is hibernation during the hottest or driest times of the year. Pretty cool. Never knew that. Um. There are also reptiles who hibernate. It's called broomation and um. There's also torpor, which is a great word this is that's

another confusing term though. Torpor can mean um. It can be an umbrella term for any hibernation strategy, right, or it can refer to a specific type of hibernation that's usually, Um, it happens on a daily basis, like a few hours maybe, And so like you're hearing all this, chuck, I can. I can put myself in the mind of people listening. They're like, you guys are talking about sleep, your dummies, it's called sleep. This is not sleep actually no, uh.

And that's very important to point out because I think if you don't know about hibernation, like I probably used to think, yeah, bears go sleepy time for half the year, It's like none of that is correct at all. So um, it's it's very different from sleep. Sleep is uh. When you hibernate, you're really going on undergoing some pretty drastic physiological physiological changes. When you sleep, you undergo a little bit of a change, Like even when we sleep, our

heart rate slows a bit, body temperature drops a little bit. Yeah, breathing slows a little bit, but nothing, it's not anything drastic at all. It's more of a mental change, right. Yeah, that's the big difference between sleep and hibernation. With sleep, your brain is taking time to rest. Even though there are plenty of phases of sleep where your brain is active,

it's also very inactive for large parts of it with hibernation. Apparently, when an animal is in even deep hibernation, its brain is still um reflecting the same type of waves I believe alpha waves that has when it's wakeful, that they're just somewhat suppressed. And actually when when animals come out of hibernation, they apparently have sleep deprivation and have to sleep for several days afterwards. Yeah, that's the fact of

the show for me. Oh yeah, yeah, like sorry for taking out no, no no, no, You'll wake up from a six month hibernation like I'm sleepy. Yeah, I gotta get some reths from laying around like this for six months. But it's all because of those brain waves. I think it's pretty interesting. Um, if you're in a zoo, you probably don't hibernate. I'm not talking about a guest and visitor at a zoo. If you're an animal living in a zoo, you probably don't hibernate because you're they're regulating

your environment. Your food is not going to be scarce. But in order sometimes to give these animals a more natural life cycle, they will trigger hibernational purpose. Yeah, they're just like blast them with an ice ray or something. An ice ray yeah. Uh, and as far as when to hibernate, like when it all depends on the animal, on when they do it, and it depends on the animal and how it's triggered, like when they know to

do it. Yeah. Yeah, So there's actually there's a biologist whose name was Jurgen ash Off and uh dr ash Off assuming doctor sounds like a bad Bond villain, almost um or an actor playing a Bond villain. Um dr ash Off came up with a term for all the different kinds of triggers that can trigger hibernation and sleepy triggs zeit geiber. Does that make sense to you because you're in a German so zeit means um uh. Right, So this, this wonderful term um is probably does mean

in German sleepy time triggers. It's a good German band name too, yeah, but the yeah because there's not a third word. The third word. The three word band names bothered me. They're really tough to pull off, and when they are pulled off, well great, they're usually done very well. But it's also really easy to fumble a three word band name. I'm trying to of three word band names now, like Bachman Turner, Overdrive. Yeah, great one. Brian Jonestown Massacre,

great one. Fleetwood Big Mac. I'll bet there's a cover band out there named that. Actually just saw a Fleetwood Mac cover band. Where were they called? I don't go to those tribute cover bands ever, but um, he just came to in the middle of one. No. I noticed there was a Smith's cover band playing and they were opening up for rumors. They're from Atlanta. Actually, the Fleetwood Mac one and uh, the Smiths one was tough. I

had a hard time watching the guy. I mean, the band was great and he sounded good, but what was the problem. He was morrisying around the stage and you can't morris see around the stage unless you're Morrissey. So I just had to kind of look at the guitar player and Johnny Marring on the stage. Now, he was fine. But Fleetwood Mac rumors they are great, dude, I mean unbelievably great, really, And if you like Fleetwood Mac and you don't want to pay two hundred dollars to go

see them, they go see rumors that huh. I mean he sounded just like them anyway, shout out to rumors. I guess so I might be on a new cover band kick though, So I found myself kind of perusing like what's coming in Atlanta, thinking like, yeah, that was kind of fun, right, who's coming? Soo? So are they coming? No? But there's uh a night of that of it with a C. D. C. Van Halen and one other like classic rock band is going to be all playing together,

