While your heart and mind may yearn to visit outer space, your red blood cells are not going to be totally ok with this kind of travel. This is the result of a new paper published in Nature Medicine that shows that the volume of red blood cells in astronauts drops due to an increase in red blood cell destruction: a 54% increase in red blood cell destruction.

We need red blood cells; they keep our bodies well-oxygenated, and the more we have the easier it is for our bodies to handle serious exertions and stresses. Without enough oxygen, our brain function gets fuzzy, our muscles don’t work as well, and it’s Just Bad.

While this result is new, we’d long known that astronauts had a lower red blood cell volume. It wasn’t known why. Perhaps optimistically, folks thought it was related to how the microgravity environment of space redistributes liquids in the body.

Nope. The body just destroys red blood cells. Figuring out how to stop that is next on the to-do list, and if they can find a solution for astronauts, hopefully, they will find a solution that also helps all the Earth-bound folks with blood disorders. It’s always nice when out-of-the-world problems can help people here on Earth.

More Information

NASA press release

“Hemolysis contributes to anemia during long-duration space flight,” Guy Trudel et al., 2022 January 14, Nature Medicine