Speaker 1: Three two YEA. Space flight definitely changed me. I think
Speaker 1: it has definitely has an effect on everyone who goes
Speaker 1: up there, even for a short mission. So, you know,
Speaker 1: just looking down at the Earth, I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: so beautiful and colorful and looks extremely peaceful, right your.
Speaker 1: Very few people have viewed Earth the way le Roy
Speaker 1: Chow has, from over four hundred kilometers above the planet's
Speaker 1: surface and cruising at an unimaginable seventeen thousand miles per hour.
Speaker 1: Leroy is a chemical engineer and a former NASA astronaut
Speaker 1: who's been to outer space on four separate missions, racking
Speaker 1: up two hundred and twenty nine days in space. One
Speaker 1: of the things that a lot of people find weird,
Speaker 1: and I found a little weird too, is you're not
Speaker 1: sure what to do with your your head and your neck.
Speaker 1: You know, because you're on Earth you're used to feeling
Speaker 1: that pressure on your head against a pillow, and in space,
Speaker 1: of course, you're just kind of I mean, we actually
Speaker 1: do have like a little phone block at the top
Speaker 1: of the sleeping bag that you can act as a pillow,
Speaker 1: and there's a cloth of fabrics trap with velcrow that
Speaker 1: you can strap against your forehead if you need that
Speaker 1: pressure against the back of your head to fall asleep,
Speaker 1: and I don't think anyone really uses that. Spending that
Speaker 1: much time in orbit means that Leroy and his fellow
Speaker 1: astronauts will definitely see the effects of that environment on
Speaker 1: their bodies, particularly when they're trying to sleep, which is
Speaker 1: even more of a challenge in space than it is
Speaker 1: on Earth. The lack of gravity effects astronauts spines, their brains,
Speaker 1: and even the amount of fluid build up in their
Speaker 1: nasal cavities, just to name a few of the challenges.
Speaker 1: All of these things just make it even more difficult
Speaker 1: to get good rest on the final frontier. Sleep is
Speaker 1: not only important when you're really young, but it's important
Speaker 1: as a lifestyle, even as a professional, to make sure
Speaker 1: you get enough sleep so that your brain can develop
Speaker 1: to it's full capacity. And certainly, anyone in any position
Speaker 1: where you have to perform, you know that you've performed
Speaker 1: best obviously when you've had good sleep and good rest.
Speaker 1: So sleep is definitely an important thing and it and
Speaker 1: it is a challenge in space. Beyond the expected challenges
Speaker 1: of sleeping in space, Leroy experienced a sort of jet
Speaker 1: lag as he first embarked, So we kept the laboratory
Speaker 1: running twenty four hours a day, and so that meant
Speaker 1: that four hours after launching into space for my first time,
Speaker 1: I had to go to sleep. And so imagine being
Speaker 1: so excited to be in space for the first time,
Speaker 1: looking at the air and floating. You know, we're in
Speaker 1: this weird environment. Feeling a little weird because you know
Speaker 1: you're floating and you're in space, and they're all these
Speaker 1: physiological changes happening in your body. Anyway, the biology and
Speaker 1: functions of the human body have been shaped in part
Speaker 1: by its evolution in the gravity of Earth. So how
Speaker 1: does an astronaut's body, having escaped that gravity, adapt to
Speaker 1: life in a spacecraft speeding through the vacuum of space.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to explore what it's like getting rest
Speaker 1: for our bodies in the ultra hostile environment of outer space,
Speaker 1: and how the absence of gravity and abundance of radiation
Speaker 1: affect the delicate mechanisms that allow our bodies and our
Speaker 1: brains to power down and recharge. On this episode of
Speaker 1: Chasing Sleep, Sleep, the final Frontier. Hi, I'm on a
Speaker 1: hut O'Connor, and this is Chasing Sleep and I heart
Speaker 1: radio production and partnership with Mattress Firm. Sleep in space
Speaker 1: is pretty weird, you know, especially the first time to
Speaker 1: get up there. Once we launched into space, I have
Speaker 1: to say we were kind of pretty worn out by
Speaker 1: the time we did fly. And that's kind of a
Speaker 1: joke among ast or not especially those of us who
Speaker 1: fly on the Space station, which is not really a joke.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, you're ready to go fly when
Speaker 1: you're completely exhausted, and so, you know, not necessarily the
Speaker 1: best way to launch into space. Right, So you're high
Speaker 1: above the Earth's atmosphere in space, a million things going
Speaker 1: through your mind and all sorts of different environmental effects
Speaker 1: happening to your body. What exactly is it like to
Speaker 1: sleep up there? We had sleep stations on that flights
Speaker 1: because we were to shift operations, which meant we had
Speaker 1: kind of little, you know, little closets if you will. Um.