I think featuring the real Sammy Hagar. Maybe you never know in Michael Anthony too, although my hat's off to Sammy Hagar for stepping up to defend Michael Anthony like a year or so ago. Oh I thought you're gonna say hats off to him for not driving well too, Yeah, he did take up for Michael Anthony. All right, So we're talking about Zeke geiber and again this is all the ways that like hibernation could be triggered. And I think you said temperature is like the big one, right,

that's the main, most common one. We talked a little bit about food supplies there. I mean there are many animals who are triggered by food supplies, birds most notably um, although there's only one bird that goes into true hibernation. Oh yeah, yeah, chicken. Now the common poor will actually goes into like real hibernation from like five months, and other birds just have a torqu port like you were saying, a few hours a day. It's all they need to

conserve a little bit energy. Yeah, and I mean again, that's the point, like you're trying to save calories, right, Yeah, it's that's the whole point exactly. Um. So there's also something called photo period where the days start getting shorter and it triggers um a hibernation response in animals too. Yeah.

And a really cool thing that this article pointed out was that they've done experiments where they've had animals in uh I was about to say, and capture locked away room studying animals that have no triggers like this going on, and they have this weird ability they don't understand, triggered by their circannual rhythm where they just know this like internal biological clock where they just know it's time. Pretty amazing,

It is amazing. And that's in contrast of the circadian rhythm which we all know and love that makes us sleepy when the day ends. That's right, Um, let's let's take a break man, all right, are you ready? Yeah, I'm gonna go listen to some Fleetwood Big Mac. You know, Josh, Starting your own business can be quite a chore, my friend, and developing your online presence doesn't have to be the

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it beautiful, all right, Tucka. We were talking about um ways that animals know, and like you said, they just seemed to know naturally when the go hibernate um and when they start getting these these triggers, they're like, oh, it's starting to be time. Um. One of the first things they do is prepare a place to stay. They fluff the pillow, check out the sleeping bag. What else. If they're the hair Bear Bunch, they just basically settle into their awesome den. Do you remember them, the hair

bear the Hairbear Bunch early seventies. They lived in a zoo, but they had like the coolest They had, like a TV and like a like great recliners and a barbridgerator. Sure, yeah, the hair Bear Bunch. You remember the um the bear with like the cravat and like the big afro. One of them had like a camouflage hat that covered his eyes, like the guy from Cypress Hill. No, I don't remember that at all, Chuck, you gotta check out the hair Bear Bunch. I think you might like them. That was

my generation too. Yeah, that was right there. Interesting maybe, and my parents didn't let me watch it. They're like that that bears obviously on the dope who knows, uh, But you are correct. They prepare their little area depends on the animal on what they do. Might be a cave, a little ground squirrel or a lemur might um dig out their den and put some insulating material around it. We talked about polar bears. Yeah, the polar bear. Mom's kind of combine hibernation and um birth right. They dig

out like a snowden, which again great movie. Uh. Sometimes they don't dig out a big area. Sometimes they'll just find a little tree hollow, a little shallow cave, and they're kind of partially exposed to the weather. Yeah, because I was thinking about that. When you think of bears hybriding, and you think of a bear hybriding in a cave, they couldn't be too far into the cave because the same triggers that that put them to sleep and and

trigger hybernation, um, also bring them out of it. Sure, so they would make sense that they would need to be like partially exposed to the weather. Yeah. You know, so as the days started to get longer they would wake up, or as the temperature got warmer, they would they would kind of come out of it. And think about that. Um. Food storage is a big deal. Um. Sometimes if it's non perishable foods, you can actually keep

