Astrofit The Astronaut Program for Anti-Aging

Chapter 1: Reversing the Body's Aging, for Astronauts and for You We ever long for visions of beauty,We ever dream of unknown worlds.-- MAXIM GORKY Astronauts will soon travel to Mars, a cold planet half the size of Earth, located more than 250 million miles away. No trip into space will have taken so long. No expedition will have involved such exhaustive, integrated preparation. As a society, we might react to the news of this incredible journey with awe and pride. Correctly, we would think of this adventure as the achievement of one of our greatest goals.For me, however, there will be something more. For me, there will be a different kind of exhilaration, one that comes from the fulfillment of one's own goals. You see, the secondary benefit of the successful journey to Mars is the impact it will have on the struggle to reverse the aging process here on Earth.The extensive plans for this three-year round-trip Martian voyage are well under way, and they entail the most comprehensive scientific preparation for any journey ever attempted. That is because prolonged space flight in microgravity -- that's the word for almost zero gravity -- results in remarkable physical changes within the body which are astonishingly similar to our journey into old age.Traveling into old age is a damaging process we want to stop and reverse, especially as it concerns our muscles and bone.Weeks into their Martian adventure, the astronauts' muscle cells will atrophy. Some will be lost forever as these space travelers become as weak as most eighty-year-olds. Calcium will be leached from their bones at a greatly accelerated rate. Normal bone growth will be upset, leaving their bones pitted with craters and liable to fracture. Imagine the bones as being like a wool sweater that has been eaten by moths. The astronauts' balance will be extremely compromised. Their blood volume will be reduced, and their heart muscle will shrink. Their immune systems will be upset, and minor infections may pose major threats. Their bodies will be bombarded by radiation, greatly increasing the risk of cancer.Turning Back the ClockMy job over the past few years has been to find effective ways to prevent the premature aging of the Mars-bound astronauts. As head of the Nutrition, Physical Fitness, and Rapid Rehabilitation Team of the National Space Biomedical Research Institution (NSBRI), I have been working on a program to prevent the astronauts from experiencing a physical deterioration equivalent to more than thirty years of aging on their journey to and from the Red Planet. The ultimate goal is to have a crew of astronauts land on Mars in great physical shape, with muscles and bones as strong and powerful as they were at liftoff nine months earlier -- and to have them return to Earth in the same physical condition.The good news is that a way to do this has been found. I can now share with you an age-reversal program that works for astronauts and will work for you. What I am proposing is revolutionary: a program that will allow all of us on Earth to take control of how quickly or slowly we age. The program is called AstroFit.In my "Mars" laboratory at the Donald W. Reynolds Center on Aging at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, I have been able to simulate a speeded-up aging process in order to see exactly what happens to muscle, bone, balance, and overall fitness. What normally takes place over the span of a lifetime, I can now observe happening in weeks, using as my test subjects healthy, active people in their twenties, thirties, and forties. My research has documented the advancement of aging, characterized by specific breakdowns and changes that occur in the human body in weightless conditions. In my lab, I am seeing what will happen to the astronauts on their journey to and from Mars.As I became more involved in mEvans, William J. is the author of 'Astrofit The Astronaut Program for Anti-Aging' with ISBN 9780743216821 and ISBN 0743216822.