• Question: How do you think NASA are going to help astronauts on the ISS with their muscle loss?

    Asked by anon-191683 to Kathryn, Graeme, Chris, Anne, Agnes, Adam on 7 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Anne Green

      Anne Green answered on 7 Nov 2018: last edited 7 Nov 2018 6:09 pm

      Astronauts exercise for several hours a day while they’re on the ISS to try and minimise the amount of muscle lost. Here’s a factsheet from NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/64249main_ffs_factsheets_hbp_atrophy.pdf
      (or if you’re really interested https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/245.html ).

      I don’t know what NASA does to help astronauts recover once they’re back on Earth. I’m guessing it’s similar to recovering from muscle loss from injury or illness i.e. build up exercise steadily and eat a good diet. But it’s possible that recovering from weightlessness is more complicated.

    • Photo: Kathryn

      Kathryn answered on 7 Nov 2018:

      What a great question. As Anne has said, the astronauts keep moving so that the muscle continue to be used which reduces muscle loss, but it is hard to not loose some condition.

      When the come back to Earth the assonants go through a lot of physical therapy to help them recover quickly.

      What is more of a concern is Bone Loss. Similar to loosing muscle mass their bones are are not being used in the same way and degrade with loss of Ca. This they counteract will special tablets but it is a major issue.

      Every trip NASA learns more and more about what happens to the human body in their alien environments.

    • Photo: Agnes Wojtusiak

      Agnes Wojtusiak answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      By giving them a space-gym 😀

    • Photo: Graeme Poole

      Graeme Poole answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      There are actually two identical twins who are both NASA astronauts – Scott and Mark Kelly. Last year, Scott went to the ISS for 6 months while Mark stayed on Earth.

      They ran loads of tests to try and see what happens to their bodies and DNA, because they both started of with exactly the same (since they’re identical twins) but only Scott went to space.

      https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-twins-study-confirms-preliminary-findings

      On the ISS the astronauts have to exercise for 2 hours everyday to prevent muscle and bone loss.

    • Photo: Adam McGuinness

      Adam McGuinness answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      Well, if my research on these packages works out well, I know that muscles have these same packages, it may be possible to use these to artificially increase muscle mass, that would be very cool!

Comments