it in there with you. Uh. And we bring this up because, UM, it's a bit of a misconception that the animals, some animals do knock out for months and months at a time, but some will wake up occasionally just to shove some food in their mouth and then go back to sleep, well, not sleep, go back into hibernation mode. So they should have some food in there. Or maybe they've just eaten so much prepared fattened up for the winter months that they don't need to eat

at all. I saw somewhere that some bears um go for meeting in an average of eight thousand calories a day to twenty calories a day to fatten up in like the weeks leading up to to hibernation. So we talk about brown fat now, I guess, yeah, it sounds gross. It's delicious, though. Brown fat is different than white fat when we typically process fat um for for energy and

heat it. Uh, there's there's something called shivering that it facilitates that helps us well, yeah, shivering shivering right, yeah, yeah, just muscle contraction burns energy and releases heat. Yeah, but brown fat is great because we don't need to shiver it. Actually, the brown fat is oxidized directly and it instantly produces the heat. It's gives the whole middle part, so you don't need to shiver. It doesn't waste energy on muscle contraction,

not at all. That's it's called non shivering thermogenesis. Nice. So that's why you want the brown fat. Yeah, and that's what the bears bulk up with. I guess, I guess all animals do, or maybe not all animals, but an it's handy. Well, when you do have to burn that fat, whether it's brown fat or otherwise, um, you you use up a lot of that stored energy because

fat is a great energy store, right. Um. And if you're a pretty large animal, you if you let your body temperature get too low, because again most of the time this is in very very cold climates in the winter, right if you, if we if you let your body temperature to get too low, it's gonna take a lot of energy to get it back to its normal warm

blooded state, even even it's normal hibernating temperature. So animals have astoundingly something called a set point, and it's like an internal thermostat setting that says, when my body temperature gets to this this temperature, burn some fat and warm

me back up. And uh, I guess all warm blooded animals have this set point, right, Yeah, but for the larger animals it's higher because again it requires so much energy to to to restore it that their body temperature never gets too low and their set point is being activated pretty frequently during hibernation. But if you're a much smaller animal, I think the Arctic ground squirrel is like the best example of of hibernation, especially in this respect.

The Arctic ground squirrel a warm blooded animal. Their body temperature will get below freezing during hibernation and you would think, well, you know, that's got to be pretty terrible for him. Yes, it is. They lose bone density, they lose their teeth, their brain actually they lose like parts of it, and um, they come very close to dying or being dead. And then the thaw comes and they are they're they're aroused from their hibernation and all of a sudden they start

growing all that stuff back. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. Yeah, Like, oh, I just want to say, move right. Well, I go through that every year. All this is controlled mostly by the endocrine system. Uh, and we have these glands in our body that alter all these hormones and it can really control with great precision all these physiological changes that they need to go through. Yeah, I say, we but yeah, I'm an animal too, I guess yeah, party animal. Uh

should we talk about some of the uh specifics of that? Right? So um and again like this is the reason why things like temperature changes and um, the changes in the amount of sunlight during any given day can trigger hibernation because those are capable of affecting hormones. Right. That's right. So you're picking up things like um, like when to grow your coat, it triggers melatonin production, which triggers a

thick coat like coat thickening. Yeah. Right, your pituitary gland is gonna control that fat old up the heart rate and the breathing rate and metabolic functions. That's a big one. Intuitary gland takes care of a lot. Oh yeah, you lose that, you probably can't hibernate. Uh. Thyroid m that's gonna control your metabolism somewhat and your levels of activity. Right. And then finally, insulin, as we all know, is gonna regulate your glucose. Right. There's also something that was isolated.

