Former NASA Astronaut Explains How Workouts Are Different in Space | WIRED

I remember one of my test pilot friends felt very bad but he didn't want to go to the doctor because you know he wanted to be grounded and in the end he couldn't take it. He collapsed on the way to the doctor's office. This is not a good idea. Children, if you are sick, go to the doctor. I'm Mike Massimino and this is how health is

different

in

space

. I was an

astronaut

for 18 years. I flew to

space

twice on two space shuttle missions. Health is very important for

astronaut

s there. There is a whole list of things that can disqualify you from going to space.

Generally, you want to try to be as healthy as possible and you want to have a healthy heart. You want to be as fit as possible. You want to eat. well and take care of yourself and if you don't and you don't meet the standards you're supposed to meet it could mean you won't get the chance to fly into space, you don't have to be an olympic athlete but they want to make sure you're healthy enough to do the job, meaning they don't want to worry about a medical situation when you're in space if you're prone to kidney stones, for example, that was a disqualifying thing: they don't want you to get kidney stones while you're in space.

The medical situation on Earth is pretty bad, but in space it's really bad, so they want to make sure that people who go to space don't go. have a problem once you are in space exercise is important for all of us before I became an astronaut I usually played sports for recreation and rode my bike for fun or maybe went running things like that once I became an astronaut It became a little more structured, I felt like I was preparing for some kind of athletic event because spacewalking required effort and you needed to move almost constantly and you had to manipulate the suit you were wearing to get in better shape. you were better going to perform.

I was in the best physical shape of my life before each of my space flights and that was because I was older. I was 39 on my first flight and 46 on my second flight, but I was in better shape. Than I ever was as a high school athlete or any other time in my life, exercising in space is a little

different

because you're in zero gravity, you're floating, so it's like you're on bed rest, but even worse than that when it comes to fitness, you're lying down, you're not trying hard, you're just floating and even doing things like just walking or even sitting on the ground, you're fighting gravity in space, you're floating all the time. . time, so it doesn't put a strain on your bones or muscles and if you don't exercise in space for a long period of time you can lose bone mass and you can lose muscle mass and your heart, which is a muscle, will shrink and That's not a good thing, so the way we prevent these bad things from happening is by exercising.

Weights aren't going to work very well in space. You can take an object that weighs 600 pounds and lift it with one finger because everything is floating that weightless. So you want to pull something for a resistance exercise, like a spring or something that has some resistance, it works well in space, but actual weights don't work. There is a two-hour exercise period set over six days. a week for astronauts who are on the space station and it is a combination of cardiovascular exercises that consists of riding a stationary bike or a treadmill, the vibration isolation system of the seevis cycle ergometer, the vibration isolation part is very important when you exercise, you can cause vibration and the advantage you have in a space station for science is that you are in zero gravity and if you start to shake and vibrate that compromises the microgravity environment, you will disturb the experiments that use the microgravity of the environment zero gravity for science, but start shaking it a little, you'll find out, so these engineers who have developed these machines won't get all the credit they deserve because they don't just keep astronauts healthy. but they're isolating the vibrations associated with doing that kind of work on those machines and not extending them to compromise the integrity of the zero-gravity experiments on board, but that's the way you can do cardio in space for a workout. advanced resistance. red resistance exercise device, which is a pretty high-tech piece of equipment that works with pulleys and springs and you can do a variety of exercises with which you can even do squats, you can do leg presses, you can do push-ups, you can bench press. press and when you combine that with the cardio devices you get a pretty good workout.

We also had Thera bands. These elastic bands that we used give you some resistance and we have astronauts who sometimes come back in better shape than when they left the path. We prevent disease and space by putting you, the astronaut, in quarantine in advance so as not to bring germs into space, so the spacecraft must be perfectly clean, there must be no bacteria in the spacecraft, so what we do is to enter quarantine. period not a week before the flight in what we call health stabilization. The only people allowed to be near you have to be screened and approved by the flight surgeon.

There was an age limit that changed for children to be around you. On the first flight, my children were too young to be near me. On the second flight, they were both teenagers, so they were able to come visit me. Food poisoning probably won't happen because that's all that happens on board. Your water is clean water if I think we could also treat it with iodine if necessary. Iodine leaves a certain taste, so there was another filtration system. We had to remove the iodine from the water, so they really want to make sure that the water is clean so that it is in a practically germ-free environment on earth, when you don't feel well, you can go to the doctor, ask someone to try, you can take care of it yourself somehow, it's some medication or aspirin or whatever you have at your disposal, but eventually if you feel bad, you can go to the doctor and get a checkup when you apply to be an astronaut, if you advance enough in the selection process to be a finalist and there are usually around one hundred and twenty finalists. for each class of astronauts and then they will choose as many as they need.

