Sleeping like a bear might help humans live a healthier life, study suggests

Scientists and veterinarians are observing and studying bears and their long deep sleep during winters that actually help them live a healthy life. Bears, which go into hibernation in winter like many other hibernators, save themselves from a plethora of ailments that might affect them if they do not go into deep sleep. This can be a healthy cue for humans too.

In a recent report published by the Washington Post, several space agencies and even militaries around the world are putting money into hibernation research. They want to know how animals like bears survive their long winter snooze without dying.

Technically, going into deep sleep leads to several bodily issues, one of which is a drop in heart rate drastically. But somehow, hibernators like bears are able to survive through it.

Taking health cues from bears’ deep winter sleep for humans

Ole Frobert, a cardiologist who works at Orebro University Hospital in Sweden and Aarhus University in Denmark, is the frontrunner of this research with bears.

The hibernating brown bear is “an animal that doesn’t get disease, but it should,” said Frobert. “This is a living library of biological solutions.”

Brown bears hibernate for up to eight months. If we try this with humans, it would get ugly - muscles would atrophy, bones would weaken, and skin would scab with bed sores and whatnot.

Frobert explained that hibernation is not really a form of sleep as people say it is, but rather something more extreme than sleep. It is a deep state of energy conservation in which a brown bear’s heart rate drops lower than 10 beats per minute. For humans, just taking a transatlantic flight boosts the risk of blood clots. But bears emerge clot-free after their months of deep sleep.

To find answers to this mystery- Frobert and Manuela Thienel, a cardiologist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich teamed up with bear researchers in Sweden. The team chased 13 brown bears by helicopter during the summer and stalked their dens during the winter to collect their blood.

The research led to the discovery of certain proteins, but one in particular, called HSP47. This protein appeared with far less abundance in bear blood in winter as compared to summer, as per a paper published earlier this year in the journal Science.

This protein, which appears on the surface of platelets, helps blood cells stick together. When blood clots form after a cut, they stop the body from bleeding and help it heal. But when blood coagulates inside veins and doesn’t dissolve naturally, clots can be deadly.

To see whether the protein had the same effect in humans, the team turned to people with spinal cord injuries. Those patients, like hibernating bears, don’t get many blood clots, suggesting their bodies have found a way to decrease the presence of the protein after the injury.

The team found those patients have far less HSP47 than uninjured people.

Now Frobert’s team is searching for a chemical to develop a new blood-thinning medicine with fewer adverse effects than existing drugs. His team said that it might take five to ten years to develop such a drug.

(With inputs from agencies)