It's an opioid called datal d a d l e UM and they found that it lowers heart rate and um respiration in animals and that if you give any animal this, they kind of start to get into hibernation mode. So it's not like I don't think it's a hormone, it's a chemical, but it has like a hibernating effect on animals. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So some of these

changes can be pretty drastic. The heart rate can drop to as little as two and a half percent um a chipmunk, for example, five beats per minute as opposed to two d that's pretty significant. Let's to the bat. Some some species of bat go from a thousand beats per minutes and they only breathe once every two hours, amazing. And the box turtle doesn't breathe at all. It completely

shuts down breathing. But I mean that makes sense. Like when you are when you're running off of stored fat, right, Yeah, you you don't have the need to power cells like normal. Your hybrid and your metabolism is slowed because your cells aren't requiring the same energy that they have before, which means that you don't need oxygen or nearly as much oxygen,

so you don't have to breathe as much. And since you're not taking in that much oxygen, your your blood doesn't need to pump nearly as much either, because that's the point of the heart and your blood is to spread oxygen through your body at least in last part. Uh, and the turtle, the box turtle takes an air through the skin, So like you said, it still needs the oxygen, but just said need to breathe to get it right, And it doesn't need much because the box tirtroles heartbeats

about every once every ten minutes. Man. That's then two minutes later boo boom, alright, pretty amazing. Um. And then uh, most animals, probably all animals that go into any sort of deep hibernation, they have like x amount of fat stored up that they that should carry them through the winter. Right. Um, that's why you should never ever mess with a hibernating animal of any type because you will basically have killed

it if you rouse it from its hibernation. It will take a tremendous amount of energy to to come back to wakefulness right and to bring that temperature up right. And so it just spent way more than its budget for um for the winter. So even if it can get back into hibernation, it'll starve to death because it used up a bunch because you some jerk woke it up from its hibernation. Why did you do that? I

didn't do it. I'm just saying, uh, waste If you're wondering, Um, I know, we kind of gave it away a little bit in the Polar Bear episode about the poop and peepee. Um, some or most animals that go into deep hibernation don't do either one. Uh, there is no poopoo because they're not eating. Um all that all that food has been digested already and turn into fat. Yeah, so there's nothing going through the intestines at all, which must be a

wonderful feeling. Oh yeah, you know when you empty outrook good. But the body does produce urea no matter what, and that's the waste product in urine and hibernating animals actually recycle that. Bears in particular, break it down into amino acids and use it. And if you think, well, they're not drinking, how are they not dehydrated? That comes from fat too. Pretty unreal, it really is. Yeah, this whole thing is just like it's unbelievable that animals uh evolved

to do this to survive, you know. Yeah, but I mean it makes uttering plete sense. It's like the food supply dried it up for five months. Well, then just go to sleep, don't eat any food, and again they're not sleeping. Yeah, it's really tough to avoid that, I know. But just go hibernate. Yeah, I think we point about that earlier. We mentioned estivation, which is hibernation and hot weather. This is something I did not know existed until the

last few days. Yeah, Um, in the desert. If you live in the desert or a tropical climate and it gets too hot, or if the food is getting low, you may not be able to survive unless you dig a hole and dig down into the earth where it's cooler and more more stable temperature down there. Or if you are a fish or a primitive fish that has lungs like a long fish, um, you may live in an area where the your body of water dries up annually. This is a good reason to estivate too, right, So

long fish actually um produce mucus. They create a mucous sack around themselves that dries on the inside but stays wet. No dries on the outside, stays wet on the inside. Yeah, they're like down in the mud, right, um. But the lake can completely dry out around them and they still stay hydrated and um, they don't dry out. They're lungfish, though, so they breathe through long so they have like a one.

They also make a tube of mucus nbelievable that reaches into the air, so they can breathe while they're sequestered away and that's good eating too. I I don't know lungfish. Yeah, those are. Maybe we're related to those. We're both tetrapods. Did you know that, Uh, we're related to the lungfish. I don't think I did know that, although it makes sense because they you know, they're the only fish I

think that breathes that way, right, I believe so. But they're also, um, probably one of the first fish to start to come out of water and produce what became amphibians. I just had to look up a lung fish real quick. You've seen it before. Yeah, it looks sort of like an eel a little. But they have like foot like appendages almost. Yeah, interesting, just like us. I have a foot like appendage. You can do two of them. Uh. So we talked a little bit about torpor with birds.

