Would you like to see yourself in 100 years maybe 1000 years from now? Sounds pretty new and scientific?

Scientists have been working on this concept for a long time. This area is called CRYOBIOLOGY. Cryo stands for “cold” and biology stands for “study of living things”. Basically, Cryobiology is the study of living things under extremely low temperatures, specifically near -80 degrees C to -196 degrees C.

In nature cooling down the cell or the body along with the environment or cryopreservation can be seen often.

In the micro world, three species of bacteria Carnobacterium pleistocenium, Chryseobacterium greenlandensis, and Herminiimonas glaciei survived after thousands of years frozen in the ice. In the plant world the process called “Hardening” makes them cross the prolonged cold season surviving temperatures below 0 degrees C. In the animal world, many creatures have been recorded with the ability of cryopreservation in harsh environmental conditions. For example, Cold-tolerant fish use anti-freezing proteins to prevent ice forming at low temperatures and some freeze-tolerant frogs use cryoprotective agents when 70% of the body water has become ice crystals.

So, it is not new to nature, but it is quite new to mankind.

Think of cryopreservation of the whole human body as cheating to death. Ever thought what is “death”?

The definition of death is… an individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead. (Leming and Dickinson 2002, p. 43; Scarre 2007, p. 6)

In cryopreservation, the whole body is functioning at a very slow rate of metabolic activity due to very low temperature. When the temperature is low, below the optimal temperature, there is a very low rate of metabolic activity. So, the cell requires less amount of oxygen. Then the cell dies slowly. When considering the whole body, the body dies slower. This is the basic and overall idea of the cryopreservation.

The first human to be cryobiologically frozen was James Bedford. It wasn’t until the 1980s that vitrification which offers

Cryopreservation advantages without the harm that ice crystals cause was developed. Also, DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) is no longer used as back then and has most likely irreversibly harmed Bedford’s brain. Even so, Bedford is still kept in cryostorage today.

After 22 years, he was moved to a different dewar, and he is currently residing at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.

Like Bedford, do you want to sleep under liquid nitrogen? What? Why liquid nitrogen?

Here’s why it is liquid nitrogen.

The process of cryopreservation begins with the legal death of a person who has signed up in a cryonics facility and has a membership. After announced death, the body is still at the optimal temperature of 37 degrees C. Although the body is said to be dead some of the metabolic activities at the cellular level can occur in this stage. But cells are now not getting oxygen. In this state, cells start to become apoptosis which cells kill themselves. This leads to actual death that never becomes to live a life. Before that, the entire body needs to cool down immediately. This has two stages. External cooling down and internal cooling down. The first and crucial step is to do chest compressions to avoid ischemia. Then the following steps are the flow of ice water around the body. This makes the external body surface decrease the temperature. Also in some cases, nasopharyngeal spaces and peritoneal spaces are filled with cold fluid and taking out warm fluid. This allows for a decrease of furthermore temperature. After the external cooling, the process focuses on the internal cooling. It is achieved by pumping in cold cryoprotective agents and pumping out warm blood.

Now the body can be cooled down further and further. The benefit of cryoprotective agents is they prevent the formation of ice crystals, a process called vitrification. After that, the body is sprayed with liquid nitrogen which is at – 196 degrees C known as the cryogenic temperature. After fulfilling these main steps, the body then goes to the destination “the storage dewars” to meet the final temperature mentioned before. So, the bodies in this case are not dead but dead, wait until the future science makes them alive.

Don’t say frozen, say vitrified.

What is the difference between these two words?

The term “frozen” typically denotes the sample’s preservation at extremely low temperatures, frequently through freezing, to halt or slow down biological processes. One way to do this is to freeze tissues or cells for long-term preservation. This can cause long-term damage to the particular cell or tissue at the cryogenic temperature.

In cryopreservation, vitrification is the process of turning a liquid solution into a condition mimicking glass-like state without ice crystals forming. This is frequently accomplished by lowering the freezing point of the solution by applying large quantities of cryoprotectants. Cells or tissues can be preserved via vitrification without experiencing the negative consequences of ice crystals.

In the past few years, the field of cryobiology has developed very speedy, achieving many goals. So in the near future, we can meet past dead people and say hi to them. They are dead but not dead thanks to cryobiology.

Written By : Sirini Karunathilaka

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