Opening the Mind

Imagine a future in which you're not dead. You're just waiting for repair.

Incredible.

Comments

[Josh Scholar]

And there's another reason to cool people.

It turns out that the 5 minute limit on lack of oxygen (or blood pumping) isn't caused by the actual lack of oxygen for a long time (I forget, an hour or more) - it's caused by cells self destructing when oxygen is resumed. It turns out that lack of oxygen triggers a mechanism that probably meant to kill cancer cells or some such.

But if you cool a person and bring up the oxygen slowly when they're cold and slowly bring the temperature up, then you can revive someone long after the limit.

They used to think that some people survived drowning in cold waters because they weren't using oxygen when they were so cold, but it turns out that what was actually saving people is if they somehow revived while still cold - saving them from the self destructing cell problem.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

Interesting. I wasn't aware of the 'oxygen shock' that destroyed cells.

[Josh Scholar]

Well I read one article on this, and I may have an exaggurated impression of it.

But it's been tested on heart attack patients with success.