How does the human body change to bear with Space Life?
Humans evolved on Earth since the beginning, thus our body is not naturally disposed for life out of our planet. A lot of effects come visible when we travel in Space. Firstly, they depend on how far from Earth our body is and on how much time is spent.
Intensive studies are performed nowadays on human physiology in Space, in particular thanks to the International Space Station program, long duration missions (up to one year) allows scientist to observe phenomena that could not be appreciated here on Earth. This has two consequences: understanding how our body works, improving our medical knowledge with immediate effects on patients, and designing future long duration missions, such as the Moon or Mars, with a greater attention to the human aspect of the journey.
While those are effects that are observed through a prolonged and/or far-from-Earth stay, one immediate effect can be observed even for low orbit and short missions: motion sickness, due to reduced gravity environment.
Gravity provides a directional stimulus that plays an important role in life processes in the cells, such as biosynthesis, membrane exchange, cell growth and development.
Throughout its entire evolution, each living organism on Earth has experienced a 1-g environment. Its absence, or its reduced presence can be used to better understand the molecular mechanisms through which a cell detects gravity and converts this signal to a neuronal, ionic, hormonal, or functional response.
NASA Ames Research Center developed a combined application of biofeedback and autogenic therapy (a learned self-regulation technique). Even though this technique demonstrated to be quite successful in controlling symptoms such as nausea and vomiting, it has been useful only on a small part of the tested individuals.
One of the most interesting approach was introduced by NASA with the Preflight Adaptation Trainer (PAT), which is employed on subjects prior to flight in order to simulate the future conditions of reduced gravity and pre-adapt the body, giving a preview of the upcoming conditions. This technique demonstrated to be very promising in crew training and gave the best results.
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