On the night of the full moon in February, the Tibetan people celebrate the coldest day of the year. Wearing lightweight cotton shawls, Buddhist monks climb to cliff ledges about 15,000 feet above sea level and fall asleep in childlike pose, foreheads pressed against cold Himalayan rocks.Late at night, the temperature plummeted below freezing, butThe monks still slept peacefully and did not tremble.
Records of this ritual date back to the winter of 1985, when a team of medical researchers led by Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson were allowed as observers into Upper Dharamsha in northern India. A monastery outside the town of La. Researchers are eager to understand the physiological mechanisms by which these monks survive the cold nights.Monk's body enters state called miraculous, which takes yearsMeditation and physical exercises. If Benson's research were conducted today, it's likely that he would refer to this phenomenon as “biostasis“.
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Our bodies are functioning in an orderly manner.To stay alive, we need to beContinuous supply of oxygen,ourBody temperature can only fluctuate within a narrow range, fever or severe hypothermia can be fatal. A healthy body has a steady heartbeat and oxygen consumption rate, which doctors use as a measure of metabolism.If the life burning inside us is like a symphony, thenmetabolismIt’s a carefully arranged musical score—— The perfect sum of all chemical reactions that occur within a cell.
If the life burning inside us is like a symphony, then metabolism is its score
Until recently, at least from a Western medical perspective, the rhythm of life was considered unchangeable. That change in perspective comes from an unusual first-of-its-kind program led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which supports the U.S. military.For the past five years, DARPA has funded research into biostasis technology to bring this metabolic symphonytemporarily frozenand then after an undetermined period of timerecover,andRestore to exactly the same state as when interrupted.
One goal of DARPA's biostasis research is tothrough drugsprovide aa state of suspended life or physiological change, rather than through years of meditation practice. This is unlike anesthesia, where biostasis acts on all body tissues, not just suspending consciousness and pain. It's designed to “flash freeze” the entire body, rather than cooling it down.
By studying biostasis, DARPA is planting a flag in uncharted medical territory, asking researchers to explore areas beyond conventional health.Tristan McClure-Begley, a former DARPA program manager who created the biostasis program, explained that the main motivation for the program wasExtending the “golden hour”——The short window of time when first aid is available after a serious injury. Particularly for head and spinal cord trauma, if help is delayed, irreparable damage will occur. The use of biostasis technology on the battlefield can buy injured soldiers time and improve their chances of survival.
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Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering is one of the teams responding to DARPA's call for public funding for researchers to develop biostasis drugs.”DARPA's call is interesting because it is so cutting-edge,” said Don Ingber, founder of the institute and a professor at Harvard Medical School and School of Engineering. He added: “There is no starting point, no Drug targets or screening protocols are available for implementation. “Remarkably, they were proposed early last year without academic precedent or a history of research to draw from.The first successful biostasis drug.
It's a small molecule drug called SNC80 that was initially tested on Xenopus laevis tadpoles. The embryos of this cold-blooded amphibian are easy to manipulate in the laboratory and are an effective model for simulating the human nervous and immune systems. They have large heads that contain the brain and spinal cord, as well as a tail used for swimming. Tadpoles have beating hearts, gills, and intestines. Their core organs are important for predicting what might happen to their corresponding organs in humans, and the tadpole's swimming ability provides a quick and easy screen for biostasis.
Tiny doses of the chemical seeped into the tadpoles' translucent skin, slowing their swimming speed, slowing their heart rate by half and reducing oxygen consumption, the gold standard for measuring metabolic rate, to three thirds of baseline. one. Best of all, these effects are reversible. Within an hour after the drug was expelled, the tadpoles were actively swimming around the petri dish again. As far as the researchers know,Tadpoles' core organs not adversely affected by drugs.
Megan Sperry, a postdoctoral researcher at the Wyss Institute who led the tadpole research, explained that the SNC80 molecule is able to penetrate all of the tadpole's tissues, including their gut, gills and skeletal muscles.This is a drug that affects the entire organism and likely plays a vital role in biology, capable ofInhibits all biological processes indiscriminately.Later it was discovered that the function of SNC80 isSlow down mitochondrial activityand mitochondria are the energy source of all cells, so this drug canInhibit metabolic processes,andWon't kill the organization. Sperry emphasized that the drug does not “cause toxicity.”
