Scott Solomon

It causes your, your, your muscles to weaken because they don't have to work as hard, right?

Especially like in your lower body, your back.

Um,

And because your muscles aren't working as hard, your bones basically respond to muscle.

And so they start to kind of break down, like they basically will start to absorb, the body will absorb some of the minerals, right?

right, the calcium and the potassium that makes up your bones.

Exactly.

And actually, one of the ways that people have studied the effects of prolonged space flight is through bedrest studies.

So just by not moving your body much, it's not a perfect replica, but

It does simulate some of the ways in which being in a lower gravity environment impacts the body, the circulatory system, right?

Your heart's not having to pump as much to get blood through the entire body, you know, to get blood up to your brain.

You know, you got to work against gravity here, but in space you don't.

So we know a lot about that.

We know that, you know, the fluids in your body actually, not just the blood, but all of your body fluids start to be redistributed because, you know, gravity normally pushes them down towards your lower body.

So, you know, if you look at pictures of astronauts in space, you probably can tell, like, especially at first, their faces look kind of puffy.

Moon face.

Yeah.

They have space face and they have what they call chicken legs, right?

Because their legs look super skinny because they've lost all this fluid.

So they look a little silly, at least at first.