Here’s what happens to astronauts’ physical and mental health after months in space

Is everything you’re going to need to know about these astronauts coming home and the challenges they’re going to face. My name’s John Jaquish. I’m a doctor of biomedical engineering and I have done extensive work in bone density treatment, which is one of the key challenges that those who leave the comfort of the gravity field that the earth provides have to deal with when they return earth. They’re going to notice the problems that have been added to the general physical challenges based on poor digestion, like gravity is required for proper digestion. So they’ve already been suffering from compromised digestion. No doubt they will have had some shrinkage of their stomach and digestive system just because it’s so difficult to digest food in a zero gravity environment. They’re accustomed to eating less and they’re gonna need to eat more now that they’re back on earth and can actually utilize that nutrition. They’ll be lucky if they can even get to maintenance calories. Their, their digestive system has been so compromised and they haven’t been able to eat a lot. Gravity is required to really pull food through your digestive system. If it were me, it would be an almost all protein diet. I would encourage nutrient dense. It would pretty much just be butter and steak would be the recommendation. The highest nutrient dense foods and as much strength exercise, which would be relative to their level of conditioning. So day one, they’re probably gonna go to sleep. Day two, they’re gonna do very simple stuff like body weight squats, you know, sit to stands in a chair and they’re just standing up. They haven’t had to balance themselves for a long time and that’s, that’s going to show and they’re gonna feel that just getting on and off the toilet is gonna be hard because it’s, that’s like a squat and they’re weak, so they’ll have trouble getting on and off of it, but that’s it. Then on top of that, because they have not had mechanical loading going through their musculoskeletal system, they’re going to have a loss of bone density that is noticed and a loss of muscle mass that is noticed and they’re gonna have to begin training to treat those deficiencies very quickly because they’re, they’re frail at this point. It’ll probably take them six months to a year to recover their strength and bone mass. Significant losses happen in zero gravity. Regular weightlifting just not that great. What we need is a weight that changes as we move so that it accommodates our, our strength curve delivers a much more exhausting stimulus, therefore guaranteeing muscular growth. If they train correctly in the most efficient manner within probably the same amount of time that they were gone, if they dedicate that to training, they could restore all the damage that was done by the zero gravity environment they would need to be doing four days a week. Because you do need some time to recover between exercise stimuli. Activities of daily living would probably be challenging for most people in this situation. However, you could put astronauts in the same category as Navy Seals in the amount of training and discipline that they have. So they’re well aware of what they signed up for. They know exactly what they need to do and they’re probably not even gonna complain about it. Ultimately. I have heard astronauts tell me that like the weight of a a pencil feels very strange in their hand because everything they’ve grabbed a hold of had no weight to it for the last few months. So just simple activities seem either challenging or oddly difficult or it feels strange. But again, these are NASA astronauts. They’re ready for this. When astronauts are recruited, they pick the ones who they know have the mental fortitude to handle being stranded in space for a few months. These individuals, they’re problem solvers. They don’t panic, they think their way through everything. Now the chances of one of them having a, a mental or emotional breakdown is still significant because it’s very difficult what they went through. But they are so highly trained that it’s rare where any of them have any mental breakdown or or are just in distress. This is something NASA has done exceptionally well. They really know how to pick the people and then they train them so that they don’t ever self-sabotage because in a situation like that, you are your own worst enemy. You are the one who’s gonna do something in a panic that might be a mistake and they’re trained not to do that. They think everything through radiation is an issue. Our atmosphere blocks a significant portion of the radiation that is apparent in just the part of outer space that is very close to earth. So more exposure than you would get in a couple of x-rays at the dentist. But the proximity to the sun tends to be where the real radiation concerns are. So they’re not gonna be like damaged for life because of radiation exposure. There’s such high anxiety in space like, are we gonna even make it home once they get home? It’s just kind of a collapse. You’re fighting to stay alive one day and then the next day you don’t even know your purpose. It’s depressing. I mean, ironically, it’s like your life has been saved. You’re back here on earth. But they always feel that way ‘cause they’re fighting for their life one day and that hurts.

Optimize your health through science