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Study Finds That Astronauts Are Severely Sleep Deprived
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Researchers tracked the sleep patterns of 85 crew members aboard the International Space Station and space shuttle and found that despite an official flight schedule mandating 8.5 hours of sleep per night, they rarely got more than five. In fact, getting a full night's rest was so difficult that three-quarters of shuttle mission crew members used sleep medication, and sometimes entire teams were sedated on the same night. Given that sleep deprivation contributes to up to 80% of aviation accidents, it's important to better understand why sleep is so difficult in space, the authors say."
If it isn't really dark, with all the indicator lights extinguished, how well can one expect to sleep? Even a single blue power light on a PC is enough to interfere with REM. And, if the windows aren't totally blacked, having a sunrise-sunset every 45 minutes can't help, either.
I'd want to soak up every minute of it. Maybe they should look into the mechanism called: "It's frickin awesome."
Apparently I sleep like an astronaut.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
That helps me sometimes.
Oh, and no coffee late in the evening.
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Earth to astronauts: Go to sleep
By Emily Underwood
7 August 2014 6:30 pm
It's hard to sleep in outer space. On the International Space Station (ISS), the sun rises every 90 minutes when the station circles Earth. Space suits can be uncomfortable, too: After landing on the moon in 1969, Buzz Aldrin reported getting only âoea couple of hours of mentally fitful drowsingâ due to the noise and the cold.
Now, a new study published online today in The Lancet Neurology shows the extent of sleep deprivation among astronauts. Researchers tracked the sleep patterns of 85 crew members aboard the ISS and space shuttle and found that despite an official flight schedule mandating 8.5 hours of sleep per night, they rarely got more than five.
In fact, getting a full night's rest was so difficult that three-quarters of shuttle mission crew members used sleep medication, and sometimes entire teams were sedated on the same night. Although, unlike astronauts from Aldrin's day, crew members now sleep in quiet, dark chambers, lack of gravity itself may contribute to the problem.
Given that sleep deprivation contributes to up to 80% of aviation accidents, it's important to better understand why sleep is so difficult in space, the authors say.
I used this: http://www.viewcached.com/http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/08/earth-astronauts-go-sleep
Yahoo is the only site that had it cached.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I wonder how sleep apnea works in space. It's hard to sleep on your side when there's no "up".
Everyove knows how fast men fall asleep after they have taken care of themselves.
This is nothing new, and is surely not news; perhaps quantifying it and writing an article for a magazine bleeding subscribers is relevant, but this has been discussed since mankind breached the outer limits of the atmosphere.
Blindingly obvious link for anybody with a Freshman-Year level physics course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena
Aliens probing them. I know that I would have a hard time sleeping.
Unless it was a sexy tentacled alien probing me with its slimy sticky gooey dropping hot ovipositor.
I have trouble getting a full night's sleep when I stay in a hotel during a business trip. Maybe they can't just relax and sleep like babies easily because they're, you know, flying through space at 17,100 mph, 200 miles up in the sky where there's no air to breath, in a tiny, cramped, tin can that's just barely keeping them alive in the most inhospitable environment humans have ever survived in. I don't think I'd sleep soundly, either.
...every morning
I mean, they're only in a metal tube in an airless environment hurtling at 27700km/hr around the earth surrounded by objects that could possibly destroy or cripple the only thing keeping them alive. Who'd lose sleep over that?
I don't think there's ever been a proper study of astronauts' natural sleeping patterns in space. There are always more things people want astronauts to do than there are hours to do them in, so everything (including sleep) is very tightly scheduled. Nobody's ever said "spend the next week doing nothing but keeping your spaceship running, and do it on your own schedule".
We don't know what effect, if any, the freefall environment has on sleep patterns. It may be that astronauts are so sleep-deprived because Mission Control has been scheduling things wrong.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Their bodies are not challenged during the day
"mandating 8.5 hours of sleep per night"
Oh sigh. Last time I had over 8 hours of sleep a night regularly was probably in the '70s.
People do not need the same amount of sleep... some people regularly need 8+ hours, others do fine on 5+. It's a question of age, metabolism, habits, workload, etc.
If you mandate that astronauts must sleep 8.5 hours a night, then you should not be surprised that they do not quite make it! State that they should have 6+ on average other their mission and suddenly the statistics will look far less worrisome.
Do we have comparisons for their physical state before and after regarding how much sleep deprivation their bodies showed? Perhaps part of the reason that they had trouble sleeping is that it's less tiring to be awake in space or more restful to be asleep in space.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The ISS is probably the worst place to try and get some sleep imaginable.
1. The noise
It might not be apparent from recordings taken on the ISS, but the station is noisy as hell. This is because all the air inside must be constantly recirculated to prevent dead air, and the only way to do this is with large fans.
2. Zero-G
Even if you're psychologically capable of tolerating zero-g, your body is expecting a constant downwards acceleration of 9.8m/s^2. For the relatively short stays on the ISS, each astronaut has to adjust to not having that downwards pressure acting on them when they try to go to sleep.
