(Image Credit: Hedges Family Estate Winery)
In the latest round of good news surrounding humanities restored interest in leaving Earth for greener shores, a new study helps justify taking a few cases of your favorite Bordeaux along for the trip. The Beth Israel Deaconess Center at Harvard University claims that resveratrol, a well known component of red wine which comes from the skins of the grapes, may help contribute to retaining muscle mass and tone as astronauts spend increasingly long times in reduced-G environments. Specifically, their study considered how to assist the first crews to reach Mars to better tolerate the 40% of Earth normal gravity that they will live and work with as new residents of our second home.
The study by the Beth Israel Deaconess Center, conducted so far on rats, found that taking resveratrol supplements (the most boring way to intake resveratrol) resulted in “a significant increase in muscle weight, myofiber (or muscle cell) size, and a protection of muscle composition”. These results are exciting for a number of reasons: Mars research specifically continues to increase at the highest academic levels, solutions are being found to human frailty in non-Earth environments, and the solutions are potentially natural ones allowing us to achieve needed results through diet, exercise and habit change rather than massive artificial modification.
Stay tuned for more important scientific papers, you can be sure, on how we can meet the challenge of the stars!
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