Science Daily, July 23, 2009
UTMB's Douglas Paddon-Jones is quoted in this article about a study that he led that has been able to counter the amount of muscle loss in an experiment that simulated weightlessness. The UTMB research team conducted the first human experiments using a device intended to counteract this effect - a NASA centrifuge that spins a test subject with his or her feet outward 30 times a minute, creating an effect similar to standing against a force two and half times that of gravity. Working with volunteers kept in bed for three weeks to simulate zero gravity conditions, they found that just one hour a day on the centrifuge was sufficient to restore muscle "This gives us a potential countermeasure that we might be able to use on extended space flights and solve a lot of the problems with muscle wasting. This small amount of loading, one hour a day of essentially standing up, maintained the potential for muscle growth," Paddon-Jones said. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Physiology.