Italian Sociologist to Discover Body Rhythms

[L Roebuck]

Three years in grotto: Italian sociologist to discover body rhythms

ROME (AFP) - An Italian sociologist hopes to spend up to three years hunkered in a small, chilly underground cave in central Italy to better understand the body's natural cycles, a newspaper has reported.

Maurizio Montalbini, 53, moved into his new grotto home Wednesday, said La Repubblica on Thursday.

He intends to pass more than 1,000 days drinking water from a small pipe, and eating food pills at meals. But he's also brought a few treats: four kilogrammes (10 pounds) of honey, two kilogrammes (4.4 pounds) of nuts and 1.5 kilogrammes (3.3 pounds) of chocolate, according to La Repubblica.

His sojourn aims to better understand the body's natural rhythms to determine better medical dosages and fight stress and insomnia.

"I've signed a letter authorizing that those who monitor me outside, my friends from the underground laboratory Underlab to let me spend three years in the grotto, no more," Montalbini, who is also a professional cave explorer, told the newspaper.

It won't be a cakewalk.

Montalbini's new home -- 80 meters (262 feet) underground -- is two meters (6.6 feet) wide, and 50 meters (164 feet) long and five meters (16.4 feet) meters high. The cave's temperature fluctuates between 9 degrees C (48 F) 10 degrees C (50 degrees F).

The sociologist is no stranger to grotto life. He beat a world record for the feat in the early 1990s, after living just over a year in a cave.

"When I remained 366 days underground, I had the impression of only spending 219 days," Montalbini said.

Still he knows when to call it quits.

"This is the last experiment I'm going to do, I'm getting too old," Montalbini told the newspaper.

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[L Roebuck]

Three years in a cave - and trying for six

· Italian sociologist aims for new record underground
· Scientists to monitor daily cycles of solitary sojourn

John Hooper in Rome
Friday October 13, 2006
The Guardian

Maurizio Montalbini is Italy's least gregarious citizen. The 53-year-old sociologist has distinguished himself by spending almost three years of his life in total on his own and underground.

Yesterday Mr Montalbini vanished into the gloom of a pothole near the eastern Italian town of Ascoli Piceno having instructed his support team that, so long as all went well, he should be left undisturbed for another three years. He is already credited with the longest time spent alone underground - more than 12 months between 1992 and 1993.

By spending lengthy periods alone in the dark, Mr Montalbini has helped scientists to explore such riddles as why human beings who are shut away have longer daily cycles. "When I stayed underground for 366 days, I thought that only 219 had passed," he was quoted as telling the daily La Repubblica.
When another Italian hermit, a 27-year-old interior decorator, Stefania Follini, lived by herself in a sealed cave for 130 days in 1989, she tended to stay awake for 20-25 hours at a time and sleep for about 10 hours. Her menstrual cycle stopped.

Similar experiments elsewhere have led to psychological complications and, in one extreme case, a suicide.

Mr Montalbini plans to while away his time in the "Grotta fredda" (literally Cold cave) at Acquasanta Terme. His support team has created a 10-square-metre "home" for him, equipped with running drinking water and an electricity supply to power the array of medical devices that will monitor his physical condition and relay the data to the team on the surface.

At night - or rather, at what he will think is night - Mr Montalbini will be able to snuggle into an enclosed wooden bunk. Most of his nourishment will come from pills and capsules of the sort used by astronauts. But, as a concession to indulgence, he will have with him four kilos of honey, two kilos of walnuts, and one and a half kilos of chocolate.

He was also reported to have a library of 85 books that could be read by the glare of a lamp.

Italy's star loner has been toughing it out at intervals over 20 years. In 1987, at the age of 33, he emerged blinking into the light near Ancona to claim the then world record of 210 days underground.

His last monumental stint of shadowy inactivity lasted until April 16 1998 (which he thought was February 9). Over a period of 166 days, he had lost almost two stones and never slept for longer than five hours.

While he was beneath the surface, the area in which his cave was located was shaken by a major earthquake and he admitted to the reporters who greeted him on his emergence that "for the first time, I was frightened".

Asked eight years ago if he preferred life in the cave, Mr Montalbini replied: "Are you trying to be funny? I'm not going back in there. I need the sun. I used to dream about the dawn. It's an experience I would not repeat."

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