Speaker 1: I hate to I hate to use this word, but
Speaker 1: they're kind of like little coffins that we could get
Speaker 1: into and slide the door shut so it would be dark,
Speaker 1: and put ear plugs in. Leroy continued to tell the
Speaker 1: story of his first time sleeping in space, getting to
Speaker 1: the obstacle that I find most interesting zero gravity. And
Speaker 1: so I got into my little bunk after I had
Speaker 1: taken my sleeping pills, and it was dark, and had
Speaker 1: my ear plugs in, and I knew the orientation of
Speaker 1: the Space shuttle. Usually it was always the belly of
Speaker 1: the shuttle facing the Earth, so I knew the orientation
Speaker 1: of the shuttle. I knew my orientation inside of that
Speaker 1: dark sleep station. And I was laying on my back.
Speaker 1: Although I was floating, I wasn't really laying. I was
Speaker 1: just floating in there in a sleeping bag, and I
Speaker 1: kind of felt like laying on my side, and it
Speaker 1: didn't make any sense whatsoever. But I rotated ninety degrees
Speaker 1: and in my mind I knew I was on my
Speaker 1: side relative to the Earth. Didn't make any difference because
Speaker 1: I was, you know, floating, and then I fell asleep.
Speaker 1: So just describing these sleep closets seems like an interesting
Speaker 1: place to have to squeeze into for rest, are there
Speaker 1: multiple astronauts in each bunk? And exactly how tight is
Speaker 1: the space on a bed up there in space? It
Speaker 1: looks like a big box. Okay, So you slide the
Speaker 1: door open and you kind of get yourself inside, and
Speaker 1: then there's three other people beneath you if you're on
Speaker 1: the top right, but you're all separate. You're on your
Speaker 1: own little box. And there's air flow, so you got
Speaker 1: plenty of ventilation, so you don't, you know, build up
Speaker 1: carbon dox and all that, and but the sleeping bags
Speaker 1: in there, and it's just kind of floating in there.
Speaker 1: There's not much room. There's room for nothing else except you, basically.
Speaker 1: So one part about being an astronaut you can't be
Speaker 1: the slightest pit claustrophobic, and that doesn't work out. But
Speaker 1: it's not that bad. It's not uncomfortable. Maybe it's not uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: but there's a reason it takes months of training just
Speaker 1: to get used to sleeping in those quarters. And beyond
Speaker 1: the training, Leroy explained how extensively he and his fellow
Speaker 1: astronauts were monitored for sleep and for other medical conditions. So,
Speaker 1: for example, on that same first mission, I had to
Speaker 1: wear an actograph during uh my sleep period was a
Speaker 1: little thing I had to put on my wrist and
Speaker 1: it was just monitor. It was trying to get a
Speaker 1: handle on how well I was sleeping, how restless I was,
Speaker 1: how long it took for me to stop moving around
Speaker 1: and go to sleep, and then during sleep how much
Speaker 1: I moved around? So they were collecting data like that.