The black capped chickadee has a daily torpor that it undergoes for a few hours and like we said, it just that's all. It needs, just a few degrees lower in their body, just for a few hours a day to conserve that little bit of energy that it needs. Uh and only that poor will will. Um, they have a drop and energy needs the poor will does. And then back in the spring when things warm up, the poor will needs about seven hours to stretch it out.

Seven wait, seven hours of torpor, No, seven hours of getting back to north speed again after they wake up from hibernation. Because a lot of animals it takes a long time. But this, this little bird needs about seven hours. And he's like, all right, let's do this. I'm up and at him exactly. He's like that guy from Jerry McGuire, which guy, remember, the guy who like had like the interstitial interviews. He was like, every morning I wake up

and put my hand, yeah, let's go. Yeah, you know they Cameron Crow tried to get Billy Wilder for that role. And there's a great story that he told because he just revered Billy Wilder. Billy Wilder, the great filmmaker and writer, directed The Apartment among others and Boulevard too, m M, I don't know about that. Maybe. Uh So Billy Wilder said no, and Cameron Crows like please, like this would really be awesome, and he said no. So Tom Cruise was like, let me, uh come to the next meeting

and ask him, because I'm Tom curt right. So the Cruise rolls in there and asked Billy Wilder and he says no. And Cameron Crow how he put it was I could tell from the look on Tom's face that no was an word he heard often. And that's stuck with me all these years that Tom Cruise was uh told no by Billy Wilder and was just like what his smiling didn't change, is like the entire change took place in the light in his eyes. Pretty funny. Billy Wilder did direct Sunset Boulevard by the way he did.

Um all right. And hummingbirds we should mention because those little dudes and d debts are very active, as you know. Have you ever seen them flitter around? Uh? They in order to do that, they have a heart rate up to twelve hundred beats per minute. So when you see the hummingbird and it looks like they're going like all over the place they are. It's not just their wings,

Like they're in a constant state of high heart rate. Uh. And their consumption is so great that they used daily tour poor even in there in the tropics, Like every hummingbird you know has a daily torpor where they um, and I think it's like more torpoor than other birds even, Right, So it has nothing to do with weather in their case,

there's juiced up. So if uh, if this whole idea of hibernation is like a really kind of ancient mechanism, right, and we're all connected far back into the tree of life, it raises the question, are can humans conceivably hybernate? Right? And that's a it's it's not just us asking that, that's right. So let's stick a break and we'll talk about that right after this. M h alright, Josh, can

humans hybernate? Uh? Probably not. Well, it's a pretty controversial thing because there are some scientists that say, absolutely, we have this latent ability that we could tap into, and

then other scientists say absolutely not. Asleep. Yeah, Um, we did a whole episode on therapeutic hypothermia that touched on a lot of this and actually NASA's got a contract with the company from here in Atlanta called space Works, and space Works has something called rhino chill where they introduce chilled liquids up your nose to cool the base

of your brain. That's where you lose me. Well, yes, well you would lose consciousness, right, And apparently it slows metabolism and induces like a hybrid ation like state, and they're looking into it to see if they can use it for long distance space travel, like a trip to Mars or something like the exactly like in the movies. Um, NASA is very much looking into this kind of thing and apparently has been since the fifties since the movie.

