Space travel: Going to space is a real pain in the back

Story highlights

• Astronauts can temporarily gain 2 inches pending height but suffer thew loss and back pain
• More countermeasures involving exercise may help mollify pain and muscle loss

(CNN)A six-month stay on the International Space Station tin
be a pain over the back for astronauts. While they may obtainal up to 2 inches in height temporarily, howbeit effect is accompanied against a weakening of the muscles supporting the ridge, according to a unprecedented study.

In 1994, astronaut Mark Lee had his height uniform by fellow astronaut flimsy Linenger as part from a study on distant pain.

Astronauts experience been reporting back distress since the late 1980s, when space missions grew longer. Their flight physical data show that better than half of US astronauts have reported mount pain, especially in their lower backs. Up apt 28% indicated that it was moderate to afflictive pain, sometimes lasting the duration of their mission.

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Things don't improve when s/he 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 manner of an ongoing proposition that has been a token one with cause inasmuch as concern," said Dr. Douglas Chang, first author off the new study as well as
associate professor of orthopedic surgery and chief off physical medicine and rehabilitation service at University off California San Diego Health. "So this study is the first to admit it from just slang epidemiological description and forehead at the possible mechanisms for what is obtainable on with the astronauts' backs."

Like being within a body cast

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Much attention has been focused on intervertebral discs, the spongy stook absorbers that sit among our vertebrae, as the culprit for the posterior issues that astronauts face. But the new doctrine runs counter to notwithstanding thinking. In this investigation, funded by NASA, Chang's team observed little approaching no changes in the discs, their height o. swelling.

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What they did observe over six astronauts who spawned four to seven months on the ISS was a tremendous degeneration together with atrophying of the supporting musculature in the lumbar (lower) spine, Chang said. These muscles are the ones that help ourselves
stay upright, walk as well as
move our upper extremities in an environment good-looking Earth, while protecting discs and ligaments from endeavor or injury.

In microgravity, the torso lengthens, most likely due toward spinal unloading, in what the spinal curvature flattens. Astronauts also aren't using the muscle tone during their lower backs ago they aren't bending during or using their threat backs to move, probable on Earth, Chang said. This is where the pain and stiffening occurs, much like if the astronauts were in a thickness cast for six months.

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MRI scans before and after the missions revealed that the astronauts experienced a 19% decrease in these muscles during their flight. "Even after six weeks fro training and reconditioning now one Earth, they used only getting about 68% of their losses restored," Chang explained.

Chang in addition to his team consider this a serious issue considering long-term manned missions, wit when considering a supplant to Mars that could take eight or team months just to stretch the Red Planet. That trip, and the astronauts' potential time spent through Martian gravity -- 38% of the surface dignity on Earth -- creates the potential for thew atrophy and deconditioning.

The team's future research command also look at reported neck issues, where thither can be even major occurrences of muscle dwindle and a slower restoration period. They are as hoping to partner besides another university on inflight ultrasounds of the continue, to look at whether happens to astronauts till they are on the space station.

Yoga over space?

Because nobody likes back pain and thew loss, Chang suggested countermeasures that should be added to the already two- to three-hour workout astronauts have on the while station each day. Though their exercise machines kernel on a range off issues including cardiovascular as well as
skeletal health, the gang believes that space travelers also need to embody a core-strenghtening program centralized on the spine.

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In addition apt the "fetal tuck" place astronauts use in µG to stretch their threaten back or alleviate maintain pain, Chang suggested yoga. But he knows thought is easier said than done.

"A heaps of yoga depends awry the effects of sobriety, like downward dog, situation a stretch through the hamstring, calf muscles, maintain of the neck in addition to shoulders are possible since of gravity. When him remove that, you can not have the identical benefit."

Any machines on the space inform also have to signify
designed with regards forward weight, size and quite the reverberations they could produce on the station.

Scott Parazynski, which walked in space septenary times, assisted with making on the space post in 2007.

Chang as well as
the other researchers brainstormed with a virtual act team about different lesson programs that would empower astronauts to invite friends, family or even Twitter followers to join them in a virtual workout, making the daily rehearsal of their workouts better fun and competitive.

One of Chang's teammates has felt this pain personally. Dr. Scott Parazynski is the only astronaut approaching summit Mount Everest. He experienced a herniated disc after returning from the ISS to Earth. Less than a year as, when he attempted apt climb Everest the primitive time, he had apt be airlifted off. After a rehabilitation process, her ass eventually made the summit. Now, he speaks near current astronauts about the ways they can redound to studies about their health in microgravity.

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Keeping the astronauts healthy and rig is the least qualifier can do, Chang said.

"When a crew comes back, they say amiss one side of the space station, they constitute this beautiful blue planet," he said. "Everything s/he hold dear to them is on this friable little planet. And man look out the otherwise window and just absolute infinity stretching off within the blackness, and informal come back with a second sense of themselves in addition to their place in the universe.

"All of them are committed to furthering space knowledge and afoot incremental steps forward within any way they may for the next crew."

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