Speaker 1: There are also journals that you keep that you could
Speaker 1: keep on your you know, part of that was your
Speaker 1: sleep quality. How was your sleep quality? Uh? Anecdotally for myself,
Speaker 1: it seems like I need a little less sleep in space.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. It just seems like maybe I
Speaker 1: need about an hour or less in space, or I
Speaker 1: would wake up maybe an hour earlier than I might
Speaker 1: here on the Earth and sleep was okay. The struggle
Speaker 1: to get good sleep and outer space may not be easy,
Speaker 1: but Leroy told me about plenty of moments that made
Speaker 1: all the hard work well worth it. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: the most uh wow moment of my space flights was
Speaker 1: on my third flight. We were on the second major
Speaker 1: assembly mission of Space Station program. And during that time
Speaker 1: I was doing a spacewalk, one of the spacewalks, and
Speaker 1: then my my boots were attached to the robotic arm
Speaker 1: of the Space Shuttle and I was being moved from
Speaker 1: one work side to another. And during that transition of
Speaker 1: several minutes, during a good part of it, I was
Speaker 1: faced down towards the Earth, and I couldn't see the
Speaker 1: space station or the space shuttle out of my peripheral vision,
Speaker 1: and so I was looking straight down at the Earth,
Speaker 1: watching the clouds and the continents roll by, and I
Speaker 1: felt like a satellite flying over the Earth. So that
Speaker 1: was probably the most amazing, you know, a few minutes
Speaker 1: of my career. We'll be right back after a brief
Speaker 1: message from our partners at Mattress Firm, and now back
Speaker 1: to chasing sleep. The moment the human body enters space
Speaker 1: a place we've definitely not evolved to be, our bodies
Speaker 1: inter mechanisms start to change. We evolved here on Earth,
Speaker 1: so life generally likes where it evolved, and so humans.
Speaker 1: There are a number of biomedical things that happened to
Speaker 1: us in space, and none of them are good. A
Speaker 1: lot of people have a little bit of congestion because
Speaker 1: in space is a fluid shift where you're no longer
Speaker 1: have gravity pulling fluids down into your legs, so you
Speaker 1: have a fluid shift, and even though your body tries
Speaker 1: to calibrate that, in fact, the average person loses about
Speaker 1: two leads of water in space. You know, you you
Speaker 1: carry about two leaders less water in space when you're
Speaker 1: floating around. So imagine one of those big soda bottles.
Speaker 1: That's how much less water is in the average person.
Speaker 1: And but nonetheless you still feel a little bit full headed,
Speaker 1: a little bit like you're laying on an inclined head down,
Speaker 1: and so that can make you feel a little bit congested.
Speaker 1: And so you know, that was something I was aware of, uh,
Speaker 1: during my sleep, is that I couldn't breathe. This is
Speaker 1: easily through my nose, you know, and sometimes that would
Speaker 1: wake me up or something. Leroy has amazing firsthand insight
Speaker 1: into the challenges that astronaut's face and the techniques to
Speaker 1: overcome them. So to better understand the technicalities behind how
Speaker 1: space is affecting our bodies and brains, I sat down
Speaker 1: with Dr Matthias Bosner, a professor of psychiatry. I joined
Speaker 1: the German Aerospace Center actually the Flight Physiology division, and
Speaker 1: was actually hired to investigate the effects of aircraft noise
Speaker 1: on sleep. Was the largest study ever that was done
Speaker 1: at the time at the German Aerospace Center. Stayed at
Speaker 1: the German aerospacent the footage years, studied a lot of sleep,
Speaker 1: then came to the United States and did a lot
Speaker 1: of work in space flight and an astronauts. Dr Matthias
Speaker 1: Parsner broke down exactly what's going on in and around
Speaker 1: the bodies of astronauts that makes it so hard for
Speaker 1: them to sleep. We also see some volume shifts in
Speaker 1: the brain and the volumes that carry the cerebral spinal
Speaker 1: fluid they actually extend during long duration space flight. And
Speaker 1: then there's a radiation which is not a super big
Speaker 1: deal on the I S because it's still in it's
Speaker 1: a low Earth orbit and it's within Earth magnetic shield.
Speaker 1: But once we venture out of a low Earth orbit,
Speaker 1: you know, back to the Moon or two Mars, radiation
Speaker 1: becomes a major issue. And we actually generated predictive models
Speaker 1: for a mass so looking at all the different environmental
Speaker 1: stressors on the I S, and radiation was one that
Speaker 1: was consistently showing up and that it was affecting cognit
Speaker 1: performance even the oh they're still you know, in that
Speaker 1: protective environment magnetically. But then there's also the nutrition is different.
