Abstract
Nutrition has multiple roles during space flight from providing sufficient nutrients to meet the metabolic needs of the body and to maintain good health, to the beneficial psychosocial aspects related to the meals. Nutrition is central to the functioning of the body; poor nutrition compromises all the physiological systems. Nutrition is therefore likely to have a key role in counteracting the negative effects of space flight (e.g., radiation, immune deficits, oxidative stress, and bone and muscle loss). As missions increase in duration, any dietary/nutritional deficiencies will become progressively more detrimental. Moreover, it has been recognized that the human diet contains, in addition to essential macronutrients, a complex array of naturally occurring bioactive micronutrients that may confer significant long-term health benefits. It is therefore critical that astronauts be adequately nourished during missions. Problems of nutritional origin are often treatable by simply providing the appropriate nutrients and adequate recommendations. This review highlights six key issues that have been identified as space research priorities in nutrition field: in-flight energy balance; altered feeding behavior; development of metabolic stress; micronutrient deficiency; alteration of gut microflora; and altered fluid and electrolytes balance. For each of these topics, relevance for space exploration, knowledge gaps and proposed investigations are described. Finally, the nutritional questions related to bioastronautics research are very relevant to multiple ground-based-related health issues. The potential spin-offs are both interesting scientifically and potentially of great clinical importance.
Highlights
Nutrition has several key roles during space flights from the basic nutritive intake to meet the metabolic needs of the body and to maintain the organism in good health, to the beneficial psychosocial aspects related to the meals.[1]
Nutrition is likely to have a key role in counteracting many of the negative effects of space flight
Because muscle loss observed in astronauts is primarily due to a decrease in protein synthesis rather than to an increased protein catabolism, inadequate energy intake may the nutritional questions related to bioastronautics research are very relevant to multiple ground-based-related health issues, including chronic-age-related conditions
Summary
Nutrition has several key roles during space flights from the basic nutritive intake to meet the metabolic needs of the body and to maintain the organism in good health, to the beneficial psychosocial aspects related to the meals.[1]. Energy requirements during space flight are similar to those on the ground.[2,6] Yet, astronauts often consume less food than needed to cover their energy expenditure,[2,3,4] which induces body mass loss. Such energy deficits are physiologically tolerable for short-term missions because of the availability of body fat stores, a chronic negative energy balance becomes a significant detrimental issue jeopardizing health and performance for long-term missions.[3] The causes of the energy imbalance are, not understood. This will require the validation alterations including the development of insulin resistance and inflammation.[29,30,31]
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