{"id":83279,"date":"2018-10-04T07:03:11","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T14:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/deep-space-exploration-could-permanently-damage-human-gi-tracts"},"modified":"2018-10-07T17:09:12","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T00:09:12","slug":"deep-space-exploration-could-permanently-damage-human-gi-tracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/deep-space-exploration-could-permanently-damage-human-gi-tracts","title":{"rendered":"Deep Space Exploration Could Permanently Damage Human GI Tracts"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Humans aren\u2019t built for deep space exploration. We\u2019ve evolved to live here on Earth with an atmosphere, gravity, and a vitally important magnetic field that deflects high-energy cosmic radiation. It will take all our technological prowess to expand on to other worlds, and it won\u2019t simply be a matter of physically getting there. We also need to preserve delicate human biology. A new study from Georgetown University and NASA suggests it may be much harder than we thought to ensure astronauts maintain healthy gastrointestinal (GI) tract tissue in space<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While doctors expect long-term exposure to high-energy radiation will have myriad effects, it\u2019s difficult to study them in a lab on Earth. The effects of the GI tract are easier to assess because the cells lining this body system are replaced every few days. New cells migrate upward from a structure called a \u201ccrypt\u201d to take their places lining the gut. Any disturbance of this mechanism can lead to dysfunction.<\/p>\n

The study assessed mice under exposure to different radiation conditions as an analog for humans. They\u2019re much smaller, so they can\u2019t handle as much radiation has a human. However, their GI tracts respond much like ours would from exposure to high-energy particles. The researchers used the NASA<\/a> Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) in Brookhaven National Laboratory to bombard the mice with either simulated galactic cosmic radiation (sometimes called cosmic rays), gamma rays, or no radiation (control group).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Humans aren\u2019t built for deep space exploration. We\u2019ve evolved to live here on Earth with an atmosphere, gravity, and a vitally important magnetic field that deflects high-energy cosmic radiation. It will take all our technological prowess to expand on to other worlds, and it won\u2019t simply be a matter of physically getting there. We also [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83443,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83279\/revisions\/83443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}