How space travel wreaks havoc on the body

UC Science Today

Space missions are exciting, but they’re risky for astronauts’ health. The lack of gravity in space may seriously damage their musculoskeletal systems, especially the spine and hip. Thomas Lang, an imaging scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, has recently discovered crucial details about bone loss in space. “What we did in our study is to look at how this corresponded to architectural changes in the hips. We used a 3-dimentional approach called quantitative computed tomography and in particular in the hip we found the trabecular bone – the spongy bone in the center of the medullary canal in the hip - was lost at about up to 3 percent per month.” That’s similar to the bone structure that 70 or 80-year old women might lose in a year. “The driving factor is disuse. Very similar to what happens when somebody has a spinal cord injury and they sit down in a wheel chair.” One solution is to ensure that astronauts get strenuous workouts in space.