Posted on 07/12/2016 5:55:08 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Space does plenty of whacky things to astronauts' bodies, like deteriorating their muscle mass and making them on average 5 centimeters (2 inches) taller.
But scientists have uncovered another, more subtle side effect — space is totally ruining astronauts' perfect eyesight.
In fact, 80 percent of astronauts who come back from long-duration missions display symptoms of a mysterious eye condition that causes nearsightedness, Shayla Love reports for The Washington Post.
While it's a myth that all astronauts have to have natural 20/20 vision (they're allowed to have corrective laser surgery) by the time they launch, their vision does need to be flawless — so this problem could be a big issue for future human spaceflight missions, like the one hoping to get humans to Mars by the 2030s.
So what's causing all the vision problems? John Phillips, who was on board the International Space Station in 2005, was the first to notice the condition.
Throughout his time in orbit his vision suffered - although not enough to let mission control know about it - and when doctors tested him on his return to Earth, they found his vision had deteriorated from 20/20 to 20/100 during his six months in space.
Not only that, but his tests showed that his eyes had actually changed as well.
"The backs of his eyes had gotten flatter, pushing his retinas forward. He had choroidal folds, which are like stretch marks. His optic nerves were inflamed," reports Love.
NASA initially thought it was an isolated case, until they found evidence that the majority of astronauts had suffered some kind of vision problems while in space, or upon their return.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Interesting
Their mothers told them not to do that or they would go blind.
I guess the question would be is that due to being in zero gravity for so long, or the exposure to sunlight without the benefit of the atmosphere to weed out the damaging rays.
Or something else?
Hope they find the answer - that’s a significant deterioration in eyesight.
2 liters of extra fluid inside your skull? Seems like that would give you a pretty bad headache.
If you don’t spend a bit of time each day looking at infinity it would be shocking to me if your eyes didn’t adjust to focus on the nearby objects you are actually dealing with.
When “what you are looking at” is on the average about 5 to 10 feet away that is what your eyes are going to get good at.
Not much else to do when off duty...
If those billions had been spent on water projects, highway projects, rapid transit, electrical grids, etc....where would we be now? The money probably could have been spent in a better fashion causing a lot of more people to be employed on worthwhile projects.
LOL. 2 liters of extra fluid in your skull and your brain would squirt out the bottom of your spinal canal...
PING
It’s not just astronauts, they need to look a lot more into post cataract surgery patients. I did not have astigmatism before it, now I do. And am having huge fluctuations in vision that won’t stabilize to the point I can get glasses to correct the bad left implant, sloppy surgeon chose wrong lens and nicked a nerve too. I’ve always seen blurred out of from day 1. A decade later the second surgery was better, different surgeon, TOP in Memphis, but now I see at 2 focal lengths. Hard to correct vision that changes every day or two. And my Peripheral vision has been ruined.
You are not told Lasix causes Dry Eye Syndrome or that Cataract surgery does too.
And your head would look like Charlie Brown’s.
No word in the article to whether the problem corrects itself.
well, that explains why real Aliens from outer space have big black eyes.
Change in gravity effects aqueous humor
*ping*
I sometimes go to a website called Stuff Black People Don’t Like, and they have a saying there: You can have a base on Mars, or you can have a welfare state, but you can’t have both!
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