Speaker 1: On the is s. You have oftentimes elevated carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: levels that can affect performance sometimes you know, lower oxygen levels.
Speaker 1: You have just the psychological stress related to living in
Speaker 1: an isolated, confined, an extreme environment with the threat to
Speaker 1: life component. These changes on your body can be very
Speaker 1: jarring for first time astronauts, but with enough time, incredibly
Speaker 1: the human body begins to adapt, including changes to how
Speaker 1: our brain functions. There is a lot of adaptation going on,
Speaker 1: both physiologically but also from a brain perspective, because you
Speaker 1: know that gravity vector is gone, and you know your
Speaker 1: your brain kind of has to rewire itself or or
Speaker 1: reweight the different neural connections to make sense of this.
Speaker 1: You know, for example, the visual input becomes much more
Speaker 1: important now because you know, our vestibulous system that tells
Speaker 1: us how we are oriented in space is no longer working.
Speaker 1: Basically it switched off, right, So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: brain placidity going on. But also you know, because of that,
Speaker 1: nausea is a big problem during the first you know,
Speaker 1: one or two weeks, and you know there's a medication
Speaker 1: for that as well. Or back pain is another is
Speaker 1: another big issue. You know, astronauts spines are actually extending
Speaker 1: because you know, we don't have that gravity vector, and
Speaker 1: you know the spine is not compressed when we're walking around.
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting how studying something that might seem as
Speaker 1: foreign as an astronaut sleeping in space gives us great
Speaker 1: insight into how our bodies work down here on Earth.
Speaker 1: I asked Matthias what other info he was able to
Speaker 1: discover for us Earth links while studying the sleep of astronauts.
Speaker 1: We did the study in twenty for astronauts, measured their
Speaker 1: perform moments and we asked them questions about their sleep
Speaker 1: and how they felt, etcetera. But at the time we
Speaker 1: didn't have the environmental data from the International Space Station.
Speaker 1: It was actually very interesting to see which variables were
Speaker 1: you know, showing up. And I already mentioned the radiation
Speaker 1: that's not that relevant on Earth, but CEO two, for example,
Speaker 1: is one of the factors that plays a role. And
Speaker 1: we just did another study here on on Earth in
Speaker 1: bedroom of participants who were wearing like an active graph
Speaker 1: which is a fitbit like device for fourteen consecutive nights
Speaker 1: or twenty four our periods, and we measured you know,
Speaker 1: air pollution PM two point five levels in the bedroom,
Speaker 1: CEO two levels, temperature, humidity and noise and low and behold,
Speaker 1: we get significant effects on sleep of air pollution CEO
Speaker 1: two temperature, and noise always in the sense that higher
Speaker 1: levels are worse for sleep. So in that sense, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the things that we observed on
Speaker 1: the I S S translate back nicely to situations on Earth.
Speaker 1: Matthias's job is to study all the physiological effects of
Speaker 1: outer space so we can avoid any surprises on the
Speaker 1: adventurers that are heading up there, but dealing with an
Speaker 1: environment as new as that, there will always be something unexpected.
Speaker 1: I found the challenge regarding noise particularly surprising. My assumption
Speaker 1: would have been that up in space that you're probably
Speaker 1: dealing with less noise than you are on the ground. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, outside the space station it's incredibly quiet because
Speaker 1: you have a vacuum and days there's you know, sounds
Speaker 1: are not transported at all. But inside the space station
Speaker 1: you have you know, lots of pumps and devices and alarms,
Speaker 1: so there's a constant background noise level. But there's also
Speaker 1: you know, intermittent noise events that can grab your attention
Speaker 1: and also affect your sleep. Yeah, So how does that
Speaker 1: kind of noise a factor sleep? What does it do? Well?