3. Danger
You're floating in a tin can on the edge of space and if anything whatsoever goes wrong, you could be dead before you wake up.
that stuff is just too perky
Sleep meds? And the whole team in one night? That can't be good or safe.
Why not some fine pastries made with green butter? Non-addictive and more effective; mentally unwind as well as sleep inducing.
because my brains a-floatin'.
Her experience is actually not at all uncommon. Many astronauts report being uncomfortable for extended periods because of the shift in fluids messing with the body. Nausea is not uncommon because the middle ear ends up filled with fluid and there's no "down" for the vestibular system to reference. People in extended missions find they suffer from discomfort of muscles and joints. They experience vision changes and bone loss. The human body is just not adapted to zero G. Some never adapt; but, astronauts being a group of over-achievers by definition, the hide the symptoms and don't report them.
Two words: Free Fall. Now, I don't know what true weightlessness feels like, but I do know what free fall feels like, which is what an astronaut in orbit is experiencing. Just like it sounds, it's equivalent to falling. The difference from jumping out of a plane is that in orbit you never stop. Now, I don't know about you, but I would need some significantly powerful tranquilizers to fall asleep while falling, even if I know I'm not about to stop suddenly and die. That wake up while falling response was hardwired into our tree dwelling ancestors to reduce the instances of death by broken neck.
Unless you have a desk job or you are not on a deployment, I don't many military people that get more than a job 5-6 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period and the 5 or 6 they do may not have been in a single session.
Remember the episode, not tv but real time, of the now-former Shuttle crew member, Lisa Nowak, who drove from Huston to Orlando to confront her sexual rival, Colleen Shipman, for the sexual attention and pleasures of another Shuttle crew member, William Oefelein !
Ah, the 'Young And Sleep Deprived'.
Or perhaps, 'The Drugs.'
Ha
If the ISS had gravity I'm sure this would be less of an issue. Spin that fucker.
Seriously, I would bet 99.9% of the sleeping issues are related to the foreign weightless environment. Stress, etc, yes that plays a role but the biggest issue is gravity.
makes your face swell up with blood, putting pressure on your sinuses. I've heard its compared to having a cold. Wrap that into being in FREAKING SPACE, I couldn't imagine myself sleeping too.
Great. More drugs...These numbskulls never heard of Ginseng or Blue light blockers ...Yoga....etc
Exposure to light (and in particular some frequencies at the blue end of the spectrum) fool the body into thinking it is experiencing daylight, and this actually affects the balance of certain hormones, like melatonin which is normally secreted shortly before and during sleep.
Studies have shown that experiencing bright light (and especially, as mentioned, of certain frequencies) straight up to bedtime, not only after bed, is known to interfere with melatonin production and other less significant hormones. In some animals, it can drive their hormones so crazy as to cause tumors and other serious health problems.
Humans are very flexible, and we can adapt to conditions of the tropics and (with protection) the poles, but it takes time to acclimate.
I suspect that if they subjected astronauts to the same kind of lighting conditions and hours for 60 days prior to their stay on ISS, a good part of this problem would go away. Expecting them to acclimate to the lighting conditions on top of everything else, and without a prior adjustment period, is asking a lot of them.
I had an unusual work schedule and began sleeping for no more than four hours at a time. The effects where bad.. My sister is a nurse and worked PM's and nights and we talked about the toll it took on us. When she told people that she worked nights their reply was "Oh. so you just sleep during the day". The lack of a normal day/night schedule is really bad. The flight crews train for this but you can't erase your body clock. If you haven't done it you will never know what it's like. Imagine having a sunrise and sunset every 90 minutes.
Von Braun's original designs for space stations pictured them as huge wheels in orbit around the earth. Humans occupied (for the most part) the outer portions and the slow spin created an artificial gravity as also depicted in Kubrick's "2001, a Space Odyssey". Apparently all aspirations to build such a space station were abandoned entirely by the '80s. Given all the stuff we've already sent into space that has been allowed to simply burn up in the atmosphere (by design, usually), humanity could very likely have built the original design and solved many of the problems such as sleep and bone density, etc. To date, nothing has been done in that regard, and apparently nothing is even planned, insofar as I know. Anyone have good reasons why? Is it the cost alone?
They should look at this: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...
Too much crap in space research/science nowadays.
All the NASA scientists who are proposing one way trips to Mars should go on one way trips out of NASA. That'll improve NASA. One way trips to Mars are a waste of money, time and resources. NASA should just get with the real next step and build a space station with artificial gravity. Not talk about stupid one way trips to Mars.
Trying to go to Mars at this point of our "tech tree" is like trying to jump before being able to stand. Even if we succeed we will fall on our faces. And we won't learn that much for the effort expended.
You try getting a good night's sleep while constantly falling. I wake up just having a dream where I fall.
In space no one can hear you snore.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That sounds a lot like the submarines I served on. It often seemed like I was the only one not popping Tylenol Cold or melatonin to sleep.