musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

To sleep, to die, perchance to dream…


Just to be clear, I don’t actually have a wish to hibernate; I am still quite happy with sleeping: I like the large selection of dreams. I also like the idea of waking up if and when my bladder needs me or, I suppose, if the refrigerator signals to me in the middle of the night; I want the option of being able to answer either call, eh?

And anyway, I don’t know enough about hibernation to trust it. I mean, is it kind of death-lite, or  something between being able to wake up then get out of bed, or having someone with whom I am not affiliated saying words over my ashes? In other words, are we talking boundary issues? Or, more philosophically perhaps, ‘ma’ issues: the Japanese concept of the space between things, the space between the beginning and end…?

I realize how important the idea of hibernation is for science fiction stories which depend on travelling to destinations light years away: to boldly go where no man, or (mixing metaphors to satisfy Rumpole of the Bailey’s ‘she who must be obeyed’) no ‘person’ has gone before… Whatever.

Still, how would it work for humans? Was there once a time in our evolutionary past when we were able to curl up in a cave, slow our metabolism down to a crawl during the winter months, and then awaken refreshed with the coming of spring? Is there a hibernation gene hiding somewhere in our DNA that has since been turned off by, say, methylation (methyl groups can be added to block a specific gene transcription)? I mean when the cold winter nights in the cave were so severe that to survive them we had to snuggle together for months on end, the shedding of an odd methyl group might have been a boon to those who were too shy or couldn’t find a partner who wouldn’t hog all the mammoth fur because of their restless-leg syndrome. And if we still don’t really understand sleep, or for that matter, consciousness yet, good luck with hibernation, eh? [i]

Of course in a way ‘Hibernation epitomizes what harmony with nature is about – it is defined, by and large, by the amount and rate of exchange of matter, energy and information between inside and outside.’ And it’s not just a temperature thing which triggers some animals to do it when winter arrives, or food supplies become compromised: ‘there are tropical lemurs that can hibernate at high body temperatures, which suggests that being related to winter is a contingent and unimportant feature of a much broader phenomenon than the name suggests. Scientists now agree that animals hibernate not only to save energy or overwinter cold seasons, but as a way to deal with other environmental calamities.’ That is also known as estivation. Me? I find I cannot nap in a chair without a blanket over me even in the summer. I suppose if I were honest about it, I’m probably a closet estivator…

 Anyway, it would seem that we humans are able to invent things to avoid the need for hibernation: we can build shelters, create fires for heat, and use technology to solve, or create, our other problems. Also, there are chemicals which, at least temporarily, can sort of mimic hibernation. Remember Timothy Leary’s famous line in the 1960ies; ‘turn on, tune in, drop out?’ Maybe nowadays we’re simply too smart to hibernate; maybe it’s just old fashioned. Of course most of us probably do it more frequently than we realize -I mean what conscious level do we occupy while we scroll through the apps on our phones?

But hibernation is not simply a state of belle indifference because it is not a disease state, not even a timeless state because time still goes on, and although we obviously underuse our organs when we’re in the midst of it, there are profound changes to our metabolic processes and cellular clocks that I don’t think I’d want to mess with. And anyway I’m not sure I’d be happy staying in the ma for any length of time -presumably it’s unoccupied for a reason.

Maybe an occasional torpor, would suit my personality better. It would seem that hibernation can have at least two forms: ‘a seasonal, multiday profound suppression of metabolism, often lasting for months and occupying a good portion of an animal’s life, or else its shorter and milder form, a so-called daily torpor’. Come to think of it, maybe it is torpor I sometimes practice, not estivation -an evening version of torpor after I’ve eaten, washed the dishes, and then turned on the TV; I’m not proud of it, though.

So, I’m trying to avoid after-dinner chair-reading altogether; it is certainly not trademark estivation, and yet perhaps too transient to count as traditional torpor; it usually ends up with awakening an hour or so later with a stiff neck.  And despite my vaunted post-prandialism, I also awaken with a renewed sense of hunger, necessitating dirtying yet more dishes, and hence a ridiculous number to put away the following morning; it’s a chase-your-tail kind of thing.

As I’ve said, early-onset quotidian nocturnal sleeping seems to work for me, and although I also enjoy my midday naps, I’d like to think they’re merely practice for the main event. Yes, I miss a lot of parties, but I’m usually not invited anyway. In fact I rarely even get invited out for dinner nowadays either; I’m not even remotely crepuscular and so I yawn and stretch a lot at most tables as a hedge against nodding into the soup as I follow the sun slowly sinking in the sky. I think it annoys those who are sitting next to me.

I can’t be sure, but I have often wondered whether it’s why I find myself living alone. Hibernation or it’s sundries require a lonely life, don’t you think? I mean even if I had a torpidating partner, she’d probably still have to order in a lot, eh?

[i]https://aeon.co/essays/how-animals-learned-to-hibernate-and-why-we-cant-do-it-yet?

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