Speaker 1: You know, one thing is that our auditory system has
Speaker 1: kind of a watchman function it's it's like always online,
Speaker 1: it's constantly monitoring our environment for potential threats. So we
Speaker 1: have to have some sensory inputs that we're still monitoring
Speaker 1: while we're sleeping, and if everything dangerous comes up, you know,
Speaker 1: we're woken up and so that we can actually run
Speaker 1: away and and get away from that threat. So the
Speaker 1: auditory system is monitoring the environment while we're sleeping, and
Speaker 1: not only for sound levels, but actually for content. There
Speaker 1: were studies as earliest in the nineteen sixties where they
Speaker 1: would play back names and whenever your own name was
Speaker 1: played back, you would wake up with a much higher
Speaker 1: probability than when it was just another name that didn't
Speaker 1: have a meaning for you. So it's both sound levels
Speaker 1: and content that do matter. So in that sense, you
Speaker 1: know if you have an alarm, I mean alarm, alarm
Speaker 1: is actually meant to grab your attention and to arouse you,
Speaker 1: like an alarm clock, right or baby crying that those
Speaker 1: are those sounds have properties that that make you wake up.
Speaker 1: So if there's an alarm of the isis obviously you
Speaker 1: know the intent is to wake you up. But oftentimes
Speaker 1: there are like alarms that are not that important that
Speaker 1: void you up. Nevertheless, so there is you know, a
Speaker 1: pump running every time there's a change in the noise
Speaker 1: levels that is very meaningful to humans and more likely
Speaker 1: to wake you up. So this is, you know, when
Speaker 1: it's a noisy on the International Space Station that may
Speaker 1: actually affect the astronauts sleep as well. The mechanism in
Speaker 1: our brains that can determine which noises are normal and
Speaker 1: which are important, all while we're basically shut off has
Speaker 1: got to be one of evolution's most useful and coolest achievements,
Speaker 1: the testament to our species ability to explore even places
Speaker 1: we were explicitly never meant to go. The thing that
Speaker 1: surprised me is how quickly, just how adaptable the human
Speaker 1: body is. Like you get up there, it's one of
Speaker 1: the weirdest environments. You can suddenly find yourself in your
Speaker 1: floating You feel weird, you're you're dizzy. For the first
Speaker 1: couple of days, You've you've got this fluid shift going on,
Speaker 1: so you feel like you're standing on your head. But
Speaker 1: then after a few days, even the people that have
Speaker 1: trouble a little trouble adapting, even they will adapt. And
Speaker 1: then you know, surprisingly even after short shuttle mission of
Speaker 1: one or two weeks. When you come back, your body
Speaker 1: has already forgotten what it's like to be on Earth,
Speaker 1: and so you've got to adapt to being back on
Speaker 1: Earth where you're dizzy again. You can't walk a straight
Speaker 1: line save your life. Um, you feel might feel a
Speaker 1: little nauseous, you might feel fatigued and low on energy.
Speaker 1: But after a few days after a shuttle mission, you
Speaker 1: bounce back pretty well. So the human body can adapt
Speaker 1: to these different environments. Uh. Surprisingly, Well, that's all for
Speaker 1: this episode. Join me again next week when we learn
Speaker 1: about people who live at the top of the world,
Speaker 1: where the sun stays in the sky for months at
Speaker 1: a time, and how the perpetual daytime affects their sleeping patterns.
Speaker 1: Of Winter is so much easier just because it's dock
Speaker 1: all the time. But in the summer we have to
Speaker 1: like just close all the windows, all the cones, put
Speaker 1: like cobboard on to block out the light. At like
Speaker 1: ten pm, just run around the house play operation nighttime.
Speaker 1: We want to hear from you. Leave a rating or
Speaker 1: review for our show on your podcast player of choice.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at on a hot O'Connor.
Speaker 1: Until next time, hoping you're living your best while sleeping
Speaker 1: your best. Chasing Sleep is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio in partnership with Mattress Firm. Our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Molly Sosha. Our EP of Post is James Foster. Our
Speaker 1: supervising producer is Kia Swinton. Our producer is Sierra Kaiser.
Speaker 1: Our researcher and writer is Eric Lesia. This show is
Speaker 1: hosted by me On a Hot O'Connor