Your screening interview is not just an interview, it also includes many medical tests and you are examined practically from top to bottom. It is a really extensive medical exam that you must attend. That takes a few days and they will check him and make sure he is healthy. I still get an annual physical every year as part of NASA's long-range health data collection, but in space. Your medical care is a little different. We had a whole set of medications in our medical kit for almost every type of ailment imaginable and we had to make sure we didn't have any allergic reactions to those medications, so we took a drug test.

We were supposed to take one of these, they would tell you how many you are supposed to take each day. We pretty much try something different where there's an antibiotic, a sleeping medication, a pain reliever or whatever. We always had someone who is our main. medical officer on the flight was sometimes a doctor. I never flew with a doctor. I flew. I would have him at a vet and he became a doctor, but someone needs to work with that person as well to have another person who is something like that. like the assistant, so you always have at least two or sometimes three people who were trained to be medical officers, we received CPR training, we received basic first aid so we can help each other that way, but some of us received training broader as a medical officer. which is kind of the equivalent of being an EMT, you're also in close contact with the flight surgeon, so flight surgeons are doctors who have a special certification that allows them to treat space aviation medical problems.

They are flight surgeons who are also aware of things that can happen in zero gravity and the harmful effects of zero gravity on bone and muscle loss on other problems that can arise due to the spacesuit causing injuries, etc. for the job we have, so if you have a problem in space, there is a first aid kit there is a medical kit that you can do basic things with, you can do things like suture an open cut if necessary, surgery is a problem. I think early on in the space station program they thought they could do it. surgeries, it's not really practical to be able to do a major invasive operation, if someone needed something like that they would orbit it and bring it home, it's easier to do it, take care of that on Earth, that won't be the case when we.

Go further away from the planet, we'll be happy that you can't bring people back from Mars so easily. You will have to be able to deal with things and on the road or once you get to that new place. Now the luxury of being close to the ground helps with many major medical limitations, we've never had anything we've had to do, or "but for a medical issue, if you need help." from the ground on the space station on the space shuttle we were able to call the ground and see if there was help. Motion sickness happens to most people.

It happened to me on my first day in space. I didn't feel very good. Well, it's a conflict between our vestibular system and/or vision, that conflict can lead to a little bit of stomach awareness. You're moving around the cabin, let's say with your eyes, but your interviewers tell you that you're perfectly still, and that's how you are. I don't feel well. I wasn't used to it on my first day in space, of course, and ended up throwing up at the end of the day. The next day I was flying and on my second flight I was fine.

Your brain doesn't know what's going on. At first it happens and you react a certain way, but then you learn and you don't have any problems, so it's an adaptation rather than a real illness. How do you vomit if you get sick in space? Who's starting to come out? So here's an astronaut barf bag. Vomiting works just like it does on Earth and those things will come out of your mouth straight from your stomach like a projectile. Now the difference is that if you do that on Earth it will probably land somewhere. space, it will come out and float, which is not a good situation, they will make everyone sick, so we want to use our vomit bag.

We have really good vomit bags. Emesis bags is what they call it. I guess emesis is a fancy word for vomiting. I had vomit on them and they are very well made, they are cloth on the outside, plastic on the inside, so everything will go inside this bag and then once you're done you can seal it, roll it up, compact it and get another one. one ready. I was very worried about this on my first flight. I had two on me at all times that first day. After the first day I was fine. I didn't need one, but you want them on hand when you first arrive in space.

I think in everyday life we ​​realized the importance of mental health and trying to stay mentally healthy and NASA is the same way, so there was always help available if you needed to talk to someone about any problems you might have. and they were very open. which was like anything else, if you were sick you went to see the doctor and if you didn't feel well and felt like you needed to talk to a mental health professional who was also available to you and you were expected to go see one if you didn't. you felt good, so they were very open to that and it was very important and I appreciated that I think most of us did it in the space.

I think what NASA has realized over the years in particular. for long duration flights or even short flights, astronauts could suffer from some additional mental stressors, it could be stressful, you are worried about your physical well-being, so there is stress associated with that and also with performing the job you want to do. a good job and you might feel the pressure that way, plus you're away from home, you might not get as much sleep as you'd like, it's a new environment, there might be family issues going on, there might be all these things going on. which could also affect your In our performance we have a whole program associated with what we call psychological support and psychological support is there to help the astronauts feel good and all of that involves contact with home, so we have an email to which We can call or contact our family and friends from space through the Internet.

