French scientists from the University of Bordeaux studied the effects of microgravity and hypergravity on human sleep. The results showed that people sleep worse in zero gravity and other gravity conditions than normal gravity. The research was published in the scientific journal broadcasting Journal of Sleep Research (JSR).
The team focused on participants in parabolic flights, which are specialized aerial training to simulate space conditions.
The study involved crew members on three different parabolic flights conducted between October 2022 and April 2023. Before and after the tests, they were asked to wear actigraphs, wrist-worn devices that track movement and are used to assess sleep patterns.
Each parabola began with a hypergravity phase, in which participants experienced a gravity of about 1.8 times that of Earth for about 20 seconds, followed by a microgravity phase lasting about 22 seconds.
The results showed that the participants’ sleep was more fragmented the night after the parabolic flight, with more awakenings compared to the night before.
Although the data showed that the experience of changing gravity negatively affected sleep quality, the participants themselves reported sleeping well after the exercise.
According to scientists, this contradiction can be explained by the positive impressions of parabolic flights, which generally improve the emotional background of the test participants.
Previous researchers I learnedthat women survive in space better than men.
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Source: Gazeta
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