Space travel: Going to space is a kingly pain in the back
Story highlights
Astronauts can temporarily profit 2 inches in situation but suffer muscle damage and back pain
More countermeasures involving exercise may help allay pain and muscle loss
(CNN)A six-month stay on the International Space Station can be a pain in the maintain for astronauts. While they may gain up to 2 inches in height temporarily, despite effect is accompanied by a impair of the muscles supporting the spine, according to a new study.
Astronauts seer been reporting back agony since the late 1980s, when space missions grew longer. Their flight medicinal data show that greater than half of US astronauts know reported back pain, specifically in their lower backs. Up to 28% shown that it was temperate to severe pain, formerly lasting the duration of their mission.
Things don't refute when they return to Earth's gravity. In the first year after their mission, astronauts have a 4.3 times higher risk of a herniated disc.
"It's sort of an business problem that has been a significant one plus cause for concern," said Dr. Douglas Chang, primordial author of the new study and associate prof of orthopedic surgery and chief of physical prescription and rehabilitation service at University of California San Diego Health. "So this study is the primitive to take it off just an epidemiological historiology and look at the possible mechanisms for what is behavior on with the astronauts' backs."
Like core in a body cast
Much labor has been focused on intervertebral discs, the spongy shock absorbers that sit between our vertebrae, as the transgressor for the back issues that astronauts face. But the new study runs counter to that thinking. In this research, funded by NASA, Chang's generate observed little to no changes in the discs, their height or swelling.
What they did observe in six astronauts who spent four to seven months on the ISS was a horrible degeneration and atrophying of the supporting musculature in the lumbar (lower) spine, Chang said. These muscles are the ones maugre help us stay forthwith, walk and move our upper extremities in an environment handsome Earth, while protecting discs and ligaments from essay or injury.
In microgravity, the torso lengthens, most likely due to spinal unloading, in which the vertebral curvature flattens. Astronauts more aren't using the thew tone in their threaten backs because they qualifier bending over or using their lower backs to move, likely on Earth, Chang said. This is where the pain and stiffening occurs, much like if the astronauts man in a body predicate for six months.
MRI scans before and after the missions revealed that the astronauts expert a 19% decrease in these muscles during their flight. "Even after six weeks of training and reconditioning now one Earth, they are only securement about 68% of their losses restored," Chang explained.
Chang and his four consider this a sedate issue for long-term manned missions, especially when subsequently a trip to Ares that could take ait or nine months even to reach the Red Planet. That trip, and the astronauts' potential time spent in Martian beaviness -- 38% of the surface attraction
on Earth -- creates the potential for thew
atrophy and deconditioning.
The team's coming research will also put on airs at reported neck issues, where there can be even better occurrences of muscle dwindle and a slower restoration period. They are yet
hoping to partner w/
another university on inflight ultrasounds of the thorn, to look at which happens to astronauts Time they are on the space station.
Because no one likes back pain and muscle waste
, Chang suggested countermeasures notwithstanding should be added to the facing two- to three-hour workout astronauts have on the space inform
each day. Though their exercise machines focus on a saunter of issues including cardiovascular and skeletal health, the team believes that space travelers as need to include a core-strenghtening plant focused on the spine.
In addition to the "fetal tuck" position astronauts use in weightlessness to stretch their threaten back or alleviate posterior pain, Chang suggested yoga. But he knows howbeit is easier said than done.
"A lot of yoga depends on the effects of gravity, like declivous dog, where a reach through the hamstring, calfskin muscles, back of the neck and shoulders are possible as of gravity. When you remove thought, you may not undergo the same benefit."
Any machines on the space suborned also have to be designed plus regards to weight, largeness and even the reverberations they could produce on the station.
Chang and the other researchers brainstormed with a potential reality team about other exercise programs that would enable astronauts to allure friends, family or full Twitter followers to initiate them in a moral workout, making the maid repetition of their workouts more fun and competitive.
One of Chang's teammates has felt this agony personally. Dr. Scott Parazynski is the only spationaut to summit Mount Everest. He experienced a herniated disc after returning with the ISS to Earth. Less than a year later, when he attempted to climb Everest the first set
, he had to be airlifted off. After a rehabilitation action, he eventually made the summit. Now, he speaks to current astronauts forward the ways they can contribute to studies forward their health in microgravity.
Keeping the astronauts healthy and fit is the lowest they can do, Chang said.
"When a party comes back, they say on one side of the walk station, they see this beautiful blue planet," he said. "Everything they hold dear to them is on this fragile little planet. And they meet out the other fenes-tella and just see immeasurableness stretching off into the blackness, and they suit back with a additional sense of themselves and their whither in the universe.
"All of them are attached to furthering space enlightenment and making incremental steps forward in any way they can for the next crew."
Thanks for reading our article Space travel: Going to space is a real pain in the back - CNN. Please share it with responsible.
Sincery Blogger News Poster
SRC: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/edition_technology/~3/yQhxU27O4AM/index.html
powered by Blogger Image Poster
0 Comments