Telephone protocol, the possibility to Skype with your family is also there, staying in touch with the Earth is really important for psychological support, it is not only being kind but also: for performance, a happy team member is a Productive team member, what I've seen coming. Although sometimes an event happens on Earth, we had a crew toaboard the space station when we had the Columbia accident and we needed to let those guys know that we had this accident and the crew was lost, so the accident was at a time when mental health was really stressed, in fact, it was required that We would all go to consult with the psychiatrist when a traumatic event like that happens, such as the loss of a life, bad news happened on earth because it directly affected the personal life of the crew member. in space is when sometimes you need psychological support, so I think that comes in different forms, sometimes it's a crew member, a good friend, remember the clergy, a spouse, a sibling, whoever you try to call that person on the phone, then your flight ends. and you go back to earth, so once you go back and land, the biggest difference you'll notice is that gravity goes back on those changes that happened in your body.

Because you went to zero gravity and some of those are physical changes, they go back to how they were when gravity is found again, so some of the physical changes, for example, are in space, our spine grows because if our spine stays. into place by gravity to some extent and in zero gravity, the long spine doors, so my spacewalking suit actually had a waist size an inch and a half higher to accommodate spine growth than what that I was ordered, the space I would use when I practiced in the pool for my spacewalks if you feel a little discomfort in your back when that happens in space you feel a little back pain but then it goes away when you return to earth your spine stiffens. calm down again immediately so you have to be very careful, do not make sudden movements with your head.

Some astronauts have hurt their backs, particularly their necks, by doing something, a quick movement or something like that, before things have calmed down, they can hurt themselves. I mean, I'm supposed to pick up whatever your children are usually the biggest danger because you want to hold them and lift them. If they are babies, that is not a problem. If they're teenagers, they're too old to do it, but you know somewhere in the middle you know you want to. You have to be careful with that, so lifting things as soon as you come back is a problem because you want your spine to sit where it's supposed to and the other thing that is a physical change is the fluid in your body in space when If you're in zero gravity it tends to pool in your upper extremities, what that could mean is that when you come back to earth, gravity sets in and the fluid redistributes, you could get dizzy, your blood pressure goes down, you could pass out, so one of things We do it to help prevent that, before we go in we go through a fluid load, where before we go in we have a lot of bags of drinks and as a prescription you get based on your body weight what you're supposed to drink, they might be salt tablets with water or chicken broth or there was something we called astral aid, which wasn't really Gatorade, but I had to drink a lot to try to get those bodily fluids there, so that when I went back to a non-gravity I don't have this biggest orthostatic problem when trying to stand up.

The biggest problem maybe or what's most prominent is what's going on in your head because now gravity is there again and that vestibular system that was silent for all those days or however long you were there. in space now he's excited again and he's getting input like crazy in the brain saying what's there like what the hell is that that's what's going on here you want to move slowly I felt like I needed to walk with my legs wide apart because I feel like I was going to fall to keep my balance and they wanted to turn my head a lot to excite the negative stimulus system so much and after a couple of days, the gyroscope you are fine, but they tell you not to drive a car or a flying plane. or lift something heavy or do something like that until the flight surgeon clears you for those activities, final goodbyes and handshakes before they go through that hatch, way back, take a look at the soyuz tma 19 m spacecraft, one of Our The biggest health concern for astronauts in space is radiation exposure.

We have to be careful. Here on Earth we are also exposed to the sun. We want to use sunscreen. Protect us from the harmful effects of the Sun in space. We have an atmosphere or magnetic field that also protects us from radiation here on Earth. If you're up there, you're going to be exposed and we're very concerned about that, so we try to do everything we can to protect the astronauts. radiation and we do it in the spacecraft, for example, using certain materials and shielding that will protect them from radiation. NASA monitors that we have a device called a dosimeter, which is wireless and looks like a piece of plastic that can measure the amount of radiation. you've taken it and they put it in your launch suit and then you hand it in at the end of the mission and they read it to see how much radiation you've been exposed to as we get further and further away, we get further away.

Exposure to Earth's radiation could be the most important problem that needs to be solved or prevented if we are to travel further into space. Something we don't always think about about radiation exposure is that it can be very harmful and is a real challenge for space travel. One thing remember that you want to start your space flight in the best possible way. It's hard to make up for lack of exercise while you're in space, but it's much easier to be able to stay where you are. and maybe it will improve a little if you enter the flight if you take off in fairly good physical condition, for now the best way to stay healthy in a zero gravity environment is to exercise.