Reversibly shutting down metabolism is not unheard of in nature. A typical example is the in-depth exploration of the biological habits of hibernating animals. For example, brown bears living in Alaska can actively lower their metabolism to a lower level during the winter, slowing their heart rate to four times per minute and lowering their body temperature to below 40 degrees Fahrenheit.The unassuming wood frog (Rana sylvatica) can evencompletely frozen solidto spend the Arctic winter.
What do scientists think about monks who slow down their own metabolism?
Perhaps one of the most impressive feats of biostasis is caused byspiny desert ratComplete, this did not escape DARPA's attention. The spiny desert rat has round ears, dark, shiny eyes and golden fur, and has abilities comparable to those of DC Comics superheroes. The spiny desert rat is the only mammal known to be capable of tissue regeneration. When a predator bites off a piece of flesh, it can regrow skin, sweat glands, hair, and even cartilage with virtually no scarring.And in times of extreme need, they can accessA state of total body dormancy lasting six to seven hours.They can be found in African desertsHigh temperature environmentIt does this in a rare example of going into hibernation in response to heat rather than cold.
The biggest challenge in developing biostasis drugs for humans is finding a chemical that can act throughout the body and affect various tissues and organs mildly but profoundly. The Harvard team tested the effect of SNC80 on an “organ chip,” a microchip device that connects active human organ cells with tiny channels. The researchers also tested the effects on selected human tissue cultures, including intestines and liver, as well as on whole organs and limbs of pigs. The results are impressive. Compared with traditional preservation techniques that rely on mechanical freezing, an active pig heart can be preserved for twice as long. “And a pig's heart is almost as big as a human heart,” Ymber said. “So that's probably the most impressive thing we've done.”
The perfect biostasis drug would be one that does not affect the harmony of metabolic processes and connects the different tissues of the body to be processed as a whole. Inber admits that SNC80 is not a perfect drug. But as is often the case in drug development, these experiments are already a good start. Inber said SNC80 is “the first step toward compounds that reversibly slow metabolism.” “We have discovered a more potent version of the molecule. This drug works at the level of tissues and individual organs.” The next step will be to make the drug work on the entire body.
Herbert succeeded in convincing the Tibetan monks he observed at the remote Lantek Monastery to participate in a medical study. Sitting cross-legged in a large, unheated auditorium, the monks agreed to wear special masks connected to respirometers during daily meditation. This allows doctors to collect small amounts of exhaled air as they breathe and analyze it for oxygen content. Surprisingly, they found that resting metabolic rate “can be increased (up to 61%) and decreased (up to 64%)” during several different meditation practices, the latter being comparable to the effects of SNC80 in Xenopus laevis tadpoles. .
I asked Inber what he thought of the monks who showed that the body's overall metabolism could be slowed down. “In a way, you're probably right, all of this isInvolvement of the nervous system,” he said. “ButOxygen utilization is only one part of metabolism. Tibetan monks will wake up if you give them a gentle tap, so it's not exactly a dormant state. But it's certainly the first step to slowing your metabolism, and it can be achieved in a short period of time. “
The initial goals of biostasis research were:Create a state of life that can be suspended until reaching a distant planet or surviving beyond the “golden time” after catastrophic damage, which is still out of reach. But not entirely. After all, we are animals ourselves. “The way I look at it,” Inber said, “is that animals like Alaskan gophers can go into hibernation and don't need to eat for long periods of time. Bears can hibernate. I was just thinking about hummingbirds and butterflies this summer. They do that every day. It goes to sleep at night.”
As scientists continue to work on developing a therapy that can put humans into a state of systemic hibernation, perhaps they should take another closer look at the rituals Tibetan monks use to meditate in the winter cold. They look as peaceful and content as butterflies.
references
From the documentary, Advanced Tibetan Buddhist Meditation: The Investigations of Herbert Benson, MD., by filmmaker Russell Pariseau.
Sperry, MM., et al. Identification of a pharmaceutical biostasis inducer that slows metabolism in multiple vertebrates that do not hibernate. bioRxiv (2023).
Benson, H., Malhotra, MS., Goldman, RF.,Jacobs, GD., & Hopkins, PJ. Three case reports of the metabolic and electroencephalographic changes during advanced Buddhist meditation techniques. Behavioral Medicine 2, 90-95 (1990).
Author: ELENA KAZAMIA
Translation: small line
Reviewer: Meyare
Original link:Can We Stop Time in the Body?