Said they basically, yeah, um, but this idea of entering hibernation or it's also frequently called suspended animation, that kind of thing, Um, it would help tremendously, Yeah, because not only would you save people from like the boredom of a six month space trip, you'd save them from going a little crazy from that. Save on food supplies, save on space because the people don't need to move around

or exercise or anything. I guess it's slowing their aging as well, right, because I don't know that'd be the interesting thing. I would guess, so, yeah, because I would think the process of aging is the wearing out of your body from metabolism. And if your metabolism slowing, you're not aging. Sure, yeah, probably, I'm sure didn't shut it down. But andantee, there's a formula, you know, so there is

I mean, there is actual interest in this kind of thing. Um, you found a cool thing from the British Medical Journal. Uh from geez, how long a d? Ten years ago? Yeah, on the nose hundred sixteen years ago. It was an article titled human hibernation and they reprinted it about sixteen years ago and they talked about these Russians peasants that

did something called lutska. I think you nailed there, which is essentially, um, six months during the hardest winters, the family will kind of hibernate, like they don't do anything. They sleep as much as they can, eat a little hard tech, drink a little water, and someone stays up to keep the fire going. They you know, take turns doing that. But otherwise they are just bedded down conserving

their energy. Yeah, that's it. They wake up once a day, Like you said, a little bread pick, a little water go back to sleep. Imagine that's gotta like I'm sure it's not so drastic like some of these mammals that we've talked about, but it's got to have a physiological effect,

the desired effect. I mean, think about it. That's why they tell you if you're trying to lose weight, don't eat for hours before you go to bed, because all you're gonna do is just you're you're not gonna burn any of that energy off because you're just laying there sleeping. Same thing with this, I mean they're there. It's kind of like a forced pseudo hibernation, self induced pseudo hibernation that they're like, we're it's a strategy. We're not going

to use up as much um energy. We're just gonna lay here. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. And I think these survival shows that you see to um they do a lot of laying around when the food is scarce as well. Yeah, I mean it's that's what you want to do. Yeah, Plus, but I think you're kind of forced to su yeah, because you lose energy. Yeah, you have no food energy, so you're, yeah, you can't do any thing. There's one

other thing I wanted to mention too, you got something else? No, I mean, just you know, I remember a few years ago, I guess it was ten years ago now, I remember when that Japanese man was lost in the woods and claims that in some scientists agree that he went into a state of hibernation. Yeah, we talked about him in the Therapeutic Hypothermia episode. Yeah. I think we might have done one of our old video things on him too. Oh yeah, it seems like it man a while ago.

We've covered everything, dude. But there's been other cases like that, Yeah, from people like stranded in cars. Uh, Swedish biologists who like, yeah, for all intensive purposes, drowning an icy creek was revived. That's yeah. I guess that's a little more like the therapeutic hypothermia huh. But no, the same thing with the Japanese man and the woman in the trunk of the car. They were both exposed to below freezing temperatures and it

lowered their metabolism pretty amazing. And then there was this guy who was not in freezing temperatures. Back in nineteen seventy three, there was a journal article I can't remember the name of the journal um that they did a study with a Yogi Yogi Satya Murky and for eight days he went into like a state of basically like meditative hibernation as far as they don't. He didn't need or drink anything. Um, he lost ten pounds four and

a half KOs. His body temperature dropped down to ninety four degrees, which doesn't seem that much, but apparently that was the ambient temperature of where he was sealed often. And um, they had an e KG. They had e KG sensors detecting his heartbeat, and apparently his heartbeat went up to like two beats a minute and then started to taper off. And after like the first day and for the next seven days they basically couldn't detect a heartbeat.

He like lowered his heartbeat so much. And um, I haven't seen I've seen it mentioned here there or whatever, but I've not seen anybody say, well, this is how he did it, or this is the trick. Um. It seems to be one of those weird curiosities of science that it's just kind of over there, you know what I mean. I think I remember that. I'm like, that's incredible. When I was a kid. No, oh yeah, remember that show. I think I remember a piece on this dude. I

wouldn't be surprised if they did. You have his name, Yogi Sachi Murty, different guy. There was another Yogi though on that show, Yogi Bearra. No, he could do the same thing right there on the bench. Da dugout? Uh? Do we should we talk about the hydrogen sulfide real quick? There's a cell biologist named Mark Roth at the Fred

Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and cl and UM. In two thousand five, there was a big experiment where uh, scientists induced hibernation and lab mice by giving them h hydrogen sulfide gas and apparently it shut down there. It really induced hibernation, the body temperature, shut down their metabolic processes, and then they gave them normal air and then they were fine again. And they're thinking they're they're trying it now on roundworms, which apparently we have the same reaction

humans do. What's it called nitrogen sulfide The effect? Oh yeah, it's like that initial not it's kind of like, you know, gas somebody and it knocks them out. Uh. And they're doing experiments that they think that might be the key to inducing this in humans, whether for space travel or I think what was one of the other things they said it would be good for is um oregan transplants, right, that's it, And by that I meant Oregon, not Oregon transplants. Yeah,

and people moving from northern California. Um. I think they mentioned something too about people in vegetative states. Uh, they could help them out if they're if they kind of shut their metabolic functioning down while they wait for a cure or something. I'm not sure. The thing I saw about the that gas was that if you main exposed to it, you die, which I guess is like some sort of like inert gas asphyxiation. But it seemed different than that, Like, I don't know why that would mean

that it showed promise for hibernation. Maybe if, like you, you expose somebody to it and then let off a little bit, and then expose them to it and let off that you could keep it up like that. Yea, like a good dentist. We'll go, we'll go run our own experiments after this. If you want to know more about hibernation, you can tape that word in the search bar and they'll bring up this article, which is a

grabster article. Oh, that's right, yeah, marcro quality. Uh. And since I said grabs there, it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this wine growing. Hey, guys, enjoyed the episode on ice ages and commend you on your ability to once again distill a complicated subject into an informative entertainment piece. That's what we do. As a quick note from the wine industry, we often and I often personally

prefer the term wine growing. You broke you both chuckled at the phrase in the episode, but actually conveys the job better than anything else. Grapes grown for wine are generally different varieties held to different standards than grapes grown for eating or juice production. Berries are smaller, contain less juice, more acid and sugar, and have bitter skins and seeds, which make them less appetizing than the grapes you find in the supermarket. The piece are the qualities that make

good wine. In fact, many professional associations in the wine industry refer to themselves as wine growers. Unfortunately, the vines don't grow and finished bottles wine is made there in the vineyard, though the goal is to bring out the best in the fruit once it is inside the winery. I keep up the good work. I encourage you to try some of the wines from around Delanaga, Georgia. Great wine is made everywhere. You may be surprised. What is

just down the road, Steve, Steve, Steve, send us some wine. Yeah, man, that's how we try some wine. I'm in the wine industry. Go try someone send us some wine. Yes, Steve, I like big beefy red full bodied reds, dry whites. What do you like? I love Rose's, Okay, I like uh reds. I guess fruity reds like z Infandel's and Sara's um and uh, I'm cool with any white's red champagne to Steve, or any kind of sparkling wine I should say. Yeah. I recommend to you and others out there to watch

this great documentary. Did you see PSALM, the original s O M M documentary about the Somalia Master Somalia testing process. It was good. Uh. There's a sequel now from the same makers called Some Inside the Bottle, where it's just a look at wine. There are ten different topics they cover about the wine in the wine industry, and it's really really good. I'll check that one up. Yeah, you can learn a lot from it. Okay, it'll make you thirsty. We need to do a whole episode on wine. We

still have yet to do. Yeah. Emily asked me that when we were watching it, She's like, have you not done this yet? And I said, that's one I might be most afraid of. Period. Oh yeah, worse than soccer chess what we did soccer and chess. I'm more intimidated by the wine podcast because it cares so much about it and you could do a you could have a podcast series on wine would be yeah, there are plenty so it would be tough to sum it up. Do this.

We'll do it. We're doing wine, all right, it'll be great, Chuck, you'll love it so scared. Uh. If you want to get in touch with us again, you can hang out with me on Twitter at Josh Underscore, UM Underscore Clark. You can also hang out with Stuff you Should Know in general at s Y s K podcast. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can hang out with Stuff you Should Know on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know UM.

You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com uh and, as always, hang out with us at our home on the web Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.