It’s cold and dark here.  Why can’t I hibernate? Cool things about hibernating: Don’t pay for heat, just sleep through that mess. sleep for 100 days, still wake up with all your old muscle mass. There are a lot of advantages bears have over humans when it comes to hibernating, namely (duh) their massive furry coats and huge stores of fat. They’ll break down this fat over the winter for food and water as they sleep.  But the peculiar thing about bears is that they can also use urea (yep, the waste that makes up your urine) to make new proteins.  If you tried to retain all your urea to make protein and muscle, you would just be gross/die of toxemia.  So now we know that we, as primates, are too skinny hairless  and weak to hibernate.  Why do we still care about the muscles on bears? Many important reasons: What if a bear wakes up in the spring and offers you tickets to the “gun show?” Or asks directions to the nearest vet, because her “pythons” are “sick?” You don’t want to seem naive. If you could retain your muscle mass after the world’s most enviable nap, think about how this could help the chronically bedridden avoid terrible muscle atrophy.  Or what about astronauts, who miss out on all the muscle-building exercise of having to constantly fight against gravity to stand upright.  For me, though, as someone with chronic nerd-back from hunching over a computer/book/microscope, I am hoping we use this muscle-preserving technology to give me the posture my mom always yelled at me to have. (Thanks El for asking such a cool question!)

It’s cold and dark here.  Why can’t I hibernate?

Cool things about hibernating:

  • Don’t pay for heat, just sleep through that mess.
  • sleep for 100 days, still wake up with all your old muscle mass.

There are a lot of advantages bears have over humans when it comes to hibernating, namely (duh) their massive furry coats and huge stores of fat. They’ll break down this fat over the winter for food and water as they sleep.  But the peculiar thing about bears is that they can also use urea (yep, the waste that makes up your urine) to make new proteins.  If you tried to retain all your urea to make protein and muscle, you would just be gross/die of toxemia. 

So now we know that we, as primates, are too skinny hairless  and weak to hibernate.  Why do we still care about the muscles on bears? Many important reasons:

  • What if a bear wakes up in the spring and offers you tickets to the “gun show?” Or asks directions to the nearest vet, because her “pythons” are “sick?” You don’t want to seem naive.
  • If you could retain your muscle mass after the world’s most enviable nap, think about how this could help the chronically bedridden avoid terrible muscle atrophy.  Or what about astronauts, who miss out on all the muscle-building exercise of having to constantly fight against gravity to stand upright.  For me, though, as someone with chronic nerd-back from hunching over a computer/book/microscope, I am hoping we use this muscle-preserving technology to give me the posture my mom always yelled at me to have.

(Thanks El